A simple job offer from SpaceX was the source of many questions on social networks. There is talk of recruiting engineers to build an operational rocket launch facility. But, for what reason is the SpaceX company embarking on this kind of project?
A future spaceport floating off the coast of Texas
A few weeks ago, SpaceX entered the history of the space industry by sending its first astronauts into orbit. However, we mentioned shortly after the fact that SpaceX would like to take advantage of a launch window opened in 2022. The goal? Send an unmanned first mission to Mars. What if this mission to the red planet took off from a giant floating spaceport?
On the Greenhouse recruitment platform, SpaceX published a very specific job offer. In fact, the job consists in “working within a team of engineers and technicians to design and build an operational installation for launching offshore rockets”. However, the workplace is none other than Brownsville, Texas, where Starship rockets are currently being tested. Obviously, many people reacted on social networks, including Twitter:
“SpaceX is building floating super-heavy class space ports for Mars, the Moon and hypersonic travel around the Earth,” said Elon Musk.
Interplanetary journeys, but not only…
According to Elon Musk, these future floating space ports should embody the starting point for future interplanetary journeys. In other words, it is about launching Starship ships from these spaceports! As everyone knows, making Man an “interstellar species” is an old dream of the boss of SpaceX. Even if the person concerned declared in March 2020 that he would surely die before humans settled on Mars, the latter seems to have hope.
However, and this is rather surprising, there is also talk of facilitating travel on Earth. Indeed, SpaceX would intend to take off its rockets from these spaceports as part of hypersonic land trips! Logically, Elon Musk evoked the notion of “Earth to Earth” travel. It is true that the principle of traveling beyond the Earth’s atmosphere in a bell movement would save a significant amount of fuel. Thus, a trip between spaceports located in New York and Paris would only take an hour. In the meantime, there is a problem with this project: noise. Nevertheless, SpaceX has already mentioned that spaceports must be at least 30 kilometers from the coast to avoid unbearable noise pollution for the population. Finally, the floating platforms should be connected to the mainland by means of another ongoing project, namely the Hyperloop
