SpaceX's Texas Rocket Is Going to Cause a Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks

https://blog.esghound.com/p/spacexs-texas-rocket-is-going-to

by Zigurd • 3 years ago

206 157 3 years ago

blog.esghound.com

herodotus• 3 years ago

Reading this makes me so sad. We (humanity) just seem to be unable to figure out how to live a sustainable life that coexists with nature. A huge failure of the imagination. A massive thanks to Eric of ESG Hound for doing this work.

wahnfrieden• 3 years ago

You would think it has more to do with power than general inhumanity. These decisions are made by few for many and for profit. I personally don't let some few billionaires and the state stand in for my optimism for the humanity of the general population without those encumbrances

kevviiinn5• 3 years ago

This is simply the endgame of capitalism. If we keep trying to increase profit margins, something else has to give

Aeolun3• 3 years ago

I guess we just care a little bit less about this little slice of our planet when we’re at the brink of launching the largest rocket ever into space.

friend_and_foe4• 3 years ago

If it's any consolation, judging by the author's past predictions, and sourced and cited criticism in this thread, you don't have to be sad because it's mostly bullshit.

clydethefrog• 3 years ago

I wish your comment was true.

freejazz10• 3 years ago

We (humanity) just seem to be unable to figure out how to live a sustainable life that coexists with nature.

Sorry, but this is incredibly ignorant of human history. Yes, contemporary cultures cannot live sustainably, but that is not true for humans in general.

alchemist1e9• 3 years ago

If even part of this analysis is accurate then the launch could be a public relations catastrophe for SpaceX. Especially as it sounds like there are options available to mitigate the issues but aren’t being taken due to costs and time.

tgv3• 3 years ago

The noise of the fanboys and bots will drown out the critics.

To wit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590738

whamlastxmas• 3 years ago

Both pro and anti Elon HN posters are convinced the entire website is an echo chamber of whatever opinion they don’t have

dang2• 3 years ago

Please don't post swipes, sneers, or flamebait to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

brookst9• 3 years ago

Agree that this could be a fiasco if ESG Hound's claims turn out to be true.

But I would speculate that the design "failures" of too small buffer and lack of noise mitigation are more likely about SpaceX hoping to set precedent for their vision of frequent space access from everywhere.

I'll admit my enthusiasm for that vision is somewhat reduced after reading this article.

vaidhy• 3 years ago

Is there no way to appeal this in the court systems? If it is such a flagrant violation of authority, then there should be a way to hold it back, right?

neom• 3 years ago

If the FWS pressed the FAA and SpaceX to update their models and they refused, imo the FWS should have had the power to compel them to update their models.

powera• 3 years ago

Call me jaded, but I am tired of these doomer takes. It seems like every place on earth is filled with "unique biodiversity" these days.

And Musk's unwillingness to do years of extra "safety precaution" studies, bi-lingual outreach, etc. seems like a (rational) unwillingness to play by the rules of people who overtly hate Musk and want him to fail.

And yes, if you take the worst possible possibility for everything, it does look potentially bad. But that's extremely unlikely. And, if it does happen, SpaceX will have to fix it before they launch a second rocket.

vinyl7• 3 years ago

Yea these kinds of things pop up whenever people want to boot someone out. Look at the recent news about Clarence Thomas. Its just cancel culture in a more subversive manner that cant be labeled.

flangola73• 3 years ago

More like consequence culture.

irrational• 3 years ago

I expected more from our agencies, from the press

What do you call a take that reads as incredibly naive, but you suspect the author is old enough not to really be that naive? Hyperbole? Affected surprise?

dymk• 3 years ago

Pearl clutching, concern trolling

charles_f2• 3 years ago

I don't think it's naive. There's a difference between expecting something and thinking it will happen. You can expect from a supervising agency to function appropriately. Being surprised that it doesn't happen, especially when it demonstrated its inefficiency in the past is something else, but you can still expect it to be better

fabian2k3• 3 years ago

One thing that surprised me reading the article is that Boca Chica doesn't have a water deluge system. I somehow expected that this would be standard once development moves beyond the early prototypes.

If the noise levels are off by 20 decibels compared to the expected limits used for the application, that seems like a very valid complaint. I cannot judge how reliable the cited measurement is though.

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

https://youtu.be/FsqBYJd56Ko

Deluge system component delivery and install video, Feb 2023.

fabian2k3• 3 years ago

Hmm, so it seems there is a water deluge system in contrast to the claims in the article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsbnYp0FYKU

But to me that look dramatically undersized if you look at the Kennedy Space Center one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNkmwrTjKuo). And Starship is a very large rocket.

Not sure what to make of this yet.

sottol• 3 years ago

Something about this also makes me feel a bit, hmm, I guess "concerned". I know SpaceX is very efficient and that they hustle to a degree, but their launch site looks very "min-viable" (at best). I hope this does not and will not extend to other parts of their designs.

allenrb2• 3 years ago

They’re learning how to build this type of launch site at the same time they’re learning how to build this type of rocket.

These guys are not clowns. Their Falcon 9 is arguably the most reliable rocket ever built. On top of successfully performing its launch duties, it has chalked up more than one hundred successful booster landings in a row.

Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that what you see today is going to be the unalterable future of space launch.

nordsieck• 3 years ago

I know SpaceX is very efficient and that they hustle to a degree, but their launch site looks very "min-viable" (at best).

If you're getting that impression by comparing it with SLS/Shuttle, the thing to keep in mind is that SpaceX gets a huge benefit by not using solids. SLS/Shuttle had to move a rocket where some of the parts were fully fueled, which means much greater weight.

Additionally, solids can't really be "turned off", which means there are much greater safety requirements. This is apparent, not just in launch sites, but also with launch escape systems - Starliner needs a much more performant launch abort system than Crew Dragon for example.

Of course, that doesn't affect some things like the water deluge system.

cjbgkagh• 3 years ago

20dB is 100x or two orders of magnitude. It's pretty common for devs to get things off by one order of magnitude but two is much less common, and I hope these engineers have been more careful. Plus physics tends to prevent things from being 100x of by accident, at least it would be very rare and occur on a Pareto distribution similar to the frequency vs intensity relationship of earthquakes.

moralestapia2• 3 years ago

There is one deluge system in place but it is honestly a joke,

https://www.youtube.com/live/2kG4AbAcia0?feature=share&t=240...

The wildlife reaction there should raise some eyebrows already, the EPA should definitely be concerned about that. It was also a 5 second long test, compared to a full launch, I can see a chance of the whole base blowing up, lol.

renewiltord4• 3 years ago

In terms of measurable outcome, what does "catastrophic" mean? At some point, language about everything has transformed into having zero dynamic range. Everything is either a disaster or nothing.

And considering high rises by the sea side, scooters on sidewalks, and bike lanes are all "catastrophic". It would be useful to get a scale here that is continuous non-binary-value.

For instance, if it's as bad as the article's claim that the FAA's failed to hold a bilingual hearing, I'm not really that concerned. Lack of bilingual hearings don't rise to the level of disaster, by my reckoning.

brookst9• 3 years ago

It all depends on your frame of reference. For someine deeply concerned with endangered habitats, a few hundred or thousand dead animals is an unbearable catastrophe. For someone focused on progress at all costs, it's not even a slight concern.

It's just how the world works, that the people whose concerns are most impacted seek to advocate for their positions.

renewiltord4• 3 years ago

Well, they're the ones doing the advocacy so I won't armchair quarterback but my reaction to the thing when language like that is used without corresponding numbers is that it's a cry-wolf fearmongering scenario.

Perhaps the general public is different. I think not, but we shall see.

freejazz10• 3 years ago

For someone focused on progress at all costs, it's not even a slight concern.

Whose progress?

gradys• 3 years ago

It doesn’t seem like this article considers any benefits from allowing this launch or specifies a threshold of damage under which the author would be okay with allowing the launch.

In general, doing things like developing the capacity to launch very large payloads to space will come with costs. We wouldn’t be able to do any such things if we weren’t willing to pay those costs to get the benefits.

tgv3• 3 years ago

What benefits come from doing it there instead of picking a more suitable place? What benefits come from this launch at all? It's just vainglory.

prepend5• 3 years ago

The benefit of improved space travel and all that comes with that.

This seems like a decent location in that it’s not very populated and has appropriate conditions for rocket launches. It wasn’t picked randomly so other locations were considered.

I think these complaints would apply to other locations as well.

Building rockets and doing awesome things isn’t vainglory any more than any expiration and technical improvements. Rockets are needed for space exploration. Space exploration is valuable on so many dimensions - resources, sustainability, research.

AlexandrB3• 3 years ago

I particular, SpaceX already has facilities at Cape Caneveral - an area well-acquainted with these kinds of launches. It's weird that Musk insists on Boca Chica.

ekkeke• 3 years ago

Coming from the UK, I'd feel more inclined to listen to these ecological/environmental concerns if they weren't abused in such terrible ways. In general safety limits are calculated with significant error margins, so I'd take this kind of scary blog post about destroyed houses with a pinch of salt.

The other aspect to consider is that, as humans, we need space to work and live. This inevitably will come at the expense of the natural environment. Some species will suffer, some will suffer more than others. The only way around that is to tell people to stop having children, to stop living, and to stop advancing society. We have to balance all of these when we consider land utilisation.

I am far from convinced that this post takes a reasonable view of all these points. It is quite common for environmental extremists to make highly irrational decisions (germany shutting down nuclear plants in favour of coal?). Only one side of the argument seems to be considered in this post.

An old boss taught me that I should never oppose an action without having an alternative viable course to propose. I think those of us who care for the environment (I care, a lot) would advance the cause by following this advice.

klyrs• 3 years ago

In general safety limits are calculated with significant error margins, so I'd take this kind of scary blog post about destroyed houses with a pinch of salt.

The discrepancy between the calculated safety limits and measured sound levels inverts this "general" practice. And the measured sound levels were from a half-power test firing.

Enginerrrd• 3 years ago

An old boss taught me that I should never oppose an action without having an alternative viable course to propose. I think those of us who care for the environment (I care, a lot) would advance the cause by following this advice.

I'm a civil/environmental engineer. Ironically I'm pro-progress here but the fact that they got away with construction and launch here without an EIS is absolutely laughably corrupt as far as I'm concerned. I've had to do the full EIS for projects that were far, far, far less impactful in scope, by many orders of magnitude. The FAA is simply not acting in the public interest here. This is regulatory capture in action.

The alternative here is simple and IMO sensible. This should have gone deeper into the NEPA flowchart and had a full EIS, and then as a condition of approval they should have required permitting and construction of all mitigation measures prior to launches. (Water deluge / flame trenches, etc.)

bryanlarsen• 3 years ago

They did do an EIS. Then they modified it from a 27 engine Falcon Heavy to a 33 engine Starship. The FAA ruled, with input from many other government agencies, that this only partially invalidated the original EIS.

mlindner5• 3 years ago

There’s no regulatory capture here. SpaceX hasn’t been around long enough to do so in the first place.

Also regulatory capture is defined as putting in place regulations that you can handle but create undue burdens on competitors to prevent the entrance of new entrants.

AlexandrB3• 3 years ago

An old boss taught me that I should never oppose an action without having an alternative viable course to propose.

It's pretty simple: launch from Cape Caneveral, Florida.

mlindner5• 3 years ago

Note: Even if there are damaged houses, part of the FAA launch license is SpaceX making sure to take out liability insurance to handle any damage claims. $500M for any damage claims. [1]

[1] https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...

api4• 3 years ago

Wait... someone is doing something in America? We can't let this stand! I mean people might get ideas like building housing or transit without the required 20 years of paperwork!

brookst9• 3 years ago

Probably good that you edited out your praise for how Russia and China would punish anyone who raised these kinds of concerns.

api4• 3 years ago

I don't want America to become like Russia or China, but I fear that it will if we keep abusing our democratic system to create a "vetocracy" where nothing can ever be done. Eventually people will rebel and elect totalitarians to force things through. Either that or totalitarian nations will leave us in the dust while we do paperwork.

Our major cities are full of tent city slums because NIMBYs won't allow housing to be built. We have hundreds of gigawatts of renewable energy in the 'planning' stage stuck behind mountains of red tape. California has spent billions on high speed rail and they've barely started to lay track and only after scaling the project back to the point that it'll be near useless (it doesn't even connect the major cities!).

jws• 3 years ago

People don't have much feel for sound decibels. This is going to be loud, but for context, both "The Who" and "Deep Purple" have played concerts that were louder than the sample and thunder (which animals are exposed to even in wildlife refuges) is literaly 100 times more sound energy.

Animals survive thunder.

Aeolun3• 3 years ago

Thunder only sounds for a few moments though. I doubt the engines will cut out after a few moments.

Youden• 3 years ago

Thunder is around 120dB but that only lasts for a short amount of time. A rocket launch will produce continuous high-intensity noise, which is far more damaging.

Animals also have ways to prepare for a storm, such as retreating to a nest or other safe space as the storm comes. A rocket launch usually occurs during good weather and has no clear advanced warning, so there's no chance for mitigation.

So I don't think the comparison to thunder is apt.

FL33TW00D• 3 years ago

No wonder large scale projects in the west have atrophied with takes like this getting traction.

flangola73• 3 years ago

What do you mean?

kevviiinn5• 3 years ago

The OP is simply telling us that they're unaware of the details and they are showing their bias against reasonable regulation alongside a disdain for any environmental impact of any project

Vecr• 3 years ago

I think they mean turning humanity into some sort of collective suicide cult over birds is really stupid. Humanity first.

rsynnott• 3 years ago

in the west

For reference, the flame trench shown in the article is in Kazakhstan; it was used for the first manned space launch over 60 years ago. "Be a bit careful with rockets" is not an exclusively western thing, nor is it new.

friend_and_foe4• 3 years ago

Maybe the approach is also a bit outdated? Spacex is not just building a rocket, theyre building a fully reusable, low cost, high volume space launch system. That might involve innovating and cutting fat off the design of the entire set of facilities, not just the rocket. If we were just doing things the way they've always been done on faith that the people that did it did it right the first time we wouldn't have falcon 9, much less starship.

icegreentea2• 3 years ago

I get what you're saying - and actually I do agree to an extent.

But I don't think the 'problem' is these takes themselves. The problem is that generally our tolerance for negative outcomes has dwindled.

Instead of being upfront and saying "we expect these launches to kill 500-1000 extra birds over the next 3 years, and we think that's an acceptable price", we play silly games with fudging models and numbers and language to say "we expect the impact on wildlife to be negligible".

We've lost the ability to properly lead and discuss and decide on trade-offs, and instead fall back on an illusion that we can almost make decisions that are 99% upside, 1% downside. We then torture our processes to sustain this illusion.

allenrb2• 3 years ago

Everything will not be perfect the first time. Waiting for perfection guarantees that no progress is ever made. They’re going to launch, it’s going to do whatever it does (hopefully complete all test objectives!) and then we’ll have real data.

Armed with real data, SpaceX and the various agencies involved will determine the next steps. I’ll be surprised if some improvements are not needed/required. But arguing it to death without doing anything? That’s just civilization suicide.

anonymousab• 3 years ago

But nobody said not to make progress. Like, they could say least apply the same mitigations as have been used at most other launch sites. It costs more money and takes a bit more time, which is annoying and why SpaceX doesn't want to bother.

It's not a dichotomous choice of "now and success or later and failure" and it never has been.

freejazz10• 3 years ago

Everything will not be perfect the first time.

I don't see anyone calling for perfection as the standard

thegrim33• 3 years ago

According to the author, the FAA doesn't know what they're doing, SpaceX doesn't know what they're doing, the National Environmental Policy Act which exists solely to protect the environment in these scenarios apparently didn't work, but this uninvolved author somehow knows better than everyone that's actually involved. Their entire argument is apparently based around other articles that this person has written in the past, and I'm not interested in following the rabbit hole of conspiracies to see where it ends.

sho_hn• 3 years ago

I don't think you need to have a conspiracy brain to wonder if some of this may be plausible.

Musk's companies are famous for a self-described "move fast and break things" strategy, and local authorities are often incentivized to let them for what their presence does for local economy, e.g. job creation, infra buildout, further growth opportunities, etc.

There are precedents for this. I encourage you to read a little into the brouhaha and corruption revolving around Tesla's Gigafactory in Brandenburg, nearby Berlin. This was and is mired in environmental issues, from sapping the region of water to pollution concerns, yet Tesla at times kept building the thing in violation of having to wait for approvals, then environmental authorities were pressured and leaned on by local state gov to fast-track and grandfather approvals.

The above rises above the level of cospiracy theories - there are protocols, there are government employees who went to the press to complain, there is solid investigative journalism. And yet there is a car factory.

You can be on the other side of the arguments on the issues themselves perhaps (i.e. maybe your engineering/science opinion differs), or you can put humanity and economy over nature (this would be a political opinion), but rules being bent and better knowledge being ignored in favor of letting companies forge ahead at costs is a thing.

hefferbub2• 3 years ago

Nearly all of the breathless doom mongering has been from one or two small environmental groups who opposed the plant from the start and who keep inventing objections to attempt to support their foregone conclusion. They use every possible opportunity to slow down progress irrespective of the merits of their complaints, and judges have rejected most of them.

For example, water use. Tesla has built a complete onsite water reclamation plant that will allow it to build twice as many cars using the same water allocation they are already granted.

Also “they are killing the forests!”. What is not said is that this so-called forest is actual one of many vast tree farms located throughout Germany which are planted with quick-growing monocultures of identical trees and harvested regularly. Tesla is planting an identical size plot of new trees elsewhere, and that effort was 62% complete as of May 2021

woleium• 3 years ago

Part of this is how things work in Germany though. I was asking a German friend what would happen if you drove with a suspended license in Germany, he said "But why would you drive with a suspended license?”. I said ”maybe there's an emergency, maybe you have to get to the hospital”. He replied "but you have a suspended license so you can't drive"... This went on for some time. He really couldn't wrap his head around the fact that someone with a suspended license may in fact still drive a car. I suspect that there are so few cases where folks break rules like Tesla did that the administration just doesn't really know what to do about it.

throwawaylinux• 3 years ago

That's possible, but you'd have to see some actual evidence rather than the rantings of an unhinged conspiracy theorist like the author.

AlexandrB3• 3 years ago

To be fair, it's not crazy to assume that the FAA doesn't know what they're doing after the 737MAX fuckups. As a regulatory body, they may be largely captured by industry at this point.

robertlagrant• 3 years ago

People massively overstate the importance, expertise, and involvement of regulatory bodies. They can enforce some things, but not much, and often only after the fact.

dotancohen2• 3 years ago

As a regulatory body, they may be largely captured by industry at this point.

You're not wrong. But if Boeing were to exert its influence on the FAA, it would exert pressure to delay or prevent the flight, not to permit the flight. The fact that the FAA permit the flight flies in the face of the idea of regulatory capture.

And to be clear, Boeing and Lockheed are in positions to influence the FAA, but not SpaceX. SpaceX has not been around long enough for the revolving door to make a full swing.

caconym_2• 3 years ago

This person has a strange vendetta against SpaceX and has in the past made some extremely doomy predictions that didn't pan out, e.g. that the FAA's environmental review of the BC site was going to end badly for SpaceX. I think they have a very strong confirmation bias in this direction that colors everything they write, and so they are probably not worth paying attention to regardless of what you think about SpaceX.

brookst9• 3 years ago

Perhaps, but the fact that this article was so effectively suppressed on HN makes me wonder how what other dissenting opinions and claims of malfeasance the Musk fan boys have suppressed.

I didn't know there even were significant concerns (even if possibly wrong) until I happened to see this article before it was flagged for removal. What else is being whitewashed?

consumer451• 3 years ago

According to the author, the FAA doesn't know what they're doing, SpaceX doesn't know what they're doing, the National Environmental Policy Act which exists solely to protect the environment in these scenarios apparently didn't work, but this uninvolved author somehow knows better than everyone that's actually involved.

I read TFA and that's not what I got from it at all. I read that Musk optimized for speed and cost, so he skipped normal things like a flame trench and water suppression. (although I recall the latter being hastily installed prior to the last test)

As a huge SpaceX fan and tank watcher, I can say that those are all things that I and many others have been concerned about as well.

But don't worry, this piece is flagged now so people won't have to worry about any of these silly things.

kuschkufan• 3 years ago

Kann nicht sein was nicht sein darf.

frouge• 3 years ago

In case you missed it, there is a global climate emergency on planet Earth. Governments and agencies are letting it happen. So you can argue that they are doing their jobs and solving the problem as it's their job, but it's also possible that they're not doing it. And do you think Elon Musk will throw away millions in investments because of birds?

almost_usual2• 3 years ago

How does launching rockets into space prevent climate change?

Zigurd• 3 years ago

The part about the FAA being incompetent strikes me as the weakest analysis. They are being permissive. Maybe even maliciously permissive. The FAA has taken a lot of heat from Elon's fan base. Maybe they are not inclined to stop an illustrative example.

readthenotes1• 3 years ago

FAA: Boeing knows what they're doing

SpaceX: it's just some birds

NEPA: no quick quip. Maybe they were told to follow along

adastra224• 3 years ago

According to reality, they were right.

chrisco2555• 3 years ago

What endangered species were killed during the launch today? The rocket blew up in atmosphere. The launch pad obv needs a redesign, but it wasn't an ecological catastrophe, it was a little bit of shredded concrete.

dravine• 3 years ago

Apparently in your fictional universe, the US Government is competent and and effective.

How cute.

senko• 3 years ago

Seems like the author would be able to find concern for ecological disaster if SpaceX launched the rocket from the middle of a desert.

brookst9• 3 years ago

Is that supposed to be a rebuttal of the claims in the article?

newZWhoDis3• 3 years ago

Well the article has no valid claims whatsoever, so it doesn’t exactly need rebutting.

elif• 3 years ago

i'm not an explosion expert, but i would imagine the sound from the previous test articles going boom boom pop would exceed the nominal performance of these engines.

b800h• 3 years ago

I've heard of cases of stuff like this being put out by competitors in similar scenarios in other industries.

chasd00• 3 years ago

there's a lot of emotional language in this article and words like "could", "maybe", "probably" etc. Also, the author mentions making snide remarks about Musk and obviously has other motivations. The concerns on noise may be valid but i'll wait for more actual facts before passing judgement.

api4• 3 years ago

The greatest advancement in space flight since Apollo is more important than Musk's culture war BS.

Think of it this way: if Musk had drank the "woke" brand kool-aid instead of the right-wing kool-aid the far right would be bashing his rocket program instead. They'd probably find some way to link rockets and space flight to trans people or something. The far-right and far-left cults only care about your loyalty to the cause. If you are on their team everything you do is good, and if you are not on their team everything you do is bad.

The first generation to grow up on Mars will learn in school about this eccentric billionaire weirdo who helped kick the space program forward by founding a company, and that's about it. All the rest of this stuff will be forgotten.

moralestapia2• 3 years ago

Wait, why is this submission flagged?

almost_usual2• 3 years ago

Really surprised this is flagged.

sidibe• 3 years ago

Negative SpaceX and Tesla stories get a lot of comments and a lot of flags. You hardly ever catch them on the front page despite there being a couple every week with 100+ comments (well, at least for Tesla). A lot of people around here don't take too kindly to negative Elon-related news.

nynx• 3 years ago

The author confuses sound intensity levels and A-weighted sound pressure. These are, I believe, different physical quantities. Their argument doesn't make sense without that confusion.

SkyMarshal2• 3 years ago

The lack of a flame trench to redirect exhaust for the largest rocket in human history seems like it could result in heat damage to the nearby launch facilities. Particularly the methane tanks the article mentions. I wonder what SpaceX’s calculations on that are.

friend_and_foe4• 3 years ago

Well, considering they probably don't want to blow their launch pad up, and they employ engineers, they've probably determined it's fine and found another way to protect the facilities. I'll reserve judgment on that for when it does blow up.

SkyMarshal2• 3 years ago

To clarify, it’s not really about the launch pad, it’s about the facilities surrounding it. A flame trench redirects some or much of the exhaust through a channel that safely avoids the surrounding facilities. Lack of one means the exhaust goes out in all directions. But yeah I can’t imagine they haven’t considered this and planned for it, so we’ll see.

rideontime• 3 years ago

Your judgment?

javajosh• 3 years ago

It's (mostly) a good argument, and it needs making. I'm glad he did this. But I would still allow the project. I do not like Musk, but I like even less the tendency for projects to get delayed or cancelled because of infinite environmental impact studies. Especially when, as in this case, the impact is limited in time and space. I'm glad NASA acquired vast tracts of land in S Florida 60 years ago when no-one lived there. Holding SpaceX to a standard that high seems to speak less of an interest in safety and more of an interest in ending SpaceX.

This is not an easy argument to make. Our biosphere is a precious gift from deep history, and we are fools to waste it. Elon Musk bought Twitter and became a cringe right troll, which makes it hard to defend him. But the damage to nature here is limited in time and space, and Musk's personality is irrelevant. When I weigh my own sentiments here, the annoyance at not letting things get built far, far outweighs these other concerns.

As an aside, part of the argument that isn't good: to hold SpaceX to the same standard as NASA in 1960's Florida. A government agency. Florida was basically an uninhabited jungle then compared to today. This argument is "no more rockets, ever" in sheep's clothing, because those conditions will never exist again.

alpaca1282• 3 years ago

Any kind of damage to nature is limited in time and space, provided the universe is finite. Impact on endangered species is more difficult to reverse, though. You seem to imply there's no alternative for SpaceX than building their own launch site there instead of using NASA's more isolated "vast tracts of land" or other better-suited locations.

newZWhoDis3• 3 years ago

There are no valid concerns or complaints with using BC as a launch site.

xiphias2• 3 years ago

SpaceX satellites were crucial in the war against Russia.

Even if they go over the noise limit, this rocket gives a clear military advantage to US, so I don't see any rational reason why SpaceX would / should stop.

throwoutway• 3 years ago

While others have commented negatively on this article, I did find this one point interesting and worth a conversation:

In addition to the siting and sizing of the pad, SpaceX does not have a flame trench, nor do they have a water deluge system used to suppress heat and sound energy from any launches, as the Army Corps of Engineering permitting required to add these civil engineering systems is itself a multi-year process.
No large rocket complex on the planet: not in Russia, nor China, and certainly not in the US, exists that doesn’t contain one or both of these energy suppression systems.

Edit: Looks like it does have a small deluge system installed, contrary to the article

newZWhoDis3• 3 years ago

it takes multiple years of permitting and approvals to build a sloped concrete wall and some water cannons

Sometimes I struggle to remain optimistic about America’s future

charles_f2• 3 years ago

I wonder about that, does anyone have insights of what the reason is behind that?

the_third_wave• 3 years ago

SpaceX seems to have caught the ire of the ESG czars [1] who have put out their hounds to go get 'm. Jolly good sports, sure, just like chasing the fox over the hedges like they did in days of yore but rather tiring in seeing how potentially valid concerns about potential environmental damage are being abused by these self-proclaimed masters of the universe to make their will be done no matter what the law of the land may say.

Is this thing going to be loud? You bet it is, just like the Space Shuttle before it, like Ariane 5, like the Saturn V and especially like the Soviet N1 which must have been the loudest of them all. Would I want them to launch it in my backyard? No, that'd be rather unpleasant now wouldn't it? Luckily they found some mud flats in Boca Chica where they can make a lot of noise without it being all too much of a bother. Sure, they'll scare the bejeezus out of the local duck population but so did all its predecessors which does not seem to have led to the Great Duck Exodus of 1969 from Cape Kennedy (now Canavaral) or Kourou. So I say "straighten up and fly right" to the folks of SpaceX, plug your ears to the local ducks and find yourself a more worthy cause to the ESG knight in mossy armour who seems to have been on a vendetta against SpaceX for the last few years.

To infinity and beyond!

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/musks-...

baq• 3 years ago

aged like fine wine.

lelandbatey• 3 years ago

Piggybacking here as a broad response to some of the other comments.

This parent article makes some un-sourced claims about what has happened in with the SpaceX facility permitting process, and makes un-sourced claims about the motivations of why those things happened. I've dug into the claims about "what" happened, and have found that they check out. I have not been able to find sources about the "why" claims though.

Here's a key paragraph with many "what" and "why" claims, by the parent article:

SpaceX convinced FAA to approve a site that would host launching the Largest Rocket in History under NEPA’s Environmental Assessment (EA) process, which is saved for projects that do not have a “significant impact” to the environment. This action was and is eyebrow-raising, as no major spaceport has ever been authorized under this process, always requiring a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). An EIS is the default multi-year approval process specified under NEPA. The FAA piggybacked on an existing 2015 authorization for SpaceX’s operation of 2-3 annual launches of the much smaller Falcon 9 rockets to forward this streamlined Starship “low impact” approval process through the system.

I have found that:

- There was one Environmental Impact Study (the longer, multi-year process) of the Texas SpaceX facility done in 2014 based on assumptions of use for only up to the Falcon Heavy rocket (17.532 MN of force). See here : https://www.faa.gov/space/environmental/nepa_docs/spacex_tex...

- In 2021, the FAA carried out an "Environmental Assessment", a.k.a. a "Programmatic Environmental Assessment". An "Environmental Assessment" is meant to be a "brief but thorough" examination, with the outcome being a decision to either 1. Conduct a full "Environmental Impact Study" (EIS) or 2. a "Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI)" which means no EIS will be carried out. Source for the Environmental Assessment which came to a "Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI)": https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_star...

Note also that the 2021 EA definitely does gesture broadly towards the 2014 EIS many times, without directly connecting the dots in a way that seems rigorous. I am sympathetic towards categorizing the EA as "piggybacking" on the 2014 EIS given what I've read in the 2021 EA.

Something not mentioned in the parent, which seems like a GROSS oversight in the 2021 EA is that it justifies the FONSI by stating

"[SpaceX has redesigned the Raptor engines.] This change would not constitute any discernable changes in environmental impacts. An increase from 61.7 meganewtons (MN) to 74 MN would result in a less than 1 decibel change and would constitute a negligible change to the noise contours."

But there's no source on where the 61.7 MN of force claim originally comes from, and how either of those new numbers (61.7 MN and 74 MN) relate at all to the original 2014 EIS maximum thrust of 17.532 Meganewtons. That seems like a LARGE jump, a tripling of the take off thrust, without any words spoken to how existing facilities or how environmental damages might change with the change in energy.

SpaceX's Texas Rocket Is Going to Cause a Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks

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