Star Bound №28: A Road Trip to the Future
I recently sat myself down for a little talk. As a self-professed space nerd, I had a pointed question to ask. I live in Austin, the capital of Texas, and the SpaceX Starship test flights — seven of them so far — had been taking place just south of Padre Island, in my figurative backyard. So did I really have a valid excuse for my continuing failure to haul myself down to the coast to check out a launch?
It turns out the answer is yes. Texas is very big, and I, a Slurpee enthusiast and roadside historical marker junkie, am very slow. Nevertheless, determined to witness the sort of controlled explosion that can send a rocket around the planet, I climb in my Jeep and set off. The first leg of my journey takes me down the crowded 1–35 commercial corridor — think outlet malls and Toyota dealerships, a Buc-ee’s the size of a municipal airport — to sprawling San Antonio, gateway to…more San Antonio. But after that I proceed south through the gradually flattening hill country into rolling prairie and angle southwest, paralleling the Gulf Coast. U.S. 77 threads through scrubby ranch land to low-lying coastal communities pinned like insects on a great green tableland of sandy soil and Spanish daggers. Not for the first time during my travels in the state, I have the suspicion that Texas is adding area to itself as I drive, unfolding like a fanciful city in the opening credits of Game of Thrones, and that out there at the edge of the horizon the live oaks and mesquite trees are multiplying.
Still I proceed, tantalized by the thought of seeing the world’s largest and most powerful rocket spring off the Earth from a perch in my home state. And wrapped up in such thoughts is the notion that what I will be seeing won’t just be what’s here. It might also be what’s coming, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Since its creation in 2002, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has proved itself to be a workshop of wonders. The company and its fans believe Starship is the space vehicle that will dominate the 21st century. It is two vehicles, really: Starship is the flatworm-silhouetted component that astronauts will climb into and fly into orbit, to the moon, and, eventually, the company hopes, to Mars; indeed, the spaceship was early on referred to as the “Mars Colonial Transporter.” Starship is launched atop a very large rocket, the Super Heavy booster, that is powered by 33 Raptor engines. Clad in stainless steel, standing 398 feet tall and weighing in at some 11,000,000 pounds when fully fueled, the Starship “stack” (i.e., Super Heavy + Starship) is the repository of the company’s fondest dreams. It might be America’s best hope for traveling farther from the planet than the 250-odd miles it takes to make it to the International Space Station. Thus the drama. Starship’s future may be our future as well.
Starship looks thinner from a distance. I spy the rocket as I drive across the Queen Isabella Causeway from Port Isabel to Padre Island. While close-ups of the vehicle emphasize its muscularity and heft, it now seems improbably slender and tall — not a turret but a minaret. It stands at one of the two gantries that rise above Starbase, the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica Village, six miles south of the causeway. Lift-off is scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, March 6, no earlier than 5:30 p.m. I’m here on Padre Island to watch. And I have to say, the trip suddenly seems worthwhile. In the twilight, the rocket looks serene, stately, almost — dare I say it? — beautiful. It’s a giant pen, about to write prophecies in the sky.
Okay, I may have been driving a little too long today.
*
I find my hotel with no trouble, shower up, and manage to eat way too many fried shrimp at a local diner, which is a common mistake in this part of the world. Nevertheless, I wake up the next morning ready to stake out some prime rocket-watching real estate.
To do this I drive from my hotel down to Isla Blanca State Park, which stands at the southern tip of Padre Island, just a few miles from the border with Mexico. I pay $14.00 for a day pass, locate several hundred places to park, and realize I’m about eight hours early for the pre-launch countdown. There’s no one around but fishermen. For lack of a better plan, I set out to do some exploring on foot. I’ve only been in this part of the state once before, but I know that for many years the city of South Padre Island, often denoted simply as “SPI,” has played host to a seasonal tourist trade and hordes of college-age spring breakers, who come in search of cheap booze, mild surf, and other college-age spring breakers. SPI dresses itself in tropical pastels and has that air of mandatory festivity that marks a beach town. There are handsome multi-story resort buildings along the shore, but the main drag is lined with t-shirt shops and drug stores, bars and bicycle rentals. During high season, SPI’s retailers do a booming business in towels, beer coozies, and boogie boards, which are, signs testify, ALWAYS 50% OFF.
SPI occupies the nethermost six miles of Padre Island. But Padre is big. In fact, at 113 miles long, it’s the largest barrier island in the world, and most of it is so remote that it was seriously considered during the Cold War as a site for missile tests. Its seaward shore fronts the Gulf of Mexico. Leeward is the Laguna Madre (“Mother Lagoon”), a shallow estuary that shelters seagrasses, numerous fish, shrimp, and turtle species, and huge seasonal gatherings of egrets, herons, and my favorite bird, the Shakespearean-sounding marbled godwhit. The lagoon remains relatively unspoiled because it is bounded by Padre Island National Seashore on 70 miles of the island’s northern reaches, the sprawling King Ranch on the mainland, and the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge to the south. Federal law protects the local habitat but does nothing for the landform itself. Naturalists say the southern half of the Padre Island is slowly dissipating, a victim of tides, a lack of sand regeneration, and battering by severe storms.
But there’s little sign of that today. The day brings high skies and sun, breezy and cool at the edges but warm on the pavement. After several hours of walking, a light lunch, and an ill-advised pirate-themed towel purchase, I’m back at the tip of the island. By five o’clock there’s a growing throng of people on the two hundred yards or so of beach at the southern end of Isla Blanca Park. It’s a sizeable crowd, but not unmanageable. We sit on rocks on the brown sandy beach, thirty yards beyond the highest clumps of sargassum weed that have washed ashore. It’s a pleasant group, calm and chatty, like a crowd at a sporting event where everyone’s rooting for the same team. The spaceship stands ghostlike at this distance, wreathed in white cloud. “I hope that doesn’t mean trouble,” says one of my fellow spectators. I offer reassurances. The clouds are water vapor, caused by moisture in the air condensing in contact with the hardware holding the super-cooled liquid methane and oxygen that Starship will consume as it climbs.
Most of us are here for the show. A rocket launch is a little like a volcanic eruption — it’s pretty and dramatic and, if you don’t get too close, more or less safe. Others are watching more critically to see if SpaceX can finally put together a sort of modern rocketry trifecta: a successful launch of the Starship stack, a trip around the planet for Starship itself, and a smooth booster catch back at Boca Chica. SpaceX seems to have the launch procedure down pat. The first test destroyed the launch pad, which led to substantial improvements. Test flight 7 saw a successful booster catch — the second of the series of tests. All we need now is for Starship to fly halfway around the world and deposit itself in the Indian Ocean. The last test flight blew up over the Turks and Caicos and sent a beautiful but potentially dangerous shower of meteor-like fragments across the heavens. It was pretty, sure, but pretty wasn’t the point.
There’s not much to do while we wait. Some enterprising soul in a food truck is selling “Mexican hot dogs” and sodas, and I occasionally smell nachos, though it’s unclear where they might have come from. A gaggle of preteen boys plays football in the sand. On the water, a middle-aged man in a black neoprene wetsuit is wind surfing, seemingly oblivious to the crowd. A young woman in a blue bikini wades into the chilly surf but quickly wades back out. A couple of police boats are cruising the choppy estuary, and soon they’re joined by several civilian pleasure craft.
The launch window is scheduled to open at 5:30. I’ve seen launches before, and I know not to put too much stock in schedules. Rocketry at this scale is a tricky business, and postponements are par for the course. Nevertheless, at just a few seconds after 5:30, Starship belches a thick cloud of exhaust as its methane and liquid oxygen mix and combust. An orange flame is visible through the plumes as the rocket starts to rise. The first moments seem slow, but this is deceptive — and short-lived. As the rocket climbs, it accelerates. And now the sound washes over us on the beach, a massive wave of it, and the air crackles and pops as if an elephant is tap-dancing on a giant sheet of bubble wrap. Voices rise with the rocket, urging it higher. The slender cylinder swims up through the atmosphere and the color of its fiery tail is, weirdly, a sort of metallic violet, a shade I’ve never seen before. The bright light tapers to a needle and then to a dot and then, suddenly, it disappears. “Staging” occurs when Starship separates from the Super Heavy booster and the booster heads back home. I keep my eyes peeled, and it’s not long before I can see what everyone else is now oohing and aahing about: a pinprick of light, likely the sun’s reflection, glints from the booster as it descends through the clear sky.
And now, gradually, I make out the streamlined form — headless, limbless — returning to earth across the water. It’s an amazing, unnatural sight, like when those of us of a certain age watched movies run backwards in our junior high school science classes. In its own way, it’s as remarkable as the launch. As the Super Heavy booster nears earth, it fires its thrusters and slows as it veers toward the launch pad. Slowly, much more slowly than it approached, it leans in toward the gantry (“Mechazilla,” they call it), which has its mechanical arms extended like a fireman waiting to break the fall of a child leaping from a burning building. The catch comes a moment later. The booster nestles into its mechanical mother like a baby settling in for a nap. A moment later two sonic booms punch me right in the chest. I barely notice. I’m cheering louder for the catch than for the launch. It seems more fitting, after all, to root for a reunion than a departure. And then, only twenty minutes later, the beach is empty. We’ve done our part. We’ve witnessed and indeed encouraged what would have been thought impossible only a decade ago. Out in the waters of Brazos Santiago Pass, the wind surfer is still at it, whipsawing back and forth across the green waters of the Gulf.
*
I’m happy to have made the trip to South Padre. It wasn’t a perfect outing. I learned after watching the booster catch that the Starship that left Texas on a seemingly perfect trajectory blew up just a few minutes later, creating another spectacular shower of metallic debris in the sky. It was the second snafu in as many missions. The founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, has been cracking up almost as spectacularly lately, making headlines and enemies with his assault on governmental budgets and workforces. Never mind. SpaceX isn’t just Musk. It’s thousands of smart, enthusiastic young American engineers and technicians. And when it comes to hardware, SpaceX is almost as comfortable with failure as it is with success. It will figure this thing out.
Now I’m rooting for the trifecta for the SpaceX’s next test flight, currently scheduled to take off from right here in Texas — er, well, right there in Texas, anyway, 350 miles from Austin — sometime in April. Maybe you are too. If you’re interested in getting a glimpse of the future along with a Mexican hot dog, South Padre Island is the place for you.
