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Commercialization

SpaceX Gets its Incentives for Texas Spaceport and Launches AsiaSat 8

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
August 5, 2014
Filed under , ,

SpaceX Signs Agreement with Texas for Brownsville Spaceport, SpaceRef Business
“Texas Governor Rick Perry announced that the state of Texas will provide incentives to SpaceX so that the company can build a commercial spaceport in Cameron County.
The incentives include $2.3 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF). As well the state will provide $13 million from the Spaceport Trust Fund to the Cameron County Spaceport Development Corp. to support the development of infrastructure necessary for establishing a spaceport.”

Gov. Perry Announces State Incentives Bringing SpaceX Commercial Launch Facility, 300 Jobs to the Brownsville Area
Marc’s note: Hours after signing the agreement with Texas SpaceX launched AsiaSat 8 (Watch).

SpaceRef co-founder, entrepreneur, writer, podcaster, nature lover and deep thinker.

47 responses to “SpaceX Gets its Incentives for Texas Spaceport and Launches AsiaSat 8”

  1. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    Hey, it’s a business, right? Besides, Shelby’s been so good to Huntsville that I’m sure Perry could claim with a straight face that he’s just levelling the playing field!

  2. Anonymous says:
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    Houston has been reeling throughout the Obama years, so Musk is being shrewd. Plus less government regulation and restrictions, which make the Cape unappealing in the same way Orbital chose Wallops.

    • Yale S says:
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      @Hari, “Houston has been reeling throughout the Obama years”. Nonsense!
      “Bustling Houston, one of the bright spots in the U.S.economy, is growing so fast that business leaders fear running out of skilled labor as billions are spent building new energy infrastructure on the Gulf Coast…. Of the top 20 metro areas, Houston’s pace of job growth in the 12-months through May was the second-fastest in the country at 3.3 percent, behind only Dallas at 3.7 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.” http://www.reuters.com/arti
      or “Houston Is Unstoppable: Why Texas’ Juggernaut Is America’s #1 Job Creator” http://www.theatlantic.com/

      Yes, Texas was hit by the Bush Great Recession, but Obama’s massive encouragement of all energy supplies (the All-Of-The-Above strategy) has sheltered energy producing areas, whether fossil fuels or renewables (both of which Texas leads in).

      • jski says:
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        “Obama’s massive encouragement of all energy supplies” — You’ve got to be kidding!

        Tell the TX frackers they owe anything to this administration (except a boot in the ass and a slap in the face). Tell the coal industry how appreciative they ought to be! Tell the nuclear industry how welcoming this administration has been. And how’s Keystone coming along.

        • Vladislaw says:
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          So profits are down in all those fossile fuel and nuclear companies and we have had staggering amounts of companies in the energy industry going bankrupt. Is that the case? The subsidies they are getting must have also dried up as congress and the president must have cut off all subsidies and tax breaks.

        • Yale S says:
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          See my reply to Tritium3H above. As to Keystone, that is to ship Canadian Tar Sands extract to foreign customers. We are just the sacrifice zone for their profits, The supposed Bakken oil from the US was supposed to be added to the flow, but the US drillers don’t want to do it. They have a premium thin oil and it is trashed if carried in the keystone pipe

          http://www.forbes.com/sites
          http://mobile.reuters.com/ahttp://watchdog.org/145665/

      • Anonymous says:
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        I meant NASA Houston (JSC). So if SpaceX gets the contract for commercial crew it could become a symbiotic relationship.

      • Tritium3H says:
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        “Obama’s massive encouragement of all energy supplies” ??

        Have I entered an alternative “bizarro” universe, like on Seinfeld?

        • Paul451 says:
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          Or you’ve been there for awhile.

        • Yale S says:
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          Obama (who we used to call “The Senator from Excelon” has provided massive support to the industries. Yes, he has required more environmental controls, but he should. Take a look at this nat gas production chart: http://www.elsevier.com/__d… He has tried to double the loan guarantees to the nuclear industy (from bush’s $18b to more than $37b. Both of his energy secretaries have been deeply intertwined with the fossil fuel and nuclear industries. http://www.propublica.org/a

          His support of coal has been for so-called (and unlikely) Clean Coal. He has not promoted the horrible current coal mining and burning (and shouldn’t)

          In general = http://fortune.com/2014/08/

  3. Jeff Havens says:
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    Hmm.. first attempt, on time, no landing legs (since this launch wasn’t testing them — nice to know they are “optional”), no shown or known anomalies… this just keeps getting better and better. Go SpaceX! Nice shot in the arm for scheduling too.

    • Todd Austin says:
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      It actually went off 2.5 hours late due to thrust vectoring issues with the first stage, but they were able to resolve them and get it off during the original launch window (with 11 minutes to spare).

      • ReSpaceAge says:
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        2.5 hours late

        Guess the USAF will need an extra 6 months to investigate this before certifying Spacex.

  4. Vladislaw says:
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    I wonder if Elon brought up the ban of selling tesla cars in texas without going through traditional dealerships?

  5. jski says:
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    They haven’t announced a start date for construction. And if my count is , correct, this will make their 4th launch site: Canaveral, KSC, Vandenberg, and now Brownsville.

    So I’m wondering if they are really serious about Brownsville? What have they done with 39A? Canaveral is very convenient. Is this a ploy/game of some ilk?

    • Marc Boucher says:
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      This will be a fully commercial spaceport whereby they are their own masters. With a long-term goal of launching everyday they’ll need this spaceport and maybe more.

      • disqus_wjUQ81ZDum says:
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        Not for at least 5 years. FAA is limiting them to 12 launches per year, of which only 2 can be Falcon Heavies.

        • Marc Boucher says:
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          I know. I was talking about their goal to launch everyday using all available spaceports. BTW that launch rate from Brownsville could change.

          • disqus_wjUQ81ZDum says:
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            I doubt it seriously. Not unless they construct an additional significant amount of horizontal integration facilities. Even then, pad turn around, weather, anomalies, blackouts, etc would likely preclude that as well. Don’t forget, VAFB is a very limited utility with respect to orbital launches.

          • Marc Boucher says:
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            If they plan on launching everyday and even come close to achieving that then I suspect they will need more private spaceports. It’s an ambitious goal, but it’s also far down the road.

          • disqus_wjUQ81ZDum says:
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            Calculating in rehab for the stage one (there will have to be some sort of PMI, etc.) and the fact that Hawthorne can only hold 40 cores at a time with production upped to 2 cores per month by sometime in 2015 (Shotwell), yeah I don’t expect to see any “miracles” for a while. Even best guess for Boca Chica is sometime in 2016. All I want to see is an increase in launch tempo next year. Besides the F9R progression and the FH launch that is :). It will be wonderful even if they never reach such a high launch rate.

          • ReSpaceAge says:
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            Isn’t storage space pretty cheap?? And must production be all that high once you start reusing boosters.

          • cynical_space says:
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            All this talk of high rate of launches is wonderful and all, but will there actually be market of space vehicles available to be launched at that rate? Where will all these spacecraft be going?

        • ex-utc says:
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          The original EELV contract envisioned 40 launches a year. never happened. 12 launches a year is well below break even for the big boys.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Launching every day, Marc? Seriously? I follow space fairly closely-not in your league!- and wonder where the payloads are for daily launches?

    • ReSpaceAge says:
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      Bet they will be treated pretty well in Florida now. Competition for flight rate.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Don’t count on it; we have an extremely conservative governor. It’s disappointing as a Floridian that the State hasn’t been far more aggressive in helping establish launch sites.

    • Terry Stetler says:
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      No games. Construction has already started on 39A including for F9/FH, DoD, NASA and commercial crew. FH and DoD mods are being made to Vandenberg and Brownsville is largely F9/FH for GEO. LC-40 for F9. They also have to think about pad(s) for the superheavy the Raptor engine will power – no existinng pad will be able to survive it.

    • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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      39A is going to launch commercial crew and FH.
      They’ve already started dismantling structures and holding discussions on where they can build stuff, etc.
      Cheers

    • Neil Fraser says:
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      I count six orbital launch sites: two historic (Vandy SLC-3 & Omelek), two current (Canaveral LC-40 & Vandy SLC-4), two future (KSC LC-39A & Brownsville).

  6. ReSpaceAge says:
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    This September Spacex will land their first stage on a barge. Then before the end of the year the first stage will land near its launch Site.

    In about a year, Spacex will fly the Falcon Heavy. With the cross tanking, doesn’t the center core fly much further down range than the two side mount cores?

    Seems to me that one of the reasons that Spacex is using the barge to land falcon 9 on, is because landing the center stage of falcon heavy on a barge will be standard saving that extra fly back fuel.

    So I predict that Spacex’s first FH launch will return two boosters safely to the cape and the central booster will safely land on the barge.

    • ReSpaceAge says:
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      Add
      Reason Spacex is delaying the falcon heavy is because we have already entered the age of affordable reusable rockets.

      Why fly a rocket with 3 expendable cores if you don’t have to.

      • Yale S says:
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        Spacex has said the FH delay is because of an engine shortage. Production probs slowed them down. They use 28 engines per FH and don’t have a functional reusability yet (2015). They have been forced to use F9s expendables to carry out contracted flights. The plan is to use F9-Rs for medium mass launches, FH-Rs for flying big iron, and partial or completely expendables for maximum payloads (but at an up charge).

      • Yale S says:
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        Musk: “We need to find three additional cores that we could produce, send them through testing and then fly without disrupting our launch manifest,” Musk says. “I’m hopeful we’ll have Falcon Heavy cores produced approximately around the end of the year. But just to get through test and qualification, I think it’s probably going to be sometime early next year when we launch.”

      • Yale S says:
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        Musk: “Where I basically see this netting out is Falcon 9 will do satellites to roughly up to 3.5 tonnes with full reusability of the boost stage, and Falcon Heavy will do satellites up to 7 tonnes with full reusability of all three boost stages. Now Falcon Heavy could double its payload, almost; if, for example, we went expendable on the center core, we could do 14 tonnes to GTO.”

    • Allen Thomson says:
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      > This September Spacex will land their first stage on a barge. Then
      before the end of the year the first stage will land near its launch
      Site.

      Bringing the discussion back to Brownsville, the EIS documentation says SpaceX intends to fly unspecified suborbital vehicles out of Boca Chica, and I’d assume the Falcon 9 first stages would recover there too. To date, however, I’ve seen no mention of where the pad(s) for such would be located. Does anyone here have any information on that?

      • Marc Boucher says:
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        Have a look at my article on the FAA announcement. Graphics there. http://spaceref.biz/commerc

        • Allen Thomson says:
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          The description only indicates the “Vertical Launch Area”, the relevant part of which seems to be “- Launch pad and stand with its associated flame duct”.

          Is SpaceX going to recover the first stages on the launch pad itself? Pretty sporty if so — and what about Falcon Heavy which, presumably, will sometimes recover at least the two side cores?

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            presumably they will include a pad or two somewhere nearby for 1st stage recovery. that wouldn’t have to be fancy – a flat 30×30 (or so) concrete pad with an access road going to it. the other option is downrange recovery by landing on a barge. if they go that route, then there is a convenient port nearby…

          • Allen Thomson says:
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            Yes, I checked and there’s room for one or more Grasshopper-sized pads next to the launch area. The barge going back to the Port of Brownsville is also a plausible idea; it’s just that SpaceX hasn’t gotten specific about recovery options yet (AFAIK). Dunno if they might need further FAA approval once they decide what they want to do.

          • Hug Doug ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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            You’re right, SpaceX hasn’t specified what its recovery plans for Brownsville are as of yet. It is possible they are keeping all options open at the moment. I am sure we will learn more over the next 2 years as they actually begin constructing the launch site.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            “sporty”!

  7. DTARS says:
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    Why do they have to close the beach when Spacex launches a rocket in the first place? Is the site so close to the water that the noise is a problem? Then why didn’t spacex buy their site a few miles in land?

    Jets fly overhead all the time.

    Why should rockets be any different?

    I don’t like the only 12 beach closing rule.

    I don’t understand why Spacex wants their launch site that close to the water when they could build a giant Space port in land and still have the benefit of the gulf and launch and land many spaceships a day.

    Look! There comes an MCT. Is that just another one coming from the moon other is that the one do from Mars. I’m watching the kids in the water . Pass the sun screen.

    MCT stands for Moon Colonial Transport. Spacex has been flying their Mars colonial transports to Leo, L2, and the moon for years.

    Its earths heavy lifter.

  8. DTARS says:
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    F9Rs legs can only support the booster when rocket is nearly empty.

    Falcon is so tall and skinny that it needs a tower to support it.

    Well why is this the case? Yes I know weight is issue.

    Couldn’t rockets be wider with supports underneath and the “landing legs merely brace the rocket.

    Couldn’t a future launch site be just thrust hole with water suppression for sound reduction. Shouldn’t fuel be pumped into the rocket at the bottom?

    There should be no need for a tower.

    Passenger and cargo should be loaded by a mobile lift.

    Thinking of the Spaceships from the 40s and 50s that land on their fins almost any where. Commercial launch sites should be simple.

    • duheagle says:
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      Falcon needs no tower to support it. That thing that looks like a tower is a transporter-erector launcher (TEL) that moves the empty Falcon 9 out to the pad from the assembly and payload integration building, then stands it upright. It’s not a fixed part of the launch site. The TEL detaches from the Falcon 9 and leans back away from it a few minutes before launch. The fully-fueled Falcon 9 is fully capable of supporting itself, free-standing. If it wasn’t, it would fold up immediately upon launch.

      Couldn’t a future launch site be just thrust hole with water suppression for sound reduction.

      That’s pretty much what SLC-40 is, except for the lightning rod towers. Need to keep those.

      Thinking of the Spaceships from the 40s and 50s that land on their fins almost any where.

      Thinking of the “meteors” from the 40’s and 50’s that look like slow-moving furnace clinkers which gently bounce off the seamless armor-plated spaceships without even scratching the paint and never seem to dent or tear off those nifty tail fins.

      Commercial launch sites should be simple.

      I’m with Einstein on this one. “A thing should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.”