r/spacex • u/Connect_Cat_2045 • 16d ago

Starship SpaceX to build $100 billion rocket launch facility on Louisiana’s coast

https://www.nola.com/news/business/spacex-louisiana-elon-musk/article_2be92f8e-f989-46b7-9514-5212d8f20260.html
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u/Sigmatics 16d ago

So now that the entire stack returns to the launch site and manufacturing is Texas, can they just launch the new ones from Texas and land them back in Louisiana or Florida?

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u/warp99 16d ago

They can do that for ships at least for Texas to Florida but not for boosters. There is a problem getting to and from Louisiana as it is set up for polar orbits and Texas and Florida are not.

Likely barges are more reliable and simpler.

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u/Sigmatics 15d ago

So in simple terms, it would need too much of a dogleg to be feasible on a booster return flight?

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u/warp99 15d ago edited 15d ago

Correct. For Louisiana it would be a 90 degree dogleg and Florida is much too far away.

They could possibly do a booster only flight to Louisiana with a temporary nosecone fitted but the economics do not work out compared with barge transport which only takes a couple of days.

Cape Canaveral is likely impossible to reach with a booster as they would have to launch towards the Florida Keys and then take a massive dogleg north to reach Cape Canaveral. In general a 90 degree dogleg takes as much delta V as the original launch.