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Spaceport Houston Developments


trymahjong

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I'm going to make a bold prediction here... when this thing is built (and we have flights leaving it that take a mere couple of hours to get to Europe or the middle east)... you'll see major oil giants leaving the energy corridor and Woodlands and flocking back Downtown. What self-respecting company will fly high priority business associates into Houston and then have them endure a car ride to a far flung suburb across town that takes almost as long as the flight itself?

That would be great if that happened. But they already do it with IAH. I'm sure real big wigs could take a helicopter.

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I'm going to make a bold prediction here... when this thing is built (and we have flights leaving it that take a mere couple of hours to get to Europe or the middle east)... you'll see major oil giants leaving the energy corridor and Woodlands and flocking back Downtown. What self-respecting company will fly high priority business associates into Houston and then have them endure a car ride to a far flung suburb across town that takes almost as long as the flight itself?

 

I would think that an oil company would have helicopters based at Ellington and would just fly vip's wherever needed.  Lot cheaper than moving the exxon campus south.

 

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There is no way those are the final designs.

 

Probably not. Often owners of a proposed project will hire a separate firm to do pre-design work just to get the basic idea of things and come to grips with the scope. There are whole firms that just work on master plans like these.

 

I would love to see this as a major international competition. Design a spaceport for space city. It sells itself! There so many great firms that could do it. I would love to see something that would attract the BIG's, OMA's, SOM's, Zaha's, and Foster's of the world.

 

Other cities might be designing new fancy airports, but only Houston will be able to say they have a specially designed public use spaceport!

Edited by Luminare
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am I the only one that thinks this will never really happen?  it's likely being awarded the first teleport terminal or first station for a train to the planet jupiter, 

 

If they can build a spaceport in freakin Brownsville, Texas then they can build one in Houston

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am I the only one that thinks this will never really happen? it's likely being awarded the first teleport terminal or first station for a train to the planet jupiter,

Even if it is built I have doubts that the renderings they've released will be the final product. Wouldn't surprise me if it was watered down drastically.

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Brownsville is really not a spaceport. In the future, it may become one. But it is being built by SpaceX as a private launch site for their use in the immediate future. They have a vehicle to launch today - well its grounded but many around JSC are thinking they will launch again in the first half of 2016.

 

The vision for commercial spaceports are for future customers that don't exist. I'm not completely negative on Houston getting a "license", if something does come of this nationally, we have our foot in the door and be in the forefront.

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Even if it is built I have doubts that the renderings they've released will be the final product. Wouldn't surprise me if it was watered down drastically.

 

How about yall quell your Battered Houston Syndrome for a least a few days? Why would you invest that much into something like a spaceport and water it down.

 

I literally just explained this just a moment ago. Plus when are yall going to stop taking such personal ownership of images like these. Images like these are to get you excited and prepped for what is POSSIBLE! Not whats actually going to happen. It could be better or it could be the exact same thing, or a completely different design, but people on here need to stop with this sense of ownership in images which are expressly to give a visualization of what COULD BE! So why not just be excited about the possibilities? Why can't threads like these be fun and talk about the possibilities of something like this especially when 85 to 90% of the people on here are not even in the design industry at all. There are images like these that come and go all the time! Its part of the business.

 

Probably not. Often owners of a proposed project will hire a separate firm to do pre-design work just to get the basic idea of things and come to grips with the scope. There are whole firms that just work on master plans like these.

 

I would love to see this as a major international competition. Design a spaceport for space city. It sells itself! There so many great firms that could do it. I would love to see something that would attract the BIG's, OMA's, SOM's, Zaha's, and Foster's of the world.

 

Other cities might be designing new fancy airports, but only Houston will be able to say they have a specially designed public use spaceport!

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Sierra Nevada is bidding on the second round of contracts from NASA to cover cargo deliveries to the ISS from 2017 to 2024, which is expected to be awarded later this year. The Obama administration had extended the life of the ISS to 2024.

 

Assuming they win it, the cargo version of their Dream Chaser would land at Ellington space port per the agreement they signed earlier this year with the HAS. If that's the case, I would imagine that would help fast track development and firm up the final design of the Space Port.

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Actually a Brownsville spaceport makes a lot more than one at Ellington Field.

 

To take maximum advantage of Earth's rotation, you want a spaceport to be as close to the equator as possible, and you want the rocket to go east.  Also, you want nothing but sea (or empty desert or something that won't have any people or property to harm) over the route it will initially go.

 

This means you want to be as far south as possible, and you want the ocean to the east.  Not only do you have a populated area just east of Ellington, but directly east would take you over southern Louisiana.  This means launches would have to be angled to the south a bit.

 

I can see this being used for suborbital flights, but anything to go into orbit or out into space would probably make more sense to launch from Brownsville (or Cape Canaveral), unless they need the particular orbit that Ellington would be ideal for.

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For Ellington they are talking horizontal takeoff, the factors you are discussing are factors in vertical takeoff (I will say I don't exactly how they play in to horizontal takeoff). You also left off inclination which plays a bigger factor then orbital velocity. If you want more earth coverage for LEO satellites (or the space station though inclination there was also driven by the russians and soyuz injection) you want to launch at a higher latitude, or take up propulsion to get to that inclination post launch.

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I believe this will happen. It may not be built like what's pictured in the renderings, but I have full confidence that Houston will have a Spaceport. Also take a look at the Spaceport in Midland,TX. It's being built in phases.

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  • 2 months later...

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/blog/2015/09/business-incubator-coworking-space-to-launch-at.html

 

The city of Houston plans to include a new incubator and co-working space on the grounds of the new spaceport located at Ellington Airport.

 

Plans are still very early, airport and city officials point out, but the idea is to have small and large companies housed on the same campus to collaborate. The co-working space would conceivably include an incubation space for early-stage companies, more permanent offices for developing companies and even larger facilities for companies that need room to mass produce their products, Mario Diaz, Houston Airport System's aviation director, said during a presentation at a startup happy hour Sept. 22.

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  • 2 weeks later...

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/deer_park/news/purchase-of-building-at-ellington-a-key-step-in-houston/article_0aa0ac20-8448-542f-a203-802c5c7c574e.html

 

An important step in the functional launch of the Houston Spaceport was taken on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2015, when Houston City Council members approved the $6.9 million purchase of an aerospace engineering building and land adjacent to Ellington Airport (EFD).

 

Using airport funds for the purchase, the 53,000 square foot building will house a shared use manufacturing and general office facility, and already has prospective tenants. The Houston Airport System (HAS) has received a letter of intent to lease from both Intuitive Machines and UK-based Catapult Satellite Applications, and expects to receive others in the near future.

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  • 3 weeks later...

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasa-partners-with-houston-airport-system-in-development-of-spaceport-300169038.html

 

HOUSTON, Oct. 29, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- News media are invited to visit NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) onWednesday, Nov. 4, at 1 p.m. to witness a landmark event as NASA and the Houston Airport System (HAS) formally enter a development agreement to provide NASA expertise and training at Houston's new Spaceport installation. The event will be preceded by a press conference.
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http://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2015/12/21/131889/first-step-for-houstons-spaceport-new-control-tower/

 

Ellington Airport has been awarded a state grant to assist in building a new air traffic control tower. Once completed, it will not only support military operations, but will support the Houston Spaceport Project.

The current control tower at Ellington was damaged in a 2008 hurricane. And it’s old. 

Construction on the new tower is slated to start next summer, to be open for operations in the fall of 2017.

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