Construction At SpaceX's New Spaceport About To Begin 57
schwit1 writes: SpaceX has begun prepping the construction sites at its private spaceport in Brownsville, Texas. The county has begun work on a road to where the spaceport command center will be, and SpaceX has established its construction headquarters in a double-wide trailer there. It is expected that actual construction of the command center will begin in August, with the launchpad construction to follow. The expected cost for building the entire spaceport: $100 million. Compare that to the billions the Russians are spending for Vostochny, or the billions that NASA spends on comparable facilities.
Compare an expected cost, to an actual cost? (Score:1)
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Vostochny isn't finished yet either, so in that case, they're comparing estimate to estimate.
Re:Compare an expected cost, to an actual cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
left the US with no manned launch capability and no heavy lift rockets Let's hope history will not repeat itself.
What is to compare here? This is a private launch facility that will likely never see any crews launch from this location, as it will be mainly commercial communications satellites and a few other commercial payloads that will be flying from Texas. It is also being built with mostly (but certainly not exclusively) private funds with the idea that the company building this facility will use it to earn a healthy profit from its activities.
There is no history to actually repeat in this situation, other than following the history of other commercial launch endeavors that simply went bankrupt. SpaceX, on the other hand, seems to be profitable and doesn't show signs at the moment of even struggling to make payroll. Far from struggling to make ends meet, they are doing some serious capital expenditures to expand their existing business. This launch facility in Texas is proof that SpaceX plans on increasing their launch rate considerably over the next decade or more.
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I don't see any point in looking at the estimated cost of a project that hasn't even begun yet.
What if it comes in on budget?
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The bigger problem I see is that in the budget for Vostochny isn't just the bare bone cosmodrome, but whole supporting infrastructure, including city for 30,000 people. If Musk is able to build the same thing for $100 millions, that would be indeed interesting. However, I'm not holding my breath.
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Luckily SpaceX didn't have to build Brownsville.
Every project has cost projections (Score:2)
I don't see any point in looking at the estimated cost of a project that hasn't even begun yet.
Speaking as someone who does such cost estimating professionally, I can assure you that EVERY project like this has the costs evaluated long before anyone breaks ground. A company would have to be insane to not have conducted the due diligence on every aspect of a project of this scale. They have to evaluate if there is a satisfactory ROI. They have to have some sort of idea what it ought to cost so that they can know how things are going. They have to budget the money. Of course there will be cost var
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When you say "EVERY project like this", what kind of project are you referring to?
I mean every project with more than a trivial amount of capital required. EVERY project. Public, private, doesn't matter. Building a warehouse, a building, an assembly line, or a machine? There will be a budget and capital analysis along with an ROI analysis if a profit is involved. If you are talking more than a few tens of thousands of dollars (and often less), odds are someone has done a financial analysis on it. It would be very unusual for such an analysis to not be done.
The F-35 is an example of a taxpayer-funded project that has gone way over budget.
The only thing you can be
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Speaking as someone who does such cost estimating professionally, I can assure you that EVERY project like this has the costs evaluated long before anyone breaks ground.
Right, then in the case of projects receiving public funding, they subtract a percentage to make it palatable before presenting it. :)
Lies, damn lies and cost projections (Score:2)
Right, then in the case of projects receiving public funding, they subtract a percentage to make it palatable before presenting it. :)
Oh they're much more clever than that. They'll tinker with the underlying assumptions, cost of capital, expected returns, net present value, and more. You'll find it stuffed with more BS than a cattle farm. Government budgets are notoriously full of bogus assumptions and outright fabrications because they know nobody who gives a damn is really going to read them and even if they did most wouldn't understand it anyway. Pretty much every financial projection you have ever read about is wrong - the only q
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Speaking as someone who does such cost estimating professionally, I can assure you that EVERY project like this has the costs evaluated long before anyone breaks ground. A company would have to be insane to not have conducted the due diligence on every aspect of a project of this scale. They have to evaluate if there is a satisfactory ROI. They have to have some sort of idea what it ought to cost so that they can know how things are going. They have to budget the money. Of course there will be cost variances but you can't even begin to manage a project like this unless you have some idea what it should cost.
Oh, there will be plans. Realistic plans? Well.... I've worked in a supporting role to some fairly big projects and there's a few things that strike me:
1) Huge projects generally have the biggest uncertainties. It'd be easy to think the opposite, the bigger the stakes the more sure you want to be that you're right but that's not really the case. While small to medium projects have some rather tangible goals under current conditions, the huge ones generally involve more conjecture on where the company, marke
There will be plans and they will be wrong (Score:2)
Oh, there will be plans. Realistic plans?
You'll note I never mentioned realism or accuracy. Those things are not always possible and frequently are dis-incentivized. There will be plans and financial projections but only an idiot would take them at face value. The ONLY thing that will be completely correct to say about the plans is that they will be wrong. Maybe by a little, maybe by a lot but they will be wrong.
New Mexico already has a newspaceport (Score:1)
Why are they building in Brownsville when a couple hundred miles away in New Mexico there's a shiny new space port that's not in use?
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875 miles from Brownsville to Las Cruces, which has no ocean/gulf into which to drop things that fall off.
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Because SpaceX is using the New Mexico spaceport.... too!
That facility is mainly going to be used for R&D testing of their recoverable rocket systems, such as what they've been doing at their Waco facility with the Grasshopper series of flights. At the moment, they are hoping to use one of the rocket cores built for a regular flight and doing the reuse testing in New Mexico... with the much higher altitude flight clearance they can get in New Mexico which simply isn't permitted in central Texas.
Besides
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I don't see any point in looking at the estimated cost of a project that hasn't even begun yet.
Construction is not the actual beginning of a construction project.
"billions the Russians are spending for Vostochny" (Score:3)
Billions of roubles doesn't count.
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Secret ICBM base (Score:5, Funny)
This is not a spaceport.
It is actually a secret ICBM (Intra Continental Ballistic Missile) base that is being built to defend Texas* from the likes of the Jade Helm 15 plans**.
* Although if Texas has Chuck Norris, why would they need a secret ICBM base for defense?
** Jade Helm 15*** being the plans that were dictated to the chief KIO (Kenyan-In-Office), by the UN in order to suppress opposition when the veil is finally lifted off the global climate change deception. And I am pretty sure that the Illuminati dictated those plans to the UN.)
*** 15 in base 23**** is 28 in decimal and Texas was the 28th state - so Iowa better watch out for Jade Helm 16!
**** 2+3=5 and there are 5 permanent members in the UN security council.
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Chuck Norris deployment program,
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This is really very funny but the sad thing is that somewhere on the internet people are going to talk about this as a serious subject...
I really hope that you are intending this to be a joke.
Lost luggage (Score:2)
Comparisons? (Score:2, Insightful)
The expected cost for building the entire spaceport: $100 million. Compare that to the billions the Russians are spending for Vostochny, or the billions that NASA spends on comparable facilities.
Well, Vostochny is a 551sq km site. That's bigger than the city of Brownsville, let alone Boca Chica.
I don't think it is prudent to compare them, the facilities are likely to be quite different in scope. You might as well comparethe cost of the Vehicular Assembly Building to whatever they build in Texas.
It will be like comparing Grapes to Watermelons.
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I believe grapes are more tasty than watermelons.
Comparison successful.
Tornado risk (Score:4, Funny)
The tornado risk has tripled at the site. At least until permanent structures replace the doublewide.
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Too close to water for the tornado to form reliably. So either the tornado/waterspout would have to form a mile or so out either way and then head to the launch site. Not very likely.
http://www.homefacts.com/torna... [homefacts.com]
pints, pounds per inch^2, double wide trailer... (Score:4, Funny)
...you have so many funny units to pick from over there.
Wow (Score:1)
Color me a little skeptical.
They should name the spaceport Brownsville Station (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
.
love.it. (Score:2)
Queue the Visitors (Score:2)
Oh my god! The space port is to let them in, not us out!
I would like to extend this olive branch and a hardy handshake to our new...Lizards?
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"Cue", dumbass. What blows my mind is that somehow you people always manage to spell "queue" properly!
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"Cue", dumbass. What blows my mind is that somehow you people always manage to spell "queue" properly!
Uh, I meant, put them in a line?
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Dammit, a real spaceport should be located (Score:2)
in the desert. And it should be a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Spring Break (Score:2)
Why Texas? (Score:2)