Elon Musk announced that the next step for SpaceX's grand vision for starship would be operational this year. He talks about the oil rig spaceship launchpad that the next-generation spacecraft will be used to launch into space.
Techcrunch reported that this a part of SpaceX's plan for regular use in converting oil rig platforms into spaceports. Elon Musk has already mentioned this plan before, and as of now, the space company has already purchased two floating oil rigs that they nicknamed Phoibos and Deimos after the moons of Mars.
The floating oil rigs are currently in the process of being retrofitted to accommodate the Starship. It will be stationed at the Gulf of Mexico near the Brownsville, Texas office of SpaceX.
Starship | Earth to Earth Screenshot from YouTube/ SpaceX
Floating Oil Rigs To Serve As Launchpads For Point-to-Point Flights of Starship
Elon Musk's SpaceX company has bought earlier this year two deepwater oil rigs from Valaris. Oil Price reported that the rigs were named after the moons of Mars and are now located in the Port of Brownsville near SpaceX's development facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
According to Musk's June 2020 tweet: "SpaceX is building a floating, superheavy-class spaceport for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth."
Then in another tweet last February 24, he said that one of the floating oil rig platforms would be in limited operation by the end of the year.
According to a report of Interesting Engineering, it will serve as the floating launch pads for regular point-to-point flights of Starship, SpaceX's next-generation spacecraft.
Furthermore, the report said that the oil rigs would become the port for Starship to launch people into the Earth's atmosphere. In this way, it will reduce the transit times of nominal international flights from almost one day to only 30 minutes.
SpaceX chose these disused floating oil rigs in Texas as floating launchpads to prevent the disturbance to the environment caused by what would become heavy and likely regular rocket launches in the future. That means the future spaceports will be floating such as these.
ALSO READ: Will Elon Musk's SpaceX Finally Send Humans To Mars After NASA Sent Five Rovers to Mars?
Musk's Plan To Launch People From Major Cities Around the World
Elon Musk is known for his overly-optimistic timelines, wherein many of these have come true with surprising accuracy lately. His latest tweet that the oil rigs will be "in limited operational" by the end of the year remains unclear for many.
But he once emphasized that he is planning to place the floating launchpads all over the world, such as in New York City, Interesting Engineering reported. The CG concept videos that depict how these launchpads will be used showed that the floating landing stations would be adjacent to major cities worldwide.
Although it is unclear yet when this will begin, many people are already excited about this project. If it pushes through, then in the future, people in New York could take a train to the East River and climb into a rocket, and an hour later, they could be in Tokyo already.
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