Why Isn’t SpaceX Planning To Use Renewable Electricity At Starbase?
Right now, the FAA is taking public comments for SpaceX’s environmental review of the upcoming Starship Orbital launch. While I generally support space exploration and hope SpaceX succeeds, it’s important to consider the environmental impacts of space activities and find ways to reasonably minimize the environmental impacts.
Your support makes a big difference! Please let the FAA know your opinion. https://t.co/4T3NaemoCr
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 23, 2021
The Use of Methane For Rockets Is Mostly Defensible
From an environmental perspective, a rocket should be powered by hydrogen. Burning hydrogen combines hydrogen with oxygen from the atmosphere, producing only water vapor in the exhaust. The water vapor harmlessly diffuses in the atmosphere, and doesn’t contribute to climate change or any other environmental harms. Hydrogen rockets are also a proven technology that took the United States to the moon, so it’s entirely possible to use hydrogen for space launches.
But hydrogen does have some serious drawbacks.
Being a small molecule, it’s very difficult and expensive to make sure a rocket doesn’t simply leak its fuel out. Every weld must be absolutely perfect. Every seam must be carefully sealed. All joints and fittings from tanks to engines must have perfect seals. All of that need for perfection means a lot more work, expense, and even danger.
The second problem with hydrogen is that it makes metal more brittle. This again drives up the cost of safely building a hydrogen rocket. Other problems include the low energy density compared to other fuels, temperature control, expense, and complexity of the systems needed to handle it properly. It’s also not easy to produce on Mars, so it wouldn’t be suitable for a Mars colony.
Methane (the purest form of “natural” gas) is the next best thing. It does produce carbon dioxide when it’s burned, but that’s basically all it produces (other than water vapor, like any combustion reaction). Unlike RP-1 or other rocket fuels, it does contribute some to greenhouse gases, but doesn’t spew out other pollutants.
Given the costs of hydrogen and the fact that methane is only a little worse, going with methane was the obvious choice, even if not perfect for the environment.
All The Methane Has To Come From Somewhere, Though
While assessing environmental impacts, the FAA didn’t factor one thing in: the source of the natural gas that would feed SpaceX’s Starbase.
The obvious thing they’ll need natural gas for is the rockets. For those unfamiliar, natural gas is mostly methane, and while it’s good enough for things like furnaces and power plants, the gas that’s normally in pipes just isn’t pure enough for use in rockets. So SpaceX needs a facility to take natural gas in, purify it, and then cool it down until it changes to a liquid state. Then, it’ll be ready to pump into a rocket’s tank and use for launches.
But they didn’t mention the source of all this natural gas in the report. Theoretically, they could truck the natural gas in using tanker trailers, but that would be expensive, cumbersome, and would take a LOT of trucks. The other, more reasonable, option would be to reactivate a natural gas pipeline that runs through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The pipeline, which was abandoned in 2016, is currently holding fiberoptic cables for a local educational institution.
So, SpaceX may still be able to use the pipeline, or it may have to build a new one.
The other thing that hasn’t been considered in the report is that the gas has to get put in the pipeline from somewhere, and the areas near Brownsville just don’t produce enough gas to feed the needs of SpaceX at Starbase, so more gas will be needed from at least 80 miles away. That means more wells, more pipelines, and more environmental impact that isn’t currently being considered.
SpaceX Is Also Building a 250-Megawatt Gas Power Plant
Getting methane for rockets would probably be something the nearby wells could supply, with minimal gas needs from elsewhere in the state, and that would be reasonable. But, add the needed fuel for a 250-megawatt power plant that runs on natural gas, and you end up in the situation described above. There just isn’t enough local gas to power the rockets plus a big power plant.
According to TechCrunch and ESG Hound (both linked above), the power plant will be needed to power a desalination plant to provide for Starbase’s water needs, as well as to provide for the base’s other electrical needs.
Desalination makes sense, given the limited water supplies in the area and the abundance of salt water, but the equipment to do that isn’t picky about where its electrons come from. Whether it comes from natural gas, or comes from wind and solar, as long as the power keeps coming in, they’ll be able to produce the needed water.
So, Why Isn’t SpaceX Using Renewables?
Given that the company is already planning on piping in gas, and getting more gas is relatively cheap, it’s probably the cheapest solution overall.
But, really, south Texas has great solar resources.
Image provided by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Public Domain.
Sure, it’s not as red hot as it is in El Paso, but Brownsville still has better quality sunlight for solar power production than most of the country. There’s not much in the way of excuse to not build a big solar power plant with storage to supply the desalination plant’s needs, as well as other needs at Starbase. You probably couldn’t build a plant that big right next to Starbase, but you could find some vacant land in the region to supply enough power.
Brownsville only has 223 sunny days per year, which could make an issue, but there’s no reason to not go further away in Texas for power. El Paso and other parts of far west Texas, as close as Big Bend, have over 300 sunny days per year.
Getting the power from the vacant land to Starbase, whether from nearby or farther away, is an issue, but so is the issue of building pipelines. If you can build pipelines, then you can build power lines. Plus, power lines don’t leak and cause other environmental harms the way that gas lines do.
The cost of doing 250 megawatts of solar is probably higher than 250 megawatts of gas, but it doesn’t make sense to be trying to save the species with Tesla and then turn around and burn natural gas for SpaceX’s space colonization efforts.
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Yadea, which has claimed the title of the world’s largest electric vehicle maker for seven years running, has just announced a new electric motorbike powered by the company’s innovative HuaYu sodium-ion battery technology.
Yadea has long dominated the electric two-wheeler and three-wheeler market globally, but has generally relied on both lithium-ion and lead acid batteries to power its vehicles in different markets.
The newly unveiled electric scooter uses Yadea’s recently introduced sodium battery technology, offering what the company says is outstanding performance in range, charging speed, and safety. Using the HuaYu Sodium Superfast Charging Ecosystem presented by Yadea, the battery can reach 80% charge in just 15 minutes, providing greater convenience for riders.
Yadea’s sodium battery has successfully passed more than 20 safety tests, many focusing on its resistance to fire and explosions under extreme conditions like punctures and compression.
Yadea’s new sodium battery offers an energy density of 145 Wh/kg and a lifespan of up to 1,500 cycles at room temperature, with the company rating it for a five-year useful lifespan. It also includes a three-year warranty for added assurance.
With excellent low-temperature capabilities, the battery retains over 92% of its discharge capacity at -20°C, making it well-suited for colder climates.
Sodium batteries present major advantages
Most electric vehicles used in the West, especially electric two-wheelers, rely on lithium-ion batteries for their high energy density. But sodium-ion batteries offer many benefits over traditional lithium-ion batteries.
Sodium is an abundant element on the planet and is easily accessible, unlike lithium, which is concentrated in specific regions and often expensive to extract. This abundance can make sodium-ion batteries cheaper to produce, reducing costs for EV manufacturers and potentially making electric vehicles more affordable.
Lithium mining also has environmental challenges, such as water depletion and habitat destruction. Sodium, on the other hand, can be sourced from seawater or common salts, offering a more sustainable and environmentally friendly option.
Sodium-ion batteries are less prone to overheating and thermal runaway compared to lithium-ion batteries. This makes them inherently safer for electric vehicles, reducing the risk of fires and improving consumer confidence in EV technology.
Sodium-ion batteries perform better than lithium-ion in cold climates. Lithium-ion batteries struggle with capacity retention in freezing conditions, but sodium batteries maintain efficiency, making them ideal for EVs in colder regions.
Sodium batteries still have challenges to overcome
While sodium-ion batteries are promising, they currently have a lower energy density than lithium-ion batteries, meaning they store less energy per unit of weight.
For EVs, this translates to shorter driving ranges for the same-sized battery. That’s especially important in electric two-wheelers like motorbikes and electric bicycles, which don’t have much extra space for storing bulky batteries.
However, advancements in cathode materials and battery architecture are quickly closing this gap, which Yadea has demonstrated. These sodium-ion batteries still can’t match the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, but as they continue to improve their energy density, the technology’s other major advantages provide encouraging signs for larger adoption in the industry.
Yadea’s status as a major electric motorbike maker also means that its adoption of sodium-ion battery technology could help lead the entire industry towards this battery chemistry, bringing safety and performance benefits along with it.
Last year I had the unique opportunity to visit one of Yadea’s global manufacturing sites.
To see inside the company’s massive and highly-automated manufacturing processes, check out the video below!
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At CES2025, the impressively built-out John Deere exhibit was all about automation. Autonomous job sites, autonomous farms … but it was this new, battery electric, autonomous lawn mowing robot that stole the show.
The self-driving Deere mower robot was positively dwarfed by the giant farm machinery surrounding it, but it continues to prove that humans will pack bond with anything as more than one burly-looking and grizzled man asked what its name was. (It’s Howard. I’ll fight you.)
For his part, Howard packs a 21.4 kWh battery pack that runs a suite of electric motors that includes a drive motor and three cutting blade motors spread across a 60 inch cutting deck – but it’s not the electric motors that make John Deere’s little robot mower cool, it’s the way it works.
See, instead of using “just” GPS data or “just” repeating a pre-recorded run, Howard can do something in between. The way it was explained to me, you would ride the stand-up mower around the perimeter of the area you wanted to mow, select a pattern, then hop off, fold up the platform, and let it loose. Howard mows just the way you would, leaving you to focus on edging, planting, or (let’s face it) schmoozing with the clients.
It’s exactly the sort of help landscapers are looking for.
But that should come as no surprise, of course. John Deere, perhaps more than most companies, knows its customer. “We’ve been in the turf business for 60 years — it’s a core part of Deere,” says Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere, explaining things beautifully. “The work that’s being done in this industry is incredibly labor intensive … they’re not just doing the mowing work. They’re doing the tree trimming, maintaining flowerbeds and all these other jobs. The mowing is table stakes, though, for them to get the business. It’s the thing they have to do in order to get the higher value work.”
Tim Lewis, lead engineer with the commercial automatous mower, told Lawn & Landscape that the industry in general has a high turnover rate as well, making it difficult to hang to people who know where one job ends and another begins. “There’s a lot of nuances it takes to do these jobs effectively,” he explains, “so “Autonomy can help with that.”
The John Deere autonomous commercial mower (there’s no snazzy alphanumeric, yet) leverages the same camera technology as other Deere autonomous machines, but on a smaller scale (since the machine has a smaller footprint). With two cameras each on the front, left, right, and rear sides of the little guy, he has a 360-degree view of the world and enough AI to lay down a pattern, avoid an obstacle, and shut off if it thinks it’s about to mow down something (read: someone) it shouldn’t.
John Deere will have Howard on display through tomorrow at CES in the LVCC’s West Hall. If you’re in town, be sure to go say hi.
John Deere CES2025
SUOURCE | IMAGES: John Deere; Electrek.
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