If you think putting it a little out to sea would kill NIMBY objections .... still, we can but dream.

I'm not entirely sure how serious SpaceX are about their E2E idea anyway, I took it as more of a "hey, isn't this neat? totally physically possible and practical too." I imagine it would take a long time to scale up to that point though, probably decades(?) after the Moon/Mars.

Boats already stop rockets from taking off somewhat regularly. I think a lot of people would be pissed off if they couldn't sail off the coasts of many major cities on a daily (or even more frequent?) basis.

> Thats why they show the spaceport out at sea,

I suspect putting the spaceport at sea is mainly a security issue. Failing to reach the landing pad is certainly less catastrophic on water than on the ground.