SpaceX seeking permit to splash down in Pacific, Gulf of Mexico and Indian Ocean

Public comments are due Jan. 17 on Elon Musk’s plans for his SpaceX rockets to splash down in a much wider area, including Hawaiian waters and 240 nautical miles east of the Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Sanctuary.

To submit online comments to the Federal Aviation Administration, click here.

The proposed larger landing zone is part of SpaceX’s application for experimental permits and a vehicle operator license from the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation to operate its Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle from Boca Chica in Cameron County, Texas.

SpaceX proposes to increase the Starship’s heavy landings from 5 to 10 to up to 25 Starship and 25 Super Heavy landings annually. Plans call for landing at the vehicle launch area or on floating platforms in the ocean.

Some vehicles would be reused while others would be “expended in the ocean” in three ways, depending on the stage of the program’s development.

Those three ways are:

1. Hard water landing at terminal velocity and break up on impact resulting in an explosive event at the surface of the water.
2. Soft water landing and tip over and sink or explode on impact at the surface of the water.
3. In-flight breakup – Breakup during reentry resulting in debris falling into the ocean (up to 25 times per year of each vehicle stage).

SpaceX says it anticipates “no more than 20 explosive events at the surface of the water for each vehicle for the life of the program. These scenarios would occur within the first five years of the program.”

Now, SpaceX lands Super Heavy in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship in the Pacific Ocean (near Hawaiʻi) and the Indian Ocean. In the future, SpaceX is proposing to expand the potential landing sites of Starship. For ocean landings, Super Heavy would land on a droneship or continue to be expended in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship could land on a droneship (floating platform) or be expended in any of the four landing areas: the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean (near Hawaiʻi) and the northeast Pacific Ocean, or the southeast Pacific Ocean.