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SYFY WIRE SpaceX

SpaceX wants to build spaceports for Mars, the moon and 'hypersonic travel around Earth'

By Adam Pockross
SpaceX's Starship prototype

While the job market ain't what it used to be, it appears there's some new openings in the spaceport building business. Granted, to qualify, you'll have to first be an Offshore Operations Engineer, which sounds like it might take some training. Oh, and you'll have to work for a somewhat… let's say eccentric boss.

Say what you will about his public persona, but Elon Musk's public companies sure know how to get miraculous things done. None more so than SpaceX, which just became the first commercial endeavor to successfully send human beings to space. Alas, it appears the International Space Station wasn't nearly far enough for Elon's rockets.

Spaceports! Go ahead, say it with us: Spaceports!

It's not just fun to say either, but to think about. Imagine what could be, with a spaceport floating out there in the heavens, just ready to fuel up a Starship spacecraft affixed to a Super Heavy launch vessel, destined for Mars. Mars!

Of course, it's gonna take even more smarties to help SpaceX's current rocket scientists create all those far off future space colonies the boss has been raving about for years now, to the point where he envisions sending one million people to Mars by the year 2050.

Well, if you've only got 30 years, you better start hiring spaceport builders stat. So to kickstart that process, SpaceX placed a recent ad to come work in Brownsville, Texas, where the Starship is being developed, "as part of a team of engineers and technicians to design and build an operational offshore rocket launch facility."

And judging from Musk's retweet of the ad, this is part of the initial plan to build "floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth."

In response to a tweeted question about the current target date for Earth-to-Earth flights, Musk tweeted, "There will be many test flights before commercial passengers are carried. First Earth to Earth test flights might be in 2 or 3 years."

Per TechCrunch, SpaceX has imagined hypersonic, point-to-point Earth travel in concepts of its Super Heavy rocket booster paired with the Starship spacecraft, which wouldn't just send folks to the Moon and Mars, but also chop down long haul Earthly flights to a measly couple of hours. But those renders didn't mention where the rockets would launch from.

Well, now we seem to know: spaceports!