San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
From oil rigs to Starship spaceports
SpaceX has purchased two deep-water oil rigs off the Texas Gulf Coast to someday use as seagoing spaceports for its Starship spacecraft.
The commercial space firm, through an entity called Lonestar Mineral Development, bought the platforms from offshore drilling company Valaris in July, according to public filings.
Several media reports say Lonestar Mineral Development bought the rigs, which were headed to the scrapyard, for $3.5 million each, a steal compared to the original production costs of between $330 and $515 million in 2008.
London-based Valaris has corporate offices in Houston and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August.
The new owner has renamed the rigs Deimos and Phobos, presumably after the Martian moons, according to space media outlet NasaSpaceFlight.com.
Bret Johnsen, SpaceX’s chief financial officer, is listed in public records as Lonestar Mineral Developments’ principal.
Elon Musk, CEO of privately held SpaceX, hinted at his company’s plans to launch spacecraft from offshore platforms in a June 16 tweet: “SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth.”
News of the purchase came Monday when Jack Beyer, a NasaSpaceFlight.com photographer, tweeted images of Deimos.
“I’ve been exploring around the Port of Brownsville while waiting for Starship testing and found an oil rig that appears to be named Deimos, after one of the moons of Mars!” he said in
the tweet. “Based on job postings and @elonmusk’s tweets, I’m willing to bet that SpaceX is involved.”
NasaSpaceFlight.com first reported details of the sale.
SpaceX currently has more than 100 positions open at its Brownsville-area facility, including two “offshore” jobs.
Sea-based spaceports give companies flexibility, but pose logistical and regulatory challenges that land-based space operations don’t have, said Sam Ximenes, founder and CEO of San Antonio-headquartered XArc, Exploration Architecture.
“Offshore platforms are very
beneficial for mitigating launch and landing risk in areas of high population density and lessens disruption to aviation airspace operations,” he said. “It depends if the platform is located in international waters for which regulatory regimes apply. And, of course, the closer to shore, the easier the logistics.”
Ximenes’ firm is working with U.S. Transportation Command to evaluate land- or sea-based locations for future Starship operations, but XArc is not currently involved in developing the former oil platforms into spaceports.
SpaceX’s Starship, a 160-foottall
rocket that Musk hopes will someday shepherd people and cargo anywhere on Earth in under an hour — and eventually to the moon, Mars and beyond — is in development at the company’s Boca Chica facility outside Brownsville.
The first high-altitude launch of the 30-foot-wide, stainlesssteel craft came in December when SN8 (Serial Number 8) successfully flew to 41,000 feet, about 7.7 miles.
Once at altitude, the engines cut out and the rocket fell or “belly flopped” 90 degrees and glided back to earth.
Movable body fins on its base and the nose cone helped Starship maneuver while gliding horizontally like a skydiver in free fall during the descent.
Several hundred feet from the landing pad, the engines reignited, snapping the craft back into a vertical orientation and creating a controlled descent in order to land. But the landing sequence didn’t go as planned, and SN8 disappeared in a fireball and dark smoke on its landing pad.
Despite the loss, SpaceX deemed the test a success, and the next Starship, SN9, is slated to blast off sometime this month.
In their current configuration, the oil rigs have living quarters for up to 150 people, and their main decks span nearly 1.4 acres. They will likely require a significant retrofit to support space operations.
SpaceX operates a fleet of unmanned drone ships and manned boats off the coast of Florida to recover the Falcon 9 boosters and fairings after launches from Cape Canaveral.
Vessel-tracking websites indicate Deimos is docked in the offshore rig construction firm Keppel AmFELS’ facility at the Port of Brownsville, and Phobos is moored in the Port of Galveston.
Port of Brownsville spokesman Jorge Montero said he learned of the SpaceX project Wednesday from news reports and could not corroborate their accuracy.
SpaceX, Valaris and Keppel AmFELS did not respond to request for comment.