Forbes by Craig Hooper 7/20/2021
As Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson prepared to blast into space this month, Elon Musk looked to the sea, tweeting about a largely autonomous booster-recovering ship called “A Shortfall of Gravitas.” As this latest addition to a rapidly growing SpaceX navy makes waves online, it is time to look beyond the high-tech gloss of robot recovery vessels and consider the challenges and opportunities as private space companies build navies and head out to sea.
SpaceX is already a big maritime player, fielding a diverse, high-tech set of eight contracted vessels and two oil-rig platforms. A simple tug handles day-to-day barge-hauling duties, three ships handle payload fairing and Dragon capsule recovery work, while another helps with booster landings. Three autonomous barge-like craft, or self-propelled “drone vessels,” serve as booster landing platforms, while two oil rigs, or Starship “floating spaceports,” are under construction. In essence, this fleet is a foundation for moving SpaceX offshore, helping to push as much rocketry as possible out to sea.
Elon Musk’s modern take on Robert Truax’s massive “Sea Dragon,” a 60’s-era concept for a giant re-usable sea-launched booster, is coming together. If the concept actually “takes off,” the opportunities for America’s shipbuilding community are fascinating. As SpaceX and other emerging space companies head out to sea, launching bigger and bigger rockets, they will need everything from barges to tugs to tankers. The demand signal may do a lot to enliven America’s gritty industrial waterfront, a politically powerful but moribund manufacturing sector that collapsed with global oil prices. But as space goes offshore, offering economic benefits at home, maritime space launching ventures will also be tempted to fully exploit the legal “grey zones” in international waters, adding complexity to increasingly busy and increasingly coveted swathes of water—where norms, operational practices and laws haven’t kept up with technological advances.
More:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2021/07/20/challenges-and-opportunities-as-space-companies-build-navies/?sh=259d549766c8
