SpaceX plans to use two deep-water oil rigs as floating offshore ports that the company is likely to use for the Starship rockets it develops.
According to CNBC’s Michael Sheetz, referring to public documents, the now bankrupt foreign rig operator Valaris sold two rigs, 8500 and 8501, for $ 3.5 million each. The agreement was finalized in July last year, and Valaris – the world’s largest foreign drilling rig – applied for Chapter 11 capital protection shortly thereafter.
According to the CNBC report, the buyer of the craft was a limited liability company called Lone Star Mineral Development, registered in the name of SpaceX chief financial officer Bret Johnsen.
Now, the craft has been renamed Deimos and Phobos, possibly after two Martians, and has been moved to the port of Brownsville, Texas, near where SpaceX is building its Starship rockets.
TechCrunch’s Darrell Etherington notes that SpaceX has so far tested its Starship prototypes on land at a Boca Chica site, but recalls that Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, said the company plans to launch floating points in the Gulf of To build Mexico.
Starship is a top priority. The enormous spacecraft is planned to transport cargo and up to 100 passengers on missions to the Moon and Mars.
Elon Musk tweeted in June 2020 that SpaceX was building “floating, super-heavy classrooms for Mars, moon and hypersonic travel around the earth.” The tweet comes in response to another one saying that SpaceX employs a team of engineers and technicians to design and build an operational missile launch facility for overseas. ‘
According to reports, a foreign launch site is the best. NASA Space Flight’s Thomas Burghardt noted in a report on the oil drilling news that the Starship spacecraft is very large and has a large explosion hazard area. This, coupled with noise issues, he explained, would make a rural launch site a bad choice, hence the decision to drop a spacecraft from a foreign territory.
By Irina Slave for Oilprice.com
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