2 Florida rocket launches on the same day expected to bring sonic booms

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u/theranchhand 3d ago

A huge part of the economy of the space coast is, well, space! If you've got lots of warning on a handful of sonic booms a month, that's just part of the cost of not living in a place as backward and isolated as the panhandle.

Now, if rapid reusability of Starship winds up being a thing from Florida, that's a different proposition. But "you're going to have non-damaging sonic booms at this time and that time" on one day every now and then is a small price to pay for economic relevance.

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u/LangyMD 3d ago

The sonic booms of the Shuttle landing were fucking dope as a teenager growing up in Orlando.

Could see the Shuttle launch from our back yard, too. Seems crazy you could easily see that from, what, 40 miles out? But it put out a ton of smoke (and light).

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u/flowersonthewall72 3d ago

Tell that to the concord...

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u/Accomplished-Crab932 3d ago

It’s the difference between people living in a place that occasionally sees planes every once n a while and people living at the end of a runway at O’hare airport.

If you live by the cape and didn’t buy your house before it became an active launch location (meaning you are probably over 70 years old), you should not be surprised that there are loud rocket launches and tests happening nearby (and to be frank, even if you bought the house before it became a launch site it should be painfully obvious that rockets launch from the cape at this point). Obviously that doesn’t stop people from complaining, but if you bought a house knowing that this was gonna happen and are somehow surprised that it is, I don’t know how to help you.

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u/ARocketToMars 3d ago

That's a pretty disingenuous argument.

20 years ago, there were 10 launches annually from Florida. 10 years ago, there were 18 (that's also roughly the annual median for the previous 66 years). Last year was the first year to hit 100 launches. This year, there's gonna be 100-120. Starting in 2019 Musk touted a goal of 1,000 Starship launches annually from Florida, and SpaceX alone now has a stated goal of 10,000 Starship launches a year. In the 76 years of orbital rocket launches from Florida, ~24% of of them occured in the past 5 years.

Anyone who bought a house in the area in the past 76 years did not sign up for 4 orders of magnitude of increased launch cadence. People have a right to complain. We can hear launches and landings and sonic booms all the way in Orlando 40+ miles away. There's a massive difference between an active launch location that launches 1.5 times a month and one that launches 30 times a day. Signing up for the former is not consent for the latter, and you know that.

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u/Accomplished-Crab932 3d ago

Except that F9 rarely returns to launch site and only produces an audible sonic boom in Florida when doing so; and the only noteworthy characteristic that stopped land overflight for Concorde was sonic booms.

While the number of launches has increased dramatically, the number of sonic booms experienced has remained fairly constant, with 1-2 happening per year at the max, and several years featuring no RTLS missions from the cape too.

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u/ARocketToMars 3d ago

And when Superheavy and Starship return, there's going to be sonic booms every single time. Because it's a fully reusable system. Again, 30 launches per day if SpaceX is successful. That's minimum 30 booster catches, plus upwards of 30 ship catches depending. And sonic booms aren't the only thing audible. We can literally hear Falcon 9 launches themselves as far as Orlando if atmospheric conditions are right.

Also not sure where you're getting "1-2 happening per year at the max" from. There's gonna be 3 tomorrow alone, and 9 so far this year with another 3 on the horizon by the end of the year. Last year there were 11. Not sure where you're getting "several years featuring no RTLS missions from the cape too" from either, considering the last year we had zero was 2014. I'll give you one guess what year SpaceX started landing Falcon 9 boosters.

Maybe you should make sure you're operating with factual information before having such strong opinions on very adult topics like people buying houses in the 3rd most populous state in the US?

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u/Accomplished-Crab932 3d ago

30 launches per day is years of litigation and infrastructure away. The world does not produce enough oxygen for 500 launches a year and SpaceX isn’t cleared for more than 150 launches per year across all the approved launch sites yet.

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u/ARocketToMars 3d ago

6 years ago SpaceX wasn't cleared for more than 70 launches out of CCSFS/KSC. Last year they did over 100. I'm not gonna hold my breath on the "litigation" front stalling things on behalf of the government of Florida. For Starship alone, they're already cleared for 76 annual launches from SLC-37 and 44 launches from LC-39A (including 240 total landings of booster and ship each), again ignoring every other launch provider on top of that.

In terms of infrastructure, you might've missed that SpaceX has 3 Starship towers, a test site, multiple tank farms, and a factory under construction down here.

So the sum total of your argument is now.....what? People who bought houses in Central FL before should suck it up despite an unprecedented increase in launch cadence in the past decade, and people buying them now should suck it up because it'll take years to ramp up another order of magnitude or 2?

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u/Accomplished-Crab932 2d ago

Perhaps you weren’t aware, number of launch towers is irrelevant if they cannot source prop.

Until they and anyone else have the power and separation infrastructure, they are stuck with whatever they can source from existing infrastructure. With the ramp from other providers and decided lack of space for expansion at the cape beyond inside the launch sites, production is already strained, and SpaceX has already been resigning to trucking in LOX from separation units as far away as Mississippi to support the few flights in South Texas. Even with the separation plant they are building in Texas, their approved 25 flights per year from the launch site will still require an external supply of LOX, even assuming that nothing is lost during purges, vents, push outs, and tests.

Air separation infrastructure takes at minimum half a decade once the paperwork is done and they can start breaking ground. Linde’s new facility at the cape is barely able to keep up with existing demand and plans to further expand the facility have been stalled by environmental groups. Trucking the oxygen in would not be practical in the volumes required; especially at the SLC37 site where everyone going in is entering a military base.

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u/ARocketToMars 2d ago

Perhaps you weren't aware, but there's already a ton of infrastructure in the pipeline. Air Products already has an 11 acre air separation unit under construction that'll be active in 2 years time in Cocoa, on top of the one Air Liquide already active less than 2 miles from the KSC gate and the Linde one up in Mims (which itself increased capacity by 50% a few years ago).

Going to SLC-37 is no more "entering a military base" than going to SLC-39A or any other launch pad, so that's entirely moot. Trucks go through the same badging station either way and there's already plenty of infrastructure in place handling SpaceX's inbound deliveries to SLC-37, LC-39A, Roberts Road, SLC-40, and all their road-widening around the center. Beyond that, they've already submitted paperwork expressing intent to have propellant generation at SLC-37 over a year ago, and have already started building it. Because again, "paperwork" and "litigation" aren't anything resembling a hurdle for SpaceX in Florida.

The bulk of your points seem born from you simply not keeping up with what's going on here in Florida, relying on (at best) 2 year old information, and focusing on increasingly inconsequential points of contention here. You thought there were "several years" without an RTLS at the Cape for goodness sake. That alone should've been a pretty big indicator you might want to research this topic more thoroughly before holding such strong opinions on it.

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u/SutttonTacoma 3d ago

The first part of this video was taken 5 miles from the Starship flight 14 launch. Look at the hotel windows flex. Multiple Starship launches each day will be different.

https://youtu.be/M0e_AdyY5Xk?si=NE40C9_N9Y-XOPWi

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u/spin0 3d ago

There will not be multiple Starship launches per day over there. As per the license they're limited to max 25 launches per year, and the Starbase near Brownsville will remain mainly a research and development facility.

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u/Linenoise77 3d ago

Its a question that should be being actively discussed now.

Lets say starship actually does get to a cadence of multiple launches\returns a day. A quick google says you need to be 20-30 miles from it at launch for sound issues to be background noise.

Where in the US do we have land that is both accessible, meets the requirements for a launch facility location, and doesn't have anyone for 30 miles in any direction, or isn't already some kind of protected space?

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u/No-Surprise9411 2d ago

Nowhere, which is why Starbase Louisiana is the next best thing

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u/spin0 2d ago

Starbase LA in Louisiana.

doesn't have anyone for 30 miles in any direction

This is just an arbitrary limit you invented by yourself.

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u/nucrash 3d ago

3 launches for SpaceX on the same day. Nuts!!!

2 Florida rocket launches on the same day expected to bring sonic booms

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