If you think putting it a little out to sea would kill NIMBY objections .... still, we can but dream.

I'm not entirely sure how serious SpaceX are about their E2E idea anyway, I took it as more of a "hey, isn't this neat? totally physically possible and practical too." I imagine it would take a long time to scale up to that point though, probably decades(?) after the Moon/Mars.

E2E seems important as a way of making profit to reduce the cost of the Mars tickets. Also means you get more usage and testing of the rockets.

Objections, sure, but any enforcement ability? That’s international waters.

International waters start more than 20km out from the coastline (12 nm)[1], that would be a very long ferry just to reach the spaceport, not just a short hop like shown in the video...

[1] https://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc...

That's about half an hour at a not that fast 25 knots. 30 minutes from a city center. For any coastal city, that is likely to be no worse as the time to get to an intercontinental airport. Still means about 2h00 from NYC to Shangai, door to door. Quite an improvement over the 17hours today.

Non coastal cities have a problem...

In any case it takes care of most nimby as it's to far away for the neighbors to care. So reasonable, in that aspect.

Of course ITAR, fear of nuclear strikes etc... general FAA/EASA regulations remain issues for this business plan.

Weather will also be an issue. Flights rarely get canceled for weather issues. But transferring from a ferry onto a barge at high sea in bad wind seems like an non fun experience in a three piece suit.

> That's about half an hour at a not that fast 25 knots. [...] no worse as the time to get to an intercontinental airport

yes you are right, I wasn't factoring in the fact that currently airline travel requires you to travel to an airport which is usually very far from the city centre.

Couldn't you just use a Hyperloop to travel to the launch site?

Boats already stop rockets from taking off somewhat regularly. I think a lot of people would be pissed off if they couldn't sail off the coasts of many major cities on a daily (or even more frequent?) basis.

Isn't that done for the safety of the ships, in case of debris coming down on them? If they make rockets reliable enough for passenger transport that wouldn't be an issue anymore.

> Thats why they show the spaceport out at sea,

I suspect putting the spaceport at sea is mainly a security issue. Failing to reach the landing pad is certainly less catastrophic on water than on the ground.

Not for the passengers, although if they can do a soft water landing and the ship is somewhat buoyant you have some chance of hull recovery.

And that would actually be better than aircraft, there isn't such thing as a water landing there it's called crashing in the ocean.

It will certainly be buoyant, provided it can dump its propellant in time.

You also want your rocket to land in an uninhabited area, in case something goes terribly bad. Sea makes much sense in this regard.