18 October, 2024
EXCLUSIVE: SpaceX wants to launch up to 120 times a year from Florida – and competitors aren't happy about it
SpaceX’s ambitious plans to launch its Starship mega-rocket up to 44 times per year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are causing a stir among some of its competitors. Late last month, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance submitted comments calling on regulators to ensure minimal disruptions to other launch providers in the area, with Blue Origin even suggesting limiting Starship operations to particular times — and giving other launch providers a right of first refusal for conflicting launches.
But SpaceX may have even more ambitious plans for a second launch pad right next door: Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). At a series of public meetings held in March, the public was invited to comment on plans to launch Starship from SLC-37 up to 76 times per year. That would mean SpaceX aims to launch its next-gen rocket up to 120 times per year within a six-mile area on the Florida coast.
The U.S. Space Force is currently preparing the draft environmental assessment that will be released to the public this winter, and that document will contain SpaceX’s final anticipated launch cadence. A Space Force representative stressed to TechCrunch that launch cadence numbers could change from now until then. Such numbers could be influenced by the pace of Starship’s development in the coming months or even by the number of scrub jay nests discovered during the EA process. Scrub jays, a bird native to Florida, are listed as threatened on the Endangered Species list.
However, as recently as a few weeks ago, SpaceX’s competitors were still using the number 76 as a benchmark for the company’s plans, according to a person familiar with the talks. The company did not immediately return a request for comment.
Scaling in Florida and Texas
SLC-37 is a historic launch pad at CCSFS, home to NASA’s Saturn rocket in the 1960s and, more recently, United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV series rockets. The pad is now inactive after ULA flew its Delta IV Heavy for the final time in April. The Space Force announced in February that it was preparing to kick off what’s known as an environmental impact statement, a sweeping regulatory document that examines the environmental impacts of the proposed activities, regarding Starship launches from that pad.
The Federal Aviation Administration is preparing a separate impact statement for SpaceX’s Starship launch plans at Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A. Both studies are meant to examine the environmental impacts of Starship launches and landing operations, which will involve the Super Heavy boosters returning to the launch site, similar to how SpaceX’s Falcon rockets operate.
The Space Force’s environmental impact statement for SLC-37 is also considering an alternative — having SpaceX construct an entirely new launch pad currently designated SLC-50. Either way, there would likely be significant construction, including deluge ponds, fuel tanks, a catch tower — and then upwards of 120 launches per year from both sites combined.
The two Florida launch pads would join an existing Starship launch tower at SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in southeast Texas, as well as a second tower that’s currently under construction at the same location. In the near future, SpaceX could have four operational Starship launch sites.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has incredibly ambitious plans for Starship, which he sees as a key enabler for colonizing Mars and “expanding the light of consciousness” through the cosmos. He eventually wants to launch Starship multiple times per day, with each launch delivering hundreds of tons of cargo to low Earth orbit or beyond. The company has a separate goal of beefing up its Starship manufacturing facilities to enable producing one Starship second stage per day.
Blue Origin, ULA push back
As part of the preparation process, the public is invited to comment on the scope of the plans before a draft environmental impact statement is published. While the public comments on SLC-37 have not yet been released, the comments on pad 39A at Kennedy were — and they included strong statements from Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance on the plans there. Both companies expressed particular concern on the effects such a high flight rate would have on other launch providers with infrastructure at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral.
“Just one Starship launch site is likely to disrupt other launch operations in the area and cause significant environmental impacts, as discussed in detail below. The impacts are certain to be amplified if coming from two launch sites in such close proximity,” ULA said in its comment.
“For example, SpaceX intends to conduct up to 44 launches per year from LC-39A. If SpaceX aims for a comparable number at SLC-37, that would lead to nearly 100 launches per year—or one every three days or so,” the comment continued.
Blue Origin, which aims to launch its New Glenn rocket from LC-36 at the Cape Canaveral site, proposed a number of mitigating factors that made it clear it views the launch operations across both sites as a zero-sum game. Those included a suggestion to require SpaceX (or the government) to indemnify third parties for losses caused by Starship operations — including commercial disruptions.
EXCLUSIVE: SpaceX wants to launch up to 120 times a year from Florida – and competitors aren't happy about it
SpaceX’s ambitious plans to launch its Starship mega-rocket up to 44 times per year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are causing a stir among some of its competitors. Late last month, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance submitted comments calling on regulators to ensure minimal disruptions to other launch providers in the area, with Blue Origin even suggesting limiting Starship operations to particular times — and giving other launch providers a right of first refusal for conflicting launches.
But SpaceX may have even more ambitious plans for a second launch pad right next door: Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). At a series of public meetings held in March, the public was invited to comment on plans to launch Starship from SLC-37 up to 76 times per year. That would mean SpaceX aims to launch its next-gen rocket up to 120 times per year within a six-mile area on the Florida coast.
The U.S. Space Force is currently preparing the draft environmental assessment that will be released to the public this winter, and that document will contain SpaceX’s final anticipated launch cadence. A Space Force representative stressed to TechCrunch that launch cadence numbers could change from now until then. Such numbers could be influenced by the pace of Starship’s development in the coming months or even by the number of scrub jay nests discovered during the EA process. Scrub jays, a bird native to Florida, are listed as threatened on the Endangered Species list.
However, as recently as a few weeks ago, SpaceX’s competitors were still using the number 76 as a benchmark for the company’s plans, according to a person familiar with the talks. The company did not immediately return a request for comment.
Scaling in Florida and Texas
SLC-37 is a historic launch pad at CCSFS, home to NASA’s Saturn rocket in the 1960s and, more recently, United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV series rockets. The pad is now inactive after ULA flew its Delta IV Heavy for the final time in April. The Space Force announced in February that it was preparing to kick off what’s known as an environmental impact statement, a sweeping regulatory document that examines the environmental impacts of the proposed activities, regarding Starship launches from that pad.
The Federal Aviation Administration is preparing a separate impact statement for SpaceX’s Starship launch plans at Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A. Both studies are meant to examine the environmental impacts of Starship launches and landing operations, which will involve the Super Heavy boosters returning to the launch site, similar to how SpaceX’s Falcon rockets operate.
The Space Force’s environmental impact statement for SLC-37 is also considering an alternative — having SpaceX construct an entirely new launch pad currently designated SLC-50. Either way, there would likely be significant construction, including deluge ponds, fuel tanks, a catch tower — and then upwards of 120 launches per year from both sites combined.
The two Florida launch pads would join an existing Starship launch tower at SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in southeast Texas, as well as a second tower that’s currently under construction at the same location. In the near future, SpaceX could have four operational Starship launch sites.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has incredibly ambitious plans for Starship, which he sees as a key enabler for colonizing Mars and “expanding the light of consciousness” through the cosmos. He eventually wants to launch Starship multiple times per day, with each launch delivering hundreds of tons of cargo to low Earth orbit or beyond. The company has a separate goal of beefing up its Starship manufacturing facilities to enable producing one Starship second stage per day.
Blue Origin, ULA push back
As part of the preparation process, the public is invited to comment on the scope of the plans before a draft environmental impact statement is published. While the public comments on SLC-37 have not yet been released, the comments on pad 39A at Kennedy were — and they included strong statements from Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance on the plans there. Both companies expressed particular concern on the effects such a high flight rate would have on other launch providers with infrastructure at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral.
“Just one Starship launch site is likely to disrupt other launch operations in the area and cause significant environmental impacts, as discussed in detail below. The impacts are certain to be amplified if coming from two launch sites in such close proximity,” ULA said in its comment.
“For example, SpaceX intends to conduct up to 44 launches per year from LC-39A. If SpaceX aims for a comparable number at SLC-37, that would lead to nearly 100 launches per year—or one every three days or so,” the comment continued.
Blue Origin, which aims to launch its New Glenn rocket from LC-36 at the Cape Canaveral site, proposed a number of mitigating factors that made it clear it views the launch operations across both sites as a zero-sum game. Those included a suggestion to require SpaceX (or the government) to indemnify third parties for losses caused by Starship operations — including commercial disruptions.
EXCLUSIVE: SpaceX wants to launch up to 120 times a year from Florida – and competitors aren't happy about it
SpaceX’s ambitious plans to launch its Starship mega-rocket up to 44 times per year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are causing a stir among some of its competitors. Late last month, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance submitted comments calling on regulators to ensure minimal disruptions to other launch providers in the area, with Blue Origin even suggesting limiting Starship operations to particular times — and giving other launch providers a right of first refusal for conflicting launches.
But SpaceX may have even more ambitious plans for a second launch pad right next door: Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). At a series of public meetings held in March, the public was invited to comment on plans to launch Starship from SLC-37 up to 76 times per year. That would mean SpaceX aims to launch its next-gen rocket up to 120 times per year within a six-mile area on the Florida coast.
The U.S. Space Force is currently preparing the draft environmental assessment that will be released to the public this winter, and that document will contain SpaceX’s final anticipated launch cadence. A Space Force representative stressed to TechCrunch that launch cadence numbers could change from now until then. Such numbers could be influenced by the pace of Starship’s development in the coming months or even by the number of scrub jay nests discovered during the EA process. Scrub jays, a bird native to Florida, are listed as threatened on the Endangered Species list.
However, as recently as a few weeks ago, SpaceX’s competitors were still using the number 76 as a benchmark for the company’s plans, according to a person familiar with the talks. The company did not immediately return a request for comment.
Scaling in Florida and Texas
SLC-37 is a historic launch pad at CCSFS, home to NASA’s Saturn rocket in the 1960s and, more recently, United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV series rockets. The pad is now inactive after ULA flew its Delta IV Heavy for the final time in April. The Space Force announced in February that it was preparing to kick off what’s known as an environmental impact statement, a sweeping regulatory document that examines the environmental impacts of the proposed activities, regarding Starship launches from that pad.
The Federal Aviation Administration is preparing a separate impact statement for SpaceX’s Starship launch plans at Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A. Both studies are meant to examine the environmental impacts of Starship launches and landing operations, which will involve the Super Heavy boosters returning to the launch site, similar to how SpaceX’s Falcon rockets operate.
The Space Force’s environmental impact statement for SLC-37 is also considering an alternative, having SpaceX construct an entirely new launch pad currently designated SLC-50. Either way, there would likely be significant construction, including deluge ponds, fuel tanks, a catch tower — and then upwards of 120 launches per year from both sites combined.
The two Florida launch pads would join an existing Starship launch tower at SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in southeast Texas, as well as a second tower that’s currently under construction at the same location. In the near future, SpaceX could have four operational Starship launch sites.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has incredibly ambitious plans for Starship, which he sees as a key enabler for colonizing Mars and “expanding the light of consciousness” through the cosmos. He eventually wants to launch Starship multiple times per day, with each launch delivering hundreds of tons of cargo to low Earth orbit or beyond. The company has a separate goal of beefing up its Starship manufacturing facilities to enable producing one Starship second stage per day.
Blue Origin, ULA push back
As part of the preparation process, the public is invited to comment on the scope of the plans before a draft environmental impact statement is published. While the public comments on SLC-37 have not yet been released, the comments on pad 39A at Kennedy were — and they included strong statements from Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance on the plans there. Both companies expressed particular concern on the effects such a high flight rate would have on other launch providers with infrastructure at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral.
“Just one Starship launch site is likely to disrupt other launch operations in the area and cause significant environmental impacts, as discussed in detail below. The impacts are certain to be amplified if coming from two launch sites in such close proximity,” ULA said in its comment.
“For example, SpaceX intends to conduct up to 44 launches per year from LC-39A. If SpaceX aims for a comparable number at SLC-37, that would lead to nearly 100 launches per year—or one every three days or so,” the comment continued.
Blue Origin, which aims to launch its New Glenn rocket from LC-36 at the Cape Canaveral site, proposed a number of mitigating factors that made it clear it views the launch operations across both sites as a zero-sum game. Those included a suggestion to require SpaceX (or the government) to indemnify third parties for losses caused by Starship operations — including commercial disruptions.
OpenAI claims New York Times copyright lawsuit is without merit
In late December, The New York Times sued OpenAI and its close collaborator and investor, Microsoft, for allegedly violating copyright law by training generative AI models on the Times’ content. Today, OpenAI gave a public response, claiming — unsurprisingly — that the Times’ lawsuit is meritless.
In a letter published this afternoon on OpenAI’s official blog, the company reiterates its view that training AI models using publicly available data from the web — including articles like the Times’ — is fair use. In other words, in creating generative AI systems like GPT-4 and DALL-E 3, which “learn” from billions of examples of artwork, ebooks, essays and more to generate human-like text and images, OpenAI believes that it isn’t required to license or otherwise pay for the examples — even if it makes money from those models.
“We view this principle as fair to creators, necessary for innovators and critical for U.S. competitiveness,” OpenAI writes.
OpenAI also addresses in its letter regurgitation, the phenomenon where generative AI models spit out training data verbatim (or near-verbatim) when prompted in a certain way — for example, generating a photo that’s identical to one taken by a famous photographer. OpenAI makes the case that regurgitation is less likely to occur with training data from a single source (e.g., The New York Times) and places the onus on users to “act responsibly” and avoid intentionally prompting its models to regurgitate.
“Interestingly, the regurgitations The New York Times [cites in its lawsuit] appear to be from years-old articles that have proliferated on multiple third-party websites,” OpenAI writes. “It seems they intentionally manipulated prompts, often including lengthy excerpts of articles, in order to get our model to regurgitate. Even when using such prompts, our models don’t typically behave the way The New York Times insinuates, which suggests they either instructed the model to regurgitate or cherry-picked their examples from many attempts.”
OpenAI’s response comes as the copyright debate around generative AI reaches a fever pitch.
In a piece published this week in IEEE Spectrum, noted AI critic Gary Marcus and Reid Southen, a visual effects artist, show how AI systems, including DALL-E 3, regurgitate data even when not specifically prompted to do so — making OpenAI’s claims to the contrary less credible. Marcus and Southen, in fact, make reference to The New York Times lawsuit in their piece, noting that the Times was able to elicit “plagiaristic” responses from OpenAI’s models simply by giving the first few words from a Times story.
The Times is only the latest copyright holder to sue OpenAI over what it believes is a clear violation of IP laws.
Actress Sarah Silverman joined a pair of lawsuits in July that accuse Meta and OpenAI of having “ingested” Silverman’s memoir to train their AI models. In a separate suit, thousands of novelists, including Jonathan Franzen and John Grisham, claim OpenAI sourced their work as training data without their permission or knowledge. And several programmers have an ongoing case against Microsoft, OpenAI and GitHub over Copilot, an AI-powered code-generating tool, which the plaintiffs say was developed using their IP-protected code.
Some news outlets, rather than fight generative AI vendors in court, have chosen to ink licensing agreements with them. The Associated Press struck a deal in July with OpenAI, and Axel Springer, the German publisher that owns Politico and Business Insider, did likewise in December. OpenAI also has deals in place with the American Journalism Project and NYU.
But the payouts tend to be quite small. According to The Information, OpenAI — whose annualized revenue reportedly hovers around $1.6 billion — offers between $1 million and $5 million a year to license copyrighted news articles to train its AI models.
Until recently, The New York Times, too, had been in conversations with OpenAI to establish a “high-value” partnership involving “real-time display” of its brand in ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot. But discussions broke down in mid-December, according to OpenAI.
For what it’s worth, the public might be on publishers’ sides. According to a recent poll from the independent think tank The AI Policy Institute, when informed about the details of The New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI, 59% of respondents agreed that AI companies shouldn’t be allowed to use publisher content to train models while 70% said that the companies should compensate outlets if they want to use copyrighted materials in model training.
Y Combinator wants 100 times more MRI scans
L
everaging resources such as virtual data rooms and shared labs makes it easier for biotech startups to grow. This is good news: We need more companies attacking cancer from novel angles, including AI-enabled early detection. And who knows, maybe one of these will become a trillion-dollar company? — Anna
Scaling early cancer detection
Y Combinator’s newest request for startups (RFS) is well worth reading, and not just because it’s been a while since the incubator shared the ideas and categories its partners “would like to see more people working on.” As my colleague Sarah Perez noted, YC hadn’t updated its full list since 2018.
Y Combinator puts out a new call for startups in areas like AI, spatial computing, climate tech and more
Taken as a whole, YC’s RFS is a great way to sense the zeitgeist; the list includes AI of course, as well as climate tech, defense tech and more. But zooming in on individual requests is also a worthwhile exercise.
One of the requests that captured my interest calls for “a way to end cancer.” Written by YC group partner Surbhi Sarna, a former medical device company CEO, it focuses on MRIs. “Since most cancers are now treatable if caught early enough,” she wrote, “this technology would dramatically reduce cancer deaths if rolled out widely and affordably.”
My first thought was that MRI startups already exist. Just a few days earlier, New York–based Ezra raised a fresh round of $21 million — and we are talking about a team that TechCrunch first covered in 2018. It has competitors, too, such as Neko, backed by Spotify’s Daniel Ek, and Prenuvo, which has a $2,500 full-body scan that was promoted by Kim Kardashian.
For Sarna, that price point is part of the problem, as it inherently limits scale, but it’s not the only one. “There is backlash from the medical community as MRIs also create incidental findings (or false positives) that cost our healthcare system valuable time and money to investigate.” The jury is still out on whether they are beneficial or individuals, let alone society. But YC still hopes startups can help.
How to get into Y Combinator, according to YC’s Dalton Caldwell
“For this to work, the world would need to scale up the number of MRI scans it does by at least 100x. Doing that will require innovations in the MRI hardware, the AI algorithms to interpret scans and reduce false positives, and the business models and consumer marketing to make it a viable business.”
Of course, companies like Ezra are also hoping to do some of this in-house. In its latest pitch deck, the startup boasted it “leverages Al at every step of the screening process.” But if others can contribute from other angles, I can see why YC would be interested — I am.
Co-working for biotech
Shared lab spaces have been a game changer for biotech startups, Nature reported. Of course, co-working isn’t new, but co-working labs provide their customers with much more than office space, saving them both time and money.
This reminded me of Startup Battlefield alum Parallel Health — its chief scientist officer Nathan Brown had mentioned shared labs in passing when we chatted at Disrupt. I noticed he had liked a repost of Nature’s article, so I asked him for his thoughts. He confirmed that the skincare startup he co-founded had been using BioLabs‘ shared facilities in Los Angeles, and he highlighted some of the benefits of this concept:
BioLabs has enabled us to cost-effectively build a consumer biotech product. They make the laboratory infrastructure available to us without having to spend our entire seed round on capital expenses like DNA sequencing machines, laminar flow hoods, and lab-grade freezers. We also save immense amounts of time at BioLabs, because they manage all aspects of environmental health and safety as well as infrastructure management. Maybe most importantly, they create a thriving culture of innovation where startups can collaborate easily and learn from each other.
While this may read as a local endorsement, startups don’t have to be based in California to leverage this trend. BioLabs itself is a franchise that has expanded to a dozen locations, and similar things could likely be said of many competing facilities around the world. However, a founder interviewed by Nature, Accure Health CEO Jessica Sang, shared a word of caution: Some labs are better equipped and wider-ranging than others. “If you’re thinking about starting a company, try to visit a few just to see which one is the best.”
Virtual data rooms
Virtual data rooms are another important resource for biotech startups. Calling them “the unsung hero of biotech financing,” and noting that they can also be helpful in business development talks, a16z published a guide on what biotech teams should and shouldn’t put in their data rooms.
Apple and peers
Sam Altman may not be raising trillions for AI chips after all, but it still got me thinking: How much money is a trillion with a T? When asked, Perplexity.ai surfaced an old CNBC article telling me that $1 trillion in $100 bills would fill 4.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools — visually compelling, but not that helpful, sorry.
Much more relevant is looking at a list of things that recently neared or passed the $1 billion threshold. Not national GDPs; we can just stick to tech and still have plenty of anchor points. The total amount invested in bitcoin. Dry powder available for climate tech. The liquidity gap for U.S. startups. And Nvidia’s market cap in May of last year.
AI tailwinds haven’t faltered for the chip giant since then. Indeed, Nvidia’s market value briefly surpassed Amazon’s earlier this week when it reached $1.82 trillion.
This says a lot about AI’s power and the leg up it gives companies that are best positioned to benefit from its rise. But it shouldn’t eclipse the wider story about the group of tech companies that have become known as “the Magnificent Seven” and their incredible cumulated market cap of some $13 trillion.
As CNBC noted, “The last time Nvidia was more valuable than Amazon was in 2002, when they were each worth under $6 billion.” Billion, with a small b. Fast-forward to today, and both aren’t that far from Apple’s $2.81 trillion market cap. Two-thirds of an Apple is much more telling than dollar-filled Olympic pools, isn’t it?