SpaceX wants to build offshore spaceports for hypersonic flights around Earth

Elon Musk's SpaceX announced in a Tuesday tweet that the American space manufacturer is planning to construct floating spaceports at sea, which will be used to launch rockets into space and hypersonic flights around the globe.

"SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon and hypersonic travel around Earth," Musk tweeted.

Musk linked to another tweet regarding a job posting by SpaceX for an offshore operations engineer position in Brownsville, Texas.

"SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars," the job listing notes.

According to the listing, SpaceX is looking for an offshore operations engineer who will "work as part of a team of engineers and technicians to design and build an operational offshore rocket launch facility."

Under "Additional Requirements," the listing notes that applicants "must be willing to work significant overtime," among other necessities.

Currently, SpaceX launches rockets from Cape Canaveral in Florida. However, the company has been floating the idea of ocean launchpads for some time.

In November, Musk tweeted that "most Starship spaceports will probably need to be [about] 20 miles offshore for acceptable noise levels, especially for frequent daily flights, as would occur for point to point flights on Earth."

The SpaceX Starship is a reusable, heavy-lift launch vehicle that has been under development since 2012. The spacecraft is intended to be used to carry passengers to the moon and Mars.

In 2017, Musk claimed that such a spacecraft, traveling between 4,000 and 6,000 mph, could transport passengers from New York to Shanghai within 39 minutes.

SpaceX made history on May 30 after it became the first private company to send humans to the International Space Station on its Crew Dragon spacecraft. The liftoff was the first astronaut launch from US soil since 2011.

Source: RIA Novosti

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