SpaceX's giant Starship vehicle towers above turquoise waters in gorgeous photo

[Admin]

SpaceX's Starship vehicle towers above sparkling turquoise waters in a stunning image that the company shared via social media over the weekend.

SpaceX's giant Starship vehicle towers above turquoise waters in gorgeous photo : Read more

 

[Qbot]

What beautiful waters about to be vaporized by the massive starship launch! You can almost see the thousands of fish and forest animals that will be killed by the launch. How gorgeous! Oh and goodbye beautiful clean air too.

 

[sappo]

What beautiful waters about to be vaporized by the massive starship launch! You can almost see the thousands of fish and forest animals that will be killed by the launch. How gorgeous! Oh and goodbye beautiful clean air too.

On the bright side, given their permit failures and shortcuts, they are extremely unlikely to get that launch permit this year. Or possibly even this decade, if all the construction permitting stuff they skipped doing 6 (10) years ago with ACoE turns out to be necessary and they have to go through that whole 5 year permitting process from scratch, to start dredging a wetland to build water treatment pools and and real flame diverter and etc.

 

[Lct/SPI]

Yes it's indeed gorgeous, but if you live down here, as I do on South Padre Island --(a hop, skip and a jump to SpaceX as the crow flies)-- you would know that the huge turquoise body if water in the foreground is the GULF of MEXICO, not the bay. Just sayin'!!
The rocket is perhaps 200 yards from the Gulf shore, otherwise known as Boca Chica Beach. Therein, in part, lies the root of the conflict over SpaceX being here at all. It blocks beach access during its many activities. In Texas, citizens have the legal right to access the beach, courtesy of the state Open Beaches Act. In other words, no one can cordon off the shoreline and say "It's Mine!!" Or own it in any fashion.
In any case, just a clarification for those who have never been here.
Thank You.

 

[Lct/SPI]

Yes it's indeed gorgeous, but if you live down here, as I do on South Padre Island --(a hop, skip and a jump to SpaceX as the crow flies)-- you would know that the huge turquoise body if water in the foreground is the GULF of MEXICO, not the bay. Just sayin'!!
The rocket is perhaps 200 yards from the Gulf shore, otherwise known as Boca Chica Beach. Therein, in part, lies the root of the conflict over SpaceX being here at all. It blocks beach access during its many activities. In Texas, citizens have the legal right to access the beach, courtesy of the state Open Beaches Act. In other words, no one can cordon off the shoreline and say "It's Mine!!" Or own it in any fashion.
In any case, just a clarification for those who have never been here.
Thank You.

In addition, parts of the Lower RGV and Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuges, surrounds the SpaceX area, as well as the Bahia Grande, where waterways were restored under Texas Highway 48 to allow the Laguna Madre Bay to revert to its natural flow during high and low tides. Not much in the way of forest, but cacti, various palms and scrub vegetation are around the area. It looks like a barren coastal plain, but over 500 species of birds migrate through here using the Central and Mississippi flyways. Other creatures also exist in the area, including the critically endangered Ocelet, a small spotted cat of which maybe less than 50 remain on the U.S. side of the Mexican border.

 

[Kehk in a MiG]

On the bright side, given their permit failures and shortcuts, they are extremely unlikely to get that launch permit this year. Or possibly even this decade, if all the construction permitting stuff they skipped doing 6 (10) years ago with ACoE turns out to be necessary and they have to go through that whole 5 year permitting process from scratch, to start dredging a wetland to build water treatment pools and and real flame diverter and etc.

I've said it before: is America's version of the N1 program.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I've said it before: is America's version of the N1 program.

Far from it.

While similar in size, it is not in other aspects, including funding and political aspects.

Russia lost the will to make it succeed and just gave up. Musk will not lose the will.

 

[Kehk in a MiG]

Musk will not lose the will.

That's what I'm afraid of.

 

[billslugg]

Let's pray Musk survives a long while. He has made unprecendented impact upon automotive market and space market. He is an unusual combination of genius, giga$$, no leash.
When I was in industry, our CEO told us some day the company would have one employee, the CEO, and everything else would be contracted out. One person running the whole thing, instant ability to cut off arms.

 

[Kehk in a MiG]

Let's pray Musk survives a long while.

He will have to stop making enemies, especially entire states.

 

[billslugg]

He will have to stop making enemies, especially entire states.

Good observation. When I was in ROTC in college, they taught us it was important not to have any enemies in your platoon. Learn how to get along with everyone they taught us. They said: "When you are leading your platoon up that hill, you don't want even one guy shooting at you."

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Musk has been diagnosed as being in the autism/aspergers spectrum, which is characterized by diminished interpersonal relationship ability.

I chalk up some of his posts as coming from an inability to realize that how he expresses an opinion about a controversial concept has a lot to do with how it is received by both sides of the controversy. He is just more direct in his statements than a lot of people are willing to consider, or even let slide. For example, his statements about ending the war in Ukraine are not things that people are not thinking about - they are just things that people are not yet willing to accept. Sometimes, you have to recognize people's hopes, as well as their probabilities that those hopes will ever be realized. He is not good at that with other people, but he thinks other people should accept his hopes as inevitable realities. I think it is the asbergers. So long as he is driven to achieve something by making a positive contribution, rather than just by making a negative impact on his rivals, I tend to give him a pass on his unpopular opinions.

 

[Kehk in a MiG]

Musk has been diagnosed as being in the autism/aspergers spectrum, which is characterized by diminished interpersonal relationship ability.

I chalk up some of his posts as coming from an inability to realize that how he expresses an opinion about a controversial concept has a lot to do with how it is received by both sides of the controversy. He is just more direct in his statements than a lot of people are willing to consider, or even let slide. For example, his statements about ending the war in Ukraine are not things that people are not thinking about - they are just things that people are not yet willing to accept. Sometimes, you have to recognize people's hopes, as well as their probabilities that those hopes will ever be realized. He is not good at that with other people, but he thinks other people should accept his hopes as inevitable realities. I think it is the asbergers. So long as he is driven to achieve something by making a positive contribution, rather than just by making a negative impact on his rivals, I tend to give him a pass on his unpopular opinions.

For me it's just his blatant lies. "We will build a car factory here". Lie. "Ok, we will give your state a battery factory!" Lie. "Sorry, a satellite factory then!" Yet another lie. Now, to "musk" someone in my state is to give someone an empty promise ("she musked me!")


It took a while, but at least Branson kept his promise to my state.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Trying to not get into politics, here, but I have to say that state politicians (most politicians at any level) don't keep their promises, either. I am not going to blame Musk for leaving California, considering what the conditions have been allowed to deteriorate into there. That state is actually losing population, even though it has tried to attract illegal immigrants with its "sanctuary cities" and insisted on counting them in its census data. Why would any sane person expect a big business to stay there? Many are even closing retail stores, due to repeated crimes with no consequences to the criminals. Railroad trains of goods are being routinely looted coming out of the LA harbor area, and California is mainly interested in outlawing the use of diesel locomotives there, rather than controlling the security problems. If the LA port itself could be relocated, even that would probably have left that state by now. So, let's put the blame where it belongs for Musk choosing to leave California.

 

[billslugg]

Tesla has a big car plant in Fremont, CA. Global engineering facility in SF. Gigafactory went to Austin because it was the only place he could get people to move. I dont know what Khek is referring to.

 

[Kehk in a MiG]

Tesla has a big car plant in Fremont, CA. Global engineering facility in SF. Gigafactory went to Austin because it was the only place he could get people to move. I dont know what Khek is referring to.

His empty promises to New Mexico. I don't care about those other states; we don't get tax money from Austin or Fredmont.

It doesn't even matter now; we have other companies like Netflix and Facebook and Virgin Galactic, and the highest GDP our state has ever known due to current world affairs. We are recouping the cost of fixing up the giga factory site by redeveloping it for a solar panel factory.

 

[billslugg]

Musk tried for years to locate a manufacturing plant in NM but they would not allow him to sell cars except through dealers. He set up on tribal land. What empty promise are you talking about? I'm confused.

Elon Musk exploits loophole law to establish Tesla hub on tribal land

New Mexico law prohibits car manufacturers from selling directly to customers without going through third-party dealers.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Kehk in a MiG]

Musk tried for years to locate a manufacturing plant in NM but they would not allow him to sell cars except through dealers. He set up on tribal land. What empty promise are you talking about? I'm confused.

Elon Musk exploits loophole law to establish Tesla hub on tribal land

New Mexico law prohibits car manufacturers from selling directly to customers without going through third-party dealers.

www.dailymail.co.uk

There's no law in my state that prevented him from building it and selling through dealerships (as they are sold now). He chose not to. That's number one.

He said he was to build a car battery factory here. Instead he built it in Reno, IIRC. This is the one where the infrastructure was built out in anticipation for it, but I see that last part as a good thing.

The third one was a satellite factory for Starlink satellites near Kirkland AFB. I have not heard anything else about it for years, so I assume it was quietly shelved.

After that, we stopped paying attention to him, except for using the term, to "musk" someone.

One thing about our state is that we practically kiss the ground upon which any company who wants to locate here walks, so it certainly wasn't for our lack of trying.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Demanding that Teslas be sold through independent dealer franchises is the government's choice. It is not Musk's choice in your state. So, Musk did not choose to build on land controlled by your state, but instead chose to build on land within your state that is not controlled by your government. Win # one for the local tribes. Might be a message in that somewhere for your state government. Remember, in a lot of places, it was once illegal to pump your own gas. But as gas prices escalated, that was dropped just about everywhere.

All that is really needed is to arrange for 3rd party repairs that do not violate warranty, or, put Tesla owned repair shops in a lot more locations. Right now, I would have to drive about 90 miles and cross the Chesapeake Bay to get a Tesla serviced. But, that is the problem with any other electric vehicle I could buy, right now.

 

[Kehk in a MiG]

Win # one for the local tribes.

That's very true, but that's just a dealership, not a factory.

Demanding that Teslas be sold through independent dealer franchises is the government's choice.

It was more of a lobbying effort by the independent dealers; Musk was pushing one way, and they were pushing the other. However, I still don't get how that actually physically stopped him from building the gigafactory here to begin with.

 

[billslugg]

"There's no law in my state that prevented him from building it and selling through dealerships (as they are sold now). He chose not to. That's number one." - Kehk

Right, but he didn't want to sell through independent dealers, and lose all those profits. That's the whole point. No "broken promises" there. It was a simple financial decision.