Project Negishima Space Center

[Urwumpe]

I'd recommend nuclear.

Hardly surprising :lol:

Since I am pretty uneasy with operating nuclear powerplants in a tsunami region and without a backup power grid, I would recommend putting your eggs into multiple baskets.

Since you are close to the equator, covering every roof with solar arrays would be expensive, but very effective. Wind power should also be pretty reliable, you are right between the doldrums and the horse latitudes, so most of the time, you should have a pretty stable wind, sometimes just far too much wind.

Finally, as conventional backup power, I would use a triplet of combined cycle as turbine powerplants. Those can be made very small and reach extreme effectivities in practical use, a power plant in Germany reached 60.75 % thermal effectivity in 2011. Also, they are very agile and can be powered on or off in a matter of seconds.

This example is a 2x400 MW powerplant, much larger than you likely need for your spaceport:

Since you can build such a power plant really small, it is also no problem to spread them out, so they are not all in the same location during a disaster.

Since you also need to produce hydrogen at your spaceport as rocket fuel and store it, you are in a very lucky situation: You can use solar and wind power for producing much more hydrogen gas from the ocean than you actually need for your rockets and use the hydrogen gas for the CCGT power plants instead of natural gas, should you ever have a wind still night or very high temporary power demands during spaceflight operations.

With hydrogen all over the spaceport, you could also use fuel cell stacks as local emergency power supply instead of the classic Diesel generators.

Just remember the "two island principle": Never have everything your life depends on in one place, so it is very unlikely that a disaster will destroy both locations completely.

Finally: Using such a hydrogen-base regenerative infrastructure would also have the advantage, even a full "end of the world" style disaster (like a really really strong typhoon) would not have the risk that even a mild nuclear accident would contaminate your spaceport island and make it unusable for years.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

For combined cycle, you'd still need to be fairly close geographically speaking. Unless you are willing to have the trade-off between reliability (in the event of a disaster) and costs of extra plumbing to get steam from one gas turbine/HRSG to the steam turbine some distance away (usually within rock throwing distance).

There is an added "bonus" with combined cycle; in simple cycle mode you can roll Mw to the grid in about 9 1/2 minutes (depending on who "modified" the software). Once the HRSG can make dry steam, then you can roll up the steam turbine (getting approx 30% increase in efficiency).

But, you also have the fuel costs involved (and replacement costs are at the spot market rate). The gas turbines are designed to run on heavy diesel, but usually run on natural gas. So unless you are sitting on a wellhead, you'll need to pipe in (and store) your fuel.

There is also the SO and CO2 emissions to deal with; I was doomed for a life as a CEMS guy (Continuous Emissions Monitoring System) for our Fossil Power Group until I "escaped" and made it to nuclear (after nearly 9 years I still don't know if I made the right choice there).

Simple cycle makes pretty good money for peak demand, combined cycle needs to be base load to really make it worthwhile, but they too need to be down for maintenance (those "boiler tubes" look like spaghetti noodles when they cut them out during an outage).

But yeah, a mixed media approach for power like Urwumpe suggested might be your best bet. Solar, wind (maybe tidal too?) with a nuke for primary. And you can still sell your excess to the nearest co-op.

In the event of a tsunami or something, a pebble bed should be fairly robust, it's modular and self contained. And the designs are getting better all the time. You also won't have to wander around and collect your wind damaged solar cells, nor clean up and diesel fuel.

Ah... HRSG=Heat Recovery Steam Generator, identified by that big ugly box on the exhaust side of a gas turbine.

 

[Urwumpe]

For combined cycle, you'd still need to be fairly close geographically speaking. Unless you are willing to have the trade-off between reliability (in the event of a disaster) and costs of extra plumbing to get steam from one gas turbine/HRSG to the steam turbine some distance away (usually within rock throwing distance).

Usually, the gas turbine and the stream turbine are one unit, in some designs small enough to fit both into a standard ISO TEU container.

But, you also have the fuel costs involved (and replacement costs are at the spot market rate). The gas turbines are designed to run on heavy diesel, but usually run on natural gas. So unless you are sitting on a wellhead, you'll need to pipe in (and store) your fuel.

Well, if you need about 400 tons of hydrogen per launch attempt anyway, producing 100 tons more to run a Megawatt-scale gas turbine for a few weeks is not the big deal (100 tons of hydrogen at 60% efficiency = 2.413 GWh electricity)

Thats what I mean with the big advantage there.

But yeah, a mixed media approach for power like Urwumpe suggested might be your best bet. Solar, wind (maybe tidal too?) with a nuke for primary. And you can still sell your excess to the nearest co-op.

Without cooling and external power for emergency circulation, even a Pebble Bed reactor can fail badly. The worst German nuclear ruin was a [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor"]second generation pebble bed reactor[/ame], which failed because of a simple operator error, but the investigation after the accident also showed many graphite spheres that failed because of uneven heat distribution or got smashed by the control rods, making it impossible to properly circulate the fuel pebbles through the reactor core.

I think an island, that is distant enough to any meaningful power grid to be useful, remember Negishima is placed halfway between Taiwan and Guam, should not use nuclear power, since this limits your options for handling emergencies. And failure is always a possibility.

Its even 150 km west of Okinotori Island (And right on a subsea plateau of 5000m depth)

 

[PhantomCruiser]

So a solar/tidal/wind farm for "normal" operation, then ramp up the combined cycle as the island population expands just prior to work up for a launch?

Sounds pretty reasonable. And you save the manpower costs of dealing with nuclear.

OK Pipcard, get to it. Turn on the lights!

 

[Urwumpe]

So a solar/tidal/wind farm for "normal" operation, then ramp up the combined cycle as the island population expands just prior to work up for a launch?

If that is even needed. If you use the usual conservative planning for wind power and solar power, you should have most of the year MUCH more electricity than you can actually consume in a sane way (see Germany there: During one hour of storm Bodil, we produced 26 GW electricity by wind power alone, 40% of the German power generation instead of the usual 10%). Being able to produce excess hydrogen during that time would at least allow using the excess electricity for something useful.

combined cycle would then only be needed to negotiate the extreme situations, like having a high demand of power, when wind and solar are not delivering enough.

This is also only a simple case because the scenario has many favorable conditions. Its a island on a very good location in the world, it has a need for a hydrogen logistic by default, also using high-tech components is not a problem there. A few islands away it would be another case. Okinawa would be likely large enough to sustain a nuclear reactor with the needed alternative power sources to make it a safe system.

 

[Pipcard]

Thanks for the responses. I'm still wondering how much power (in MW) is needed to run a spaceport + a village.

Loru had 4 S6G reactors (4 x 150 = 600 MW) in his Jarvis Space Center, but Urwumpe said that 2x400 MW is "much larger than I likely need." And Carl Sagan Space Center doesn't seem to have any power plants.

I also can't have wind turbines, unless they are animated (and there's no way to have that, unless they are a vessel, and I don't want them as vessels that have to be loaded). So it'll be combined cycle gas turbine + solar power.

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, you can use first-order estimates to create a power budget for your spaceport.

Just make a table of all things that will need electricity.

Take for example mission control. Just an office building. But with also a few bigger computers (today that means 4-6 19" racks), beamers, etc. Still, it should run well with about 50 kW electricity.

What really will consume electricity is the heavy industry at the spaceport: For example creating hydrogen and oxygen for the rockets, desalting water etc.

Or the air conditioning and air filtering for the clean rooms.

if you have a R&D center there, you will have at least one number cruncher. The Titan supercomputer at Oak Ridge (#2 in the Nov 2013 TOP 500 list) consumes 8 MW power alone.

Launch pad lighting consumes lots of electricity, as you can imagine, but not more than the street lights of a small town, about 10 kW.

Tracking and Radar stations consume lots of electricity, but still not hundreds of MW.

Take a look at the huge TIRA radar at Wachtberg, Germany, with 49 meters radome diameter the largest in the world:

Can track objects at 24°/s, despite its huge size and is used for monitoring space debris (but it can also make ISAR images of satellites)

1 MW peak radar power, altogether it uses about 10 MW power as installation.

 

[Pipcard]

Should my seaport (which is based on the port near Tanegashima Space Center if you look on Google Earth) have breakwaters? They kind of look awkward.

And if you tell me to put my seaport in the gap east of the village, let me just tell you that that gap is about 200/300 meters wide. And I don't know if container/tanker ships can fit in there, or if they can move in reverse/back up.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Breakwaters are a good idea, most every seaport I've been has at least a jetty. Sometimes it's just some boulders and riprap, sometimes it's done up pretty nice with an access road.

A container ship can maneuver pretty well, and should have side thrusters. I've not seen any that need tug boats to help them park in many (many) years. A "normal" sized tanker should do the same, but the big boys (those that dwarf aircraft carriers) park well outside of a harbor and offload by pipeline.

 

[Pipcard]

Oh yeah, I just realized that they have to move backwards, otherwise, how would they get out of a dock?

 

[Urwumpe]

Oh yeah, I just realized that they have to move backwards, otherwise, how would they get out of a dock?

You can also make the port bigger or give it a different geometry.

Generally, a ship can turn on the spot with a bow thruster and careful maneuvering, leaving the port in reverse is dangerous.

If you want to let two ships pass each other in the entrance to the port, you should remember that ships need a lot of space between each other, because otherwise, Mr. Bernoulli can explain you what happens next (And happens actually every other month in the German Kiel canal)

There is a US Navy handbook on how to design sea ports, not sure if this also helps you there.

See here: http://www.hnsa.org/doc/index.htm

In the section of "relatively modern manuals", you can find manual manuals starting with "Design:", especially the Piers & Wharfes is interesting for this.

And this here:
http://www.vulcanhammer.net/marine/dm26_1.pdf

Is the "Navy Design Manual 26.1: Harbours".

 

[Loru]

Oh yeah, I just realized that they have to move backwards, otherwise, how would they get out of a dock?

Most operations in dock itself are performed with tugboats in assist.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Hey, for an added bit of eye candy, put a small lighthouse on the end of the jetty. If you made it static you could just put a beacon on the top of it using the base text file. If you made it as a vessel (SC3 or otherwise) you could have a light fixture that rotates.

 

[Pipcard]

Is this okay?

 

[Urwumpe]

Is this okay?

No, remember the Costa Concordia to understand why this is a pretty risky path for the ship. Also, you could often have to travel slowly with the wind and waves coming from the side. Not a good choice, even in 2014.

I would recommend to still use only a single channel, but have some space for turning the ship around. The port for the spaceport of Kourou is far inland on a larger river, with lots of room to allow maneuvering the large transport ship: See here

You need about that much room for your port as well, about half of the river is too shallow for the ship, if there would be walls, the room can be reduced of course.

---------- Post added at 04:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:30 PM ----------

Here is also a photo that shows how the MN Toucan is unloaded in Kourou:

The MN Toucan is a typical RoRo-Freighter, a pretty good ship class to transport rocket stages and payloads.

 

[Pipcard]

Some (sort of relevant) information that I found: Japan was planning to construct a runway on Christmas Island (1 deg north of the equator) as a landing facility for its now-cancelled HOPE-X spaceplane.

Another source said that "it may be used later for launching shuttles and rockets".

 

[Pipcard]

I also moved Negishima to 3.9°N, 139°E.

 

[Urwumpe]

Only 4331 meters ocean to fill up there in the West Caroline Basin... Ok I admit it, it is hard to find a good place that is no island yet and also far away from any neighbors. There are some shallow reefs that only go up to 55m depth, that would be large enough for the spaceport, but then they would also be close to inhabited islands.

 

[Pipcard]

Ok I admit it, it is hard to find a good place that is no island yet and also far away from any neighbors. There are some shallow reefs that only go up to 55m depth, that would be large enough for the spaceport, but then they would also be close to inhabited islands.

Considering that for a small island, the elevation could go from 0 to -4000 m within 20 km of horizontal distance...

 

[Urwumpe]

Considering that for a small island, the elevation could go from 0 to -4000 m within 20 km of horizontal distance...

Yeah, but still its not steeper than a 4000m mountain - and as likely to be artifically created.