Elon's SpaceX is pulling its sunk Starship Super Heavy booster from the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Boca Chica Beach, Texas
A group of filmmakers has confirmed SpaceX is running a secret Starship booster recovery operation in the Gulf of Mexico off Boca Chica Beach . For the past week, the HOS Ridgewind , a 260-foot-long offshore service vessel, has been lingering around the apparent touchdown spot of the Super Heavy booster that carried a Starship to space June 6.
It was the first Super Heavy to survive the journey in one piece and returned to splash down into the Gulf. SpaceX said at the time it wouldn’t attempt to recover the booster. RELATED: Is someone pulling a SpaceX Starship booster from the sea? Confirmation of the recovery project came from a group of young, independent filmmakers who caught wind of the operation and chartered a boat for the 15-mile trip to the Ridgewind to see for themselves what was going on. Their story offers another glimpse into SpaceX’s business in Texas as well as its secretive nature. “After weighing the benefits of cost odds of not finding anything, I decided to take a shot in the dark,” said Joey Leal, 26, a Washington-area businessman involved with Interstellar Gateway, a small film company that focuses on rocket launches. “The reward for the community outweighed any expense to my pocket.” The idea for the mission came early last week when an “X” user with the handle “TheSpaceEngineer” began posting that the Ridgewind appeared to be working at the splashdown site. Vessel tracking services’ plots of the ship’s movements confirmed it was there. Other clues that Elon Musk’s commercial space company was hunting for its lost booster included past business dealings between SpaceX and Hornbeck Offshore, the Covington, La., company that owns the Ridgewind. Also, some former Hornbeck employees now work on SpaceX’s fleet of vessels involved with its operations in Florida and California. Began as a joke The location of the Ridgewind service vessel at the booster site led Leal’s colleagues at Interstellar Gateway to joke about how it would “be funny if we went out to go see what they’re actually doing,” he said. So they did. Leal chartered a boat from Port Isabel to ferry a photographer the 15 miles to the Ridgewind on Wednesday. RELATED: Elon Musk’s SpaceX and regulators are at odds over Starship’s next launch He said he couldn’t resist the chance to solve the mystery. After a two-and-a-half-hour cruise they were about a half mile from the Ridgewind when a drone buzzed toward them. It hovered for a moment before a voice announced through a loudspeaker: “There is a one mile exclusion zone in this area, please depart one mile away from vessel.” SpaceX frequently uses such drones to chase away trespassers and keep people outside safety boundaries it sets up at its Starbase launch site in South Texas. “This was the first major sign that something was up,” Leal said. “Why would a survey ship need a security drone?” So the charter moved away but continued capturing images of the ship at work. They could see the Ridgewind’s crane was extended over the starboard side along with a ladder, apparent dive lines and cables for remotely operated submersibles. On the ship’s aft deck, a blue tarp covered what Leal said he thinks is “mangled” Starship debris. “There might be a Raptor bell on its side near the middle as well,” he said. Two large white bags near the crane also appeared to hold debris. Most telling, at least one of the Ridgewind’s crewmembers wore a SpaceX “Occupy Mars” T-Shirt — which Leal called one of his “favorite details.” SpaceX responds The Interstellar Gateway crew reached out to SpaceX, which Leal said quickly confirmed it had contracted with Hornbeck to recover the giant booster. It asked the filmmakers to refrain from announcing the find until after the Ridgewind completed its work and began steaming to port. That happened Sunday. “Our goal is never to impede on SpaceX property, or operations,” Leal said. “The growth of the interest from the community is important, but safety will always come first.” Neither SpaceX nor Hornbeck Offshore responded to inquiries from the San Antonio Express-News. Petty Officer Edward Wargo, a Coast Guard spokesman, said the service had no knowledge of such a recovery operation and added that it likely wouldn’t need to be notified if the work wasn’t affecting vessel traffic. He checked with the duty officer at the South Padre Island Coast Guard Station, who said that station also was unaware of the operation. Nor was the Coast Guard aware of any such exclusion zones that the ship’s drone claimed was in place. RELATED: FAA fines Elon Musk’s SpaceX $633,000 for violations during two launches from Florida The Interstellar Gateway team said they didn’t see any Coast Guard vessels on the journey to and from the salvage site. “If we have a security zone somewhere, we will have an asset out there,” Wargo said Friday. “We will have a boat actively patrolling.” It’s unclear under which authority the vessel was creating it’s exclusion zone as the Coast Guard is the only entity that can create such safety or security zones to keep people away from certain areas during sensitive or dangerous operations. “The captain can say there’s an exclusion zone — I don’t know what an exclusion zone is in his terms, but doesn’t just implement a security zone and leave — that’s not how it works,” Wargo said. The craft was displaying a diving flag, according to Leal, which requires a safety zone of at least 300 feet. The evidence Leal said he thinks Interstellar stumbled onto SpaceX’s first day of recovery operations. Satellite imagery of the Ridgewind the day before the team got there showed it with clear decks and stowed gear. That night, they found the crane in operation. Leal speculated that maybe “they pulled objects up only under the cover of night.” The pictures they captured the next day showed the crane in operation, lines running into the sea and tarps covering areas of the deck. When the filmmakers saw the “huge blue tarp on the deck looking to be hiding large pieces of debris,” Leal said they went into research mode, spending “a solid day breaking down every inch of pixels” to try to determine what they saw. They compared the photos to the booster specifications and ship data, including capabilities of remote submersibles, according to Leal, “even figuring out every wire, or divers line going into the water.” RELATED: SpaceX fined nearly $150,000 by the Environmental Protection Agency for water violations, fuel spill Vessel tracking services show Ridgewind left the recovery site early Sunday. It appeared to be headed to Altamira, Mexico, before returning to the Port of Brownsville. The craft sails under a Mexican flag. Some SpaceX watchers are speculating it could be after the booster’s engines as part of its research to glean additional knowledge or simply to ensure they don’t fall into the hands of rival companies or other countries. The idea of recovering old rockets from the sea isn’t new. NASA recovered nearly half of the space shuttle Challenger after the Jan. 27, 1986, explosion that killed its seven astronauts. In 2013, Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO and founder of commercial space company Blue Origin, led an expedition that recovered parts of Saturn V rocket engines that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Some of the artifacts are displayed at Seattle’s Museum of Flight and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. As for Leal and his crew, they’re returning their focus to Starship’s fifth test flight, a mission that could come as soon as the end of November, if FAA approvals are received. But many think it could roll into 2025 given the company’s recent alleged environmental and license violations. Leal wants to “make this flight more immersive and cinematic than ever before, including our first dedicated live stream of Flight 5,” he said. “Our main purpose is to push the boundaries, not make noise. We’re here to bring a different perspective of space flight.
Super Heavy Interstellar Gateway Hornbeck Offshore Ridgewind Coast Guard NASA Spacex $633 000 Blue Origin Coast Guard FAA Florida The Interstellar Gateway Occupy Mars San Antonio Express-News Environmental Protection Agency Amazon Joey Leal Elon Musk Edward Wargo Jeff Bezos Hornbeck Interstellar Gulf Of Mexico Boca Chica Beach Washington South Texas Covington La. The Interstellar Gateway Interstellar Gateway Florida Coast Guard Station California Port Isabel South Padre Island Port Of Brownsville Mexico Altamira Mexican Museum Of Flight National Air And Space Museum Seattle Starship HOS Ridgewind Starbase Thespaceengineer Raptor Challenger Apollo Saturn V T-Shirt Flight 5
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