It’s always good to return to Texas. After a 3,000km dash from central Guatemala, through the whole length of Mexico in just four days, we’re chuffed to be welcomed by friendly US border guys into Texas. Not in our 9+ years of overlanding have we ever travelled so fast!! The real reason we dashed here at warp-factor-sneeze was for a bit of Texas Rocket Time… the imminent launch of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship rocket. Exciting, eh? Then we enjoyed catching up with some lovely friends here, and we took a trip to Paris!
Rocket Time
First, for those uninitiated to the world of rocketry, it’s worth understanding the significance of this up-coming launch. Rockets are launched all the time from earth: deploying satellites; taking crew and supplies to the International Space Station etc, etc, etc. Long term Cuthbert followers might remember back in 2017 we watched an Arianne 5 launch by the European Space Agency in Kourou, French Guiana. But this SpaceX Starship rocket is on whole different a scale to any previous rockets. At 120 m high, potentially carrying up to 150 tonnes of cargo, Starship is by far the largest rocket man has ever attempted to launch. Bigger than anything every attempted by NASA, by the Russians, by the Chinese… anyone!
Starship is widely predicted to become the future of space travel for the next generations. This launch however, was to be experimental. SpaceX, by its own admission, didn’t really know for sure what was going to happen. To a certain extent, they were making it up as they went along. For Starship’s first attempted launch it had no astronauts or cargo. SpaceX hoped and expected it would fire all 33 of its Raptor engines, blast-off and clear the support tower towards the ocean. Anything beyond that would be “icing on the cake”.
Blast-off was provisionally scheduled for the morning of Monday 17th April, but this really is rocket science. Things can go wrong with rocket science. As we arrived at the Starbase launch site, we were conscious that it might go. Then again… it might not.
Rocket Stacking
Last time we went to Starbase at Boca Chica, Texas in September 2019, we arrived just in time to watch (from the public highway) a SpaceX crane-assembling (‘stacking’) the Starship Mk 1. That was a cool thing to see, but it was just an engineering learning exercise, never destined to launch. This time, we have similarly good timing and arrive just in time to see them stacking the Starship onto the Booster. And this one was destined for launch… very soon!
Stacking Starship
Rocket Ranch
Having witnessed the stacking, we went to find our spot at nearby Rocket Ranch campsite. Just 13km/8miles away from the launch pad, we thought this was the closest we could get to the safety exclusion zone. After checking-in we learned that for a (significant) extra sum, we could be taken by bus to an even closer ‘forward viewing site’. This spot is on the very edge of the safety exclusion zone, just under 6.4 km/4 miles away from the launch pad. Ooooh! How cool to watch so close! But wait… there’s a catch! Although the launch was scheduled for early next morning, the access road would be closed by police sometime during the night. So the bus had to go the evening before, and people had to camp-out in the field overnight. Hmmm… bugger!!! We have no camping kit!
Rocket Chance
Marcus’ reaction to the kit-less camping was ‘don’t care… it’ll be worth it’. He was totally happy to pay good money to sleep rough in a field, with no tent, no sleeping bag, no mattress, nothing… just for the chance to see a rocket launch in the morning. My level of enthusiasm didn’t quite stretch to accommodating that level of hardship. I decided to stay back in Cuthbert at the main camp and watch from a bit further away.
On the Monday morning, the world stood-by (and Marcus stood even closer-by) to watch Starship make its first bid for space-stardom. Visibility and conditions were spectacularly good, clear blue skies, the world’s media were there with their cameras, and the countdown sequence started. Then, some kind of space-blooper stopped the show. The launch was called off with just seconds to go ☹. A disappointed Marcus and his new chums re-boarded the bus back to Rocket Ranch.
Rocket Launch
Blast-off was re-scheduled for three days later, early on Thursday 20th April. Same palaver with Marcus taking the bus out to the site the evening before… sleeping rough in the field… but this time it was worth it! SpaceX had (as they say) ‘got all its ducks in a row’ and the launch went off… booom!
It was a cloudy day this time, so the visibility wasn’t as good as Monday. Marcus was close enough to get a good view of the blast-off, but as predicted it was the deafening noise of the 33 Raptor engines that was most striking. Marcus had ear-plugs, but still felt the ground shaking with the huge power of the blast-off. Even where I was, sat on Cuthbert’s roof at the Rocket Ranch 7 km further away from the launch pad, the noise-waves shook the truck. The cloud-cover caused the booming sound-waves to bounce around the sky, and it felt like being in the middle of a huge, dry, thunder-storm.
Starship soared into the sky, far beyond the point of SpaceX’s ‘best hope’ reach. But it soon became clear that all was not well on-board. The two sections of the rocket were intended to separate with the bottom half falling to the ocean and the top half continuing to orbit. The ‘stage separation’ was not achieved as the rocket was apparently not high or fast enough; they had to remotely detonate it over the ocean. This kaboom echoing around the sky is also known by SpaceX as a ‘RUD’ (a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly 🤣).
So we didn’t witness a full launch to orbit. What we did witness was the first of the next generation of the Space Age. Elon’s long term view for Starship is to support NASA’s mission to colonise the Moon. Even longer term, it will take crew and supplies to Mars. Who knows… maybe one day there’ll be overlanders on Mars!
Marcus did take a video (see here), but for a much better idea of the drama, the WSJ did it slightly better (click here)!
The Rest of Texas
Launch done and dusted, we could continue our route through Texas at a bit slower pace. Texas is one of our favourite states in the USA (and we had a great time touring extensively when we were here a few years ago) the bad news for us here is the lack of wild-camping opportunities. The land is all fenced-off either private land or State Parks. An exception to this is beaches. Unlike the tight controls on the West Coast beaches, Texas allows access for camping on some of its fab beaches. Our top marks here go to beautiful Padre Island. Here, there was a first for us… the weird and wonderful Portuguese Men of War washed up on the shoreline.
Also, we were very keen to catch up with some old friends. Amy, Nick, Evelyn and James in Austin; Sheila in Dallas; and Gary and Julia in Fort Worth. An overlanding lifestyle doesn’t allow the luxury of regular face-to-face friendships. But overlanding has shown us that people are nice all over the world. And it’s a real joy to re-connect with people and make new friendships when we can.
What else did we do in Texas? Ooooh… a bit of live country and western music at the Gruene Music Hall. A bit random… on a forest walking trail we found the world’s biggest collection of rock art. And finally, we took a trip to Paris. No, silly… not on a plane to Europe! This is Paris, Texas! Okay… so maybe it doesn’t have quite the same je ne sais quoi as the French version. But it was still fun to wander the town square and visit their own version of the Eiffel Tower!
Standby spacemen… for the next blog! We’ll be heading north and east across Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi!