Star City - (Starbase City)

RobertDyck · 2021-10-29 15:19:25

There are announcements that Elon Musk wants to build a city near his Starbase at Boca Chica. This video talks about some of it. (click image) I would like to make some suggestions.

First, one point in that video makes me think Elon has read some of the stuff I posted. Back in the 1980s, I suggested building a residential housing community with autonomous electric cars (self-driving electric taxis) that drive in a tunnel underground. The tunnel would be under the back lane. Each house would have a station the size of a single-car garage under their back yard, connected to that tunnel. With a door from your house basement to that station. In the morning call an autonomous taxi to take you to work, now you would do that with an app on your smartphone. The housing community would have land allocated where a street would go, but no pavement. Instead a walkway the size of a sidewalk that goes down the centre of that land. So the walk from your front door would extend all the way to that walkway. The land in front of your house would have grass and trees, park benches. So it feels that you're living in a park. For families, no surface vehicles so children can run around all they want.

Turns out Winnipeg has a community similar to this. Built in the 1940s, each bay has as much land as a bay. It doesn't have the tunnel for electric taxis, but does have a back lane. Back yards have a 6-foot fence built right to the back lane, so the lane is narrow, barely wide enough for one car. Most homes have a single-car garage. Lanes are designated one-way because people have to drive to work. The most expensive private school for the province is within walking distance. Public schools (elementary, middle, high school) are a couple blocks in the other direction.

A couple images of Wildwood Park:
$_20.JPG wildwood-h-105.jpg?width=905&height=450&mode=crop

At one point I tried to suggest another community in my city built this way. With a subway system. A small shopping mall in the centre of the community, with subway station at the mall. Restrict access to vehicles, the only vehicles permitted would be construction vehicles, utilities, and moving vans. An autonomous cube-van would be designed for the subway tunnel to supply the stores in the mall. An autonomous van could deliver goods to the garage-size station at your back door. Garbage trucks could drive down the tunnel. Utility lines in a trough or trench in the tunnel, so easy access for utility workers. That means most times utility vehicles don't even need access to surface back lanes. Unfortunately I couldn't convince politicians to build an LRT or subway here.

Now where's the thing. Homes built near Starbase have to deal with the potential of explosions. Why not design homes specifically for that? Buried homes are not a new idea, they're energy efficient. In winter, they're less expensive to heat, and in summer less expensive to air condition. Obviously air conditioning would the the concern in Boca Chica. But what makes this a good idea for Boca Chica is to orient the windows away from Starbase. So if an explosion occurs, the shockwave would flow over the house.
1-rammed-earth-wall-creates-thermal-mass-semi-buried-houses.jpg

SpaceNut · 2021-10-29 16:27:20

At the end of my street there is one of the underground style homes. Not sure how long its been in use but its unusual to see in a community of wood framed structures to say the least.

tahanson43206 · 2021-10-29 20:56:38

It is good to have a "Star City" in the West, as a logical follow up to the original...

Zvyozdny gorodok
City in Russia
Zvyozdny gorodok is a closed urban locality in Moscow Oblast, Russia. It is home to the military research and space training facility known as Star City in English. Population: 6,332. Wikipedia

(th)

louis · 2021-10-30 17:26:39

In-regolith homes make a lot of sense from some aspects but the main issues are light and build cost. You tend to end up with wide and not very deep housing units, in order to get enough light in. Bit like a glorified corridor.

Of course for Mars itself, this would make quite a lot of sense and you could probably arrange to have solar reflectors directing more light in.

Re Star City I think Musk knows if he's going to create a spaceport or centre of space engineering, he needs to make it an attractive place to live so you need the arts, the schools, the retail and the leisure.

RobertDyck · 2021-10-30 18:52:46

There are ways to make it feel open. For example, a central courtyard open to the sky. But my proposal is for houses to survive an on-pad explosion of a fully fuelled Starship / Super Heavy.

louis · 2021-10-30 19:14:40

Yeah - I really can't see that being the main issue for Star City. Surely Musk must be thinking of locating it a good (safe) distance from the launch site. He wouldn't want to double the cost of it by building it all beneath the surface. Anyway, I am not convinced Starbase will be the main launch area. Surely it's going to be the Caribbean on one or more of the rigs where most launches will take place. Star City is going to be more about technical development of (a) rockets (pretty minor in the scheme of things) and (b) extra terrestial technologies (huge! - everything from asteroid mining, to terraforming to making it safe for humans to live on Mars, to Mars economic development etc).

I think Musk sees Star City as the portal to off world living and making us a multi-plantary species.

RobertDyck wrote:

There are ways to make it feel open. For example, a central courtyard open to the sky. But my proposal is for houses to survive an on-pad explosion of a fully fuelled Starship / Super Heavy.

GW Johnson · 2021-10-31 09:10:11

In lower gravity, shrapnel flies farther. In vacuum or near-vacuum, shrapnel flies a lot farther. The "safe distance" is likely rather impractical on the moon or Mars, either one. It would be at least several 100's of km. Maybe low 1000's of km. Shrapnel usually leaves the "scene of the crime" at about 8000 ft/sec ~ 2500 m/s, which is why the Mil Std fragment impact test is specified to that value. That's a fair fraction of low orbit velocity on Mars, and just past escape velocity on the moon.

Better to put either the landing field or the city within a crater that has a tall rim. NEVER build anything tall enough to be seen over that rim from the other site. Cut your roadway from landing site to the city as a chasm or cut through that rim, but you MUST put a dog-leg bend in it, so that the turn stops any shrapnel coming through the highway cut.

Myself, I would put the landing field in the crater, where the floor elevation is lower than the ejecta plain outside. Better shrapnel protection that way.

Your city buildings will look like mushrooms: a ringwall of columns plus a center column holding up a solid roof, upon which you can pile regolith about a meter deep as a radiation shield. You put a 3-layer transparency between each pair of ringwall columns. All the columns together support the regolith-loaded roof even when depressurized, and have to be reinforced well enough to resist significant bending when pressurized.

You arrange a ring of reflective surfaces around the building to bounce enough sunlight in, through the ringwall of transparencies, to allow Earthly plants inside to grow. People inside can see outside, some of these could be greenhouses, others could be residences, etc. Nobody gets too much radiation, even if there is a solar storm.

You WILL need a reinforced concrete substitute suitable for Mars, and you WILL need structural steel. You WILL need some heavy construction equipment because you WILL be building foundations resembling those here on Earth, and you WILL be mining and elevating regolith materials.

So, exactly WHO is working on this kind of stuff?

GW

PS -- if one ship on the landing field should explode, all ships on the field WILL be lost, because of the shrapnel. Better to have more than one landing field. That's OK, craters are widespread and numerous, both places.

Last edited by GW Johnson (2021-10-31 09:18:21)

RobertDyck · 2021-10-31 11:47:42

This discussion is not about a city on Mars, it's Boca Chica, Texas. There are reports that Elon wants to build a city there to support workers at his site. Distance from SpaceX launch site to nearest house at Boca Chica village is 2.47km (1.53 miles). Yes, there's an earth berm surrounding the launch facility, but still. You can click on Elon's picture in the initial post to see a video.

Ps. Sorry, the video claimed the city would be called "Starbase". His manufacturing and launch control centre is called that, so my mind shortened the name. My bad.

GW Johnson · 2021-10-31 13:37:11

I thought y'all were talking about a city on Mars, per some of the notions depicted in some of Musk's slideshows. Sorry. My mistake. What I wrote applies to that scenario.

Musk wants to buy out the little unincorporated community of Boca Chica, I knew that. I figured he wanted to build his own community there. As far as I know, at least some residents have refused to sell out. Some of these are where the videos are coming from.

As to safety, 1.5 miles from the launch pad is not far enough for Superheavy, not based on the 3 miles NASA had to use for Saturn 5. Superheavy has more thrust and more propellant tonnage. More than 3 miles is needed.

There's 3 hazards here: (1) shrapnel from an explosion, (2) blast wave from an explosion, and (3) noise from either a successful launch or an explosion. At only 1.5 miles, you still can't rule out shrapnel, nor a devastating subsonic blast wave, although those threats are not so likely at that distance. And with Saturn-5, it took 3 miles to limit the noise injury. 1.5 is NOT far enough.

And THAT is why Musk bought two oil platforms. Once his people figure out exactly what works and doesn't work for a launch site, you'll see the launches moved 10 miles offshore, where the permitting will be so very much easier.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2021-10-31 13:39:27)

RobertDyck · 2021-10-31 14:44:27

That's why I suggested replacing houses with buried houses. Buried house designs I read about have concrete walls and roof, buried beneath dirt. The reason was inexpensive heat control. But for Boca Chica, I'm suggesting each house is effectively a block house. With windows facing away from the launch site.

louis · 2021-10-31 14:51:44

But is he going to build Star City at Boca Chica? I doubt it.

RobertDyck wrote:

That's why I suggested replacing houses with buried houses. Buried house designs I read about have concrete walls and roof, buried beneath dirt. The reason was inexpensive heat control. But for Boca Chica, I'm suggesting each house is effectively a block house. With windows facing away from the launch site.

SpaceNut · 2021-10-31 15:25:30

Once you own the property you get to call it what ever you want....

Windows facing away spoils the view of the launch much like watching the planes take off from the airport.

If the hazards are that bad the building is now made out of stone....

SpaceNut · 2021-12-19 19:05:09

SpaceX to replicate Starbase, build multiple Starship launch pads in Florida

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2021-10-29 15:19:25

Star City - (Starbase City)

#2 2021-10-29 16:27:20

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#3 2021-10-29 20:56:38

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#4 2021-10-30 17:26:39

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#5 2021-10-30 18:52:46

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#6 2021-10-30 19:14:40

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#7 2021-10-31 09:10:11

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#8 2021-10-31 11:47:42

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#9 2021-10-31 13:37:11

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#10 2021-10-31 14:44:27

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#11 2021-10-31 14:51:44

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#12 2021-10-31 15:25:30

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

#13 2021-12-19 19:05:09

Re: Star City - (Starbase City)

Board footer