SpaceX update regarding Starship FAA flight approval

https://www.spacex.com/updates/#starships-fly

by redox99 • 2 years ago

76 238 2 years ago

pjkundert• 2 years ago

People incapable of doing (or even understanding) something, interfering with other people who can do it, with no consequences if they are found to be wrong (or biased) in their basis for objecting to the activity.

Fundamentally, this is loathing and envy encoded into law.

wolfram74• 2 years ago

Yeah, spaceX is an aerospace company, what business do they have saying the environmental scientists have no idea what they're doing? It's trivial for them to complain and get them crucified in the court of public opinion because spaceX is almost immune from the law since the US military relies on them so heavily.

JumpCrisscross7• 2 years ago

“Starship and Super Heavy vehicles for Flight 5 have been ready to launch since the first week of August. The flight test will include our most ambitious objective yet: attempt to return the Super Heavy booster to the launch site and catch it in mid-air.

…

We recently received a launch license date estimate of late November from the FAA, the government agency responsible for licensing Starship flight tests. This is a more than two-month delay to the previously communicated date of mid-September. This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis.”

tedivm• 2 years ago

superfluous environmental analysis.

Maybe they should have thought about that before building their launch site next to a wildlife refuge. Maybe they shouldn't have caused significant damage to that same reserve (requiring months of cleanup) when they ignored their own engineers and blew up their own launch pad. The fact that they repeatedly violated their permit isn't helping.

The reality is SpaceX can't be trusted when it comes to compliance with rules, laws, and permits. They've proven this repeatedly (even when their own engineers point out better ways). Of course that means oversight agencies have to provide more oversight.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-launch-site-boca-chica-t...

BobbyJo• 2 years ago

Its almost funny how important environmentalism is to Musk when Tesla is the context, and how unimportant it is when SpaceX is the context. It's wild how his image has gone from forward thinking genius businessman to bipolar self-serving workaholic in less than four years.

bryanlarsen7• 2 years ago

Every US launch site is next to a de facto or a de jure wildlife refuge.

requiring months of cleanup

no it didn't.

JumpCrisscross7• 2 years ago

SpaceX can't be trusted when it comes to compliance with rules, laws, and permits

I suppose I’m confused why this is the FAA’s remit.

foobarqux18• 2 years ago

As I noted in previous threads this is brazen lying: they are not dumping tap water into the ground they are dumping (boiling hot) water that has been processed by blasting it with rocket fuel, which their own third-party analysis contains contaminants that are not present in "tap water".

By SpaceX's logic any factory would be able to dump toxic water into the ground as long as they sourced the input water from the city's drinking water distribution system.

This is probably the most basic environmental and health and safety law, namely to prevent businesses from dumping toxins into the water; trying to frame this as government overreach and knick-knack regulations is seriously depraved and it would be banana-republic-esque if he actually succeeds in ignoring or removing these rules.

matrix2003• 2 years ago

How is this different than launches at Canaveral or elsewhere? Don’t those pads also have water deluge systems and service a variety of liquid fueled rockets?

malfist3• 2 years ago

This was wonderfully hard to find out. ChatGPT tells me that NASA employees a detention pond to treat water after a deluge. Found this french post about the construction of it all: http://www.capcomespace.net/dossiers/espace_US/shuttle/ksc/S...

Interestingly, ~70% of the water is evaporated during a launch.

SLS's main engine is hydrolox fueled, so it's byproducts should be water and hydrogen. But the SRBs have a lot of nasty ingredients like perchlorates.

sq_• 2 years ago

Given that Starship and Super Heavy are both methalox fueled, wouldn’t the combustion products in the exhaust be carbon dioxide and water?

verdverm2• 2 years ago

Combustion is imperfect and it is occurring over metal which will erode into the mix of air and water. Then there is also whatever chemicals and material are on the ground prior to launch activities that get washed away with the deluge system

foobarqux18• 2 years ago

Not according to the tests SpaceX submitted themselves. But if it were you would first show that to the EPA and then they would give you a permit to go ahead.

damon_c• 2 years ago

Hello. I just want to start by saying I appreciate this post as every other post on this article is: "this is politically motivated because I think it is".

That being said... on the linked page it says:

Outflow water has been sampled after every use of the system and consistently shows negligible traces of any contaminants, and specifically, that all levels have remained below standards for all state permits that would authorize discharge. TCEQ, the FAA, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evaluated the use of the system prior to its initial use, and during tests and launch, and determined it would not cause environmental harm.

Is this all lies?

foobarqux18• 2 years ago

I wouldn't trust any analysis that SpaceX submits itself given Musk's long history of lying, including right now on this very subject. Others have pointed out problems in the way the water is being sampled (surface water vs ground water) but I'm not an expert. It is certainly possible that no serious contamination has already occurred.

But the way it works is not that you dump stuff out of your factory and then, after getting caught, try to run some tests to show it's okay. It's almost impossible to remove contaminants out of the water after the fact so the way it works is that you go through a process with the government where you show that you are not going to dump contaminants into the ground, then they issue a permit, then you can discharge the water. Otherwise you would have people doing what Musk is doing now, which is to dump the water first and if there is any irreversible contamination say "oops, my bad".

JaggedJax2• 2 years ago

I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, but parent's comment that

By SpaceX's logic any factory would be able to dump toxic water into the ground as long as they sourced the input water from the city's drinking water distribution system.

is patently wrong and unfortunately undermines their entire comment.

I believe SpaceX is stretching the truth and trying to sneak by with improper permits, but also people lying about what SpaceX is doing is not helping keep them in check and gives them ammunition.

Of course water in contact with the flamey end of a rocket has chemicals not found in drinking water, that's not really relevant. What's relevant are the actual levels in that water.

fernandopj• 2 years ago

I think your second paragraph is spot on.

I just don't understand why this seems to be an issue with this launch in particular, cause to me it just something that's done at every launch ever (throw water at a launching rocket). Isn't this a very well understood env impact anyway that Falcon 9 launches don't face those delays?

LeroyRaz• 2 years ago

You seem to be willfully misinterpretating SpaceX's post. They say that only potable water is used in the deluge process. That's all they are saying. They aren't saying that the post deluge water is potable.

mr_toad• 2 years ago

It’s probably still drinkable if you let it cool down and wait for the sediment to settle out.

FireBeyond7• 2 years ago

No-one cares about the water before deluge, that's why. Worst case scenario, a leak there floods some wetlands with "drinking water".

People are only concerned about the post deluge water.

Why does SpaceX repeatedly, and condescendingly, keep saying "Again, this is drinking water!"

So no, I don't think he's willfully misinterpreting SpaceX's post. In fact, I think SpaceX's repeated references to drinking water, at a non-problematic stage of the complaints, is willfully misleading.

lupusreal8• 2 years ago

I bet this wouldn't be happening if Elon Musk wasn't shitposting on twitter, and particularly, doing it in a way that pisses off liberals/progressives.

On the plus side, every day the Biden administration delays SpaceX, IFT-5 becomes more likely to succeed, digging the pit of despair for EDS sufferers even deeper. Invest in salt futures.

throwaway1492• 2 years ago

Let him go build his rockets in Russia or China. If he wants to support anti democratic folks he’ll be right at home somewhere else. Musk and his troll farm can piss right off imo.

lupusreal8• 2 years ago

EDS

JumpCrisscross7• 2 years ago

bet this wouldn't be happening if Elon Musk wasn't shitposting on twitter, and particularly, doing it in a way that pisses off liberals/progressives

I mean, yes, though to imagine it’s just the left Elon has disappointed is naïve. Musk went from representing a paragon of American industry to something much less. Being a paragon is powerful, in part because it’s undefined.

Being a partisan political agitator has its own power, but it’s much easier to constrain and counter because there’s a playbook for that. (Witness, for example, how Musk was given a singular free pass on his relationship with China, but now isn’t able to push back on either party’s China policy.)

mensetmanusman7• 2 years ago

Which business leaders besides Musk should Americans look up to?

indoordin0saur7• 2 years ago

He is still a paragon of industry. Are there any comparably successful American companies outside of the software sector? it's just he's constantly creating distractions.

malfist3• 2 years ago

This press release seems very unprofessional. It's very negative and aggressive, both actively and passively.

I'm a huge fan of SpaceX, but this press release just screams "Musk ordered us to post a screed"

srackey• 2 years ago

Can you believe when you get dicked around by unelected bureaucrats for political reasons people get upset? They should know to listen to their betters!

malfist3• 2 years ago

That isn't what I was saying at all. There are reasonable and professional ways to disagree, and this PR isn't one of them.

renewiltord4• 2 years ago

The ecosystem that is business is so interesting. You have creatures like SpaceX that are watered by the government and grow into magnificent trees but the tree has parasites that want to extract some of the value for themselves.

It's like fertilizing the soil and finding that not only your crops but also weeds grow stronger.

Everyone wants their cut. Which is why for a certain sum of money, the desert iguana will turn out to not be a problem.

Great stuff. I understand how much fun it must be to be an agriculturist.

llamaimperative4• 2 years ago

You think government policymakers get a portion of the revenue from government licenses or what does this mean?

Everyone wants their cut. Which is why for a certain sum of money, the desert iguana will turn out to not be a problem.

renewiltord4• 2 years ago

I think that people just have friends who like to take them on vacation - nothing untoward. Just nice friends who do nice things for them. Out of the kindness of their hearts.

jupp0r7• 2 years ago

It's absurd how these licenses are not fast-tracked by the government. This is one of the greatest technological assets the US have over other nations. It boggles my mind how the US government is shooting itself in the foot here if you compare it against other national security projects run by the government itself.

foobarqux18• 2 years ago

They have had years to apply for the permits, no fast tracking was necessary, they just didn't feel like doing it.

bryanlarsen7• 2 years ago

The first Environmental Impact Statement was completed in 2014.

JumpCrisscross7• 2 years ago

have had years to apply for the permits

In the way they have time to apply for licenses for an eventual Mars landing, yes. The practical timer started with IFT-4.

jupp0r7• 2 years ago

They need to apply for a license for each launch.

mlindner3• 2 years ago

They did not have years to apply for anything. You can't apply for something you don't know you were planning to do. Also the FAA is overloaded and can't handle applications for all possible plans. So they need to pick and choose and if plans change because of new developments then they need to apply again.

caseyy2• 2 years ago

People really love SpaceX and Tesla on HN. It is generally difficult to present a counter-opinion. Even with good evidence.

I’m not sure why that is. Techno-optimism perhaps.

jupp0r7• 2 years ago

There are environmental concerns, I get it, but this feels a little bit like delaying the Manhattan project for a year because the test detonation would endanger some birds in the desert.

georgeg232• 2 years ago

Maybe it's not about birds if it's about nukes.

jfengel• 2 years ago

The Manhattan project was about winning a war. Is there any comparable pressing issue here?

aeternum3• 2 years ago

The environmental concerns are illegitimate though, the probability of hitting a sea creature is so vanishingly small.

Where's the outrage around the thousands of container ships that burn the dirtiest crude oil and dump their waste into the ocean? Or all the airliners killing birds?

Let's be real, this isn't environmental concerns, it's a way to punish Musk for his political stance.

jltsiren• 2 years ago

That's what you get when the Congress is too divided to pass laws, while the Supreme Court keeps telling the executive branch to stop inventing new interpretations of existing laws. If nobody is capable of setting national priorities, regulators just keep doing whatever they are doing.

jupp0r7• 2 years ago

I'm not convinced new legislation is even needed to fix this. All of these agencies are controlled by the executive branch of the government.

sterlind• 2 years ago

Regulators can't even keep doing what they're doing, because what they were doing was publishing rules to resolve ambiguities in legislation, and now the Court system has preempted that privilege. Loper-Bright has turned the existing body of regulations into a target-rich environment. Every agency rule can be challenged, possibly overturned, applying retroactively.

Libertarians may cheer at this, but not so fast. The edge cases and particulars of laws aren't abolished, they're just fuzzy. You can't be sure you're complying with the law, even if the regulatory body says you're in the clear. You're at the mercy of judges who know nothing about the field they're ruling over. The chaos of legal uncertainty will grind the permitting of new technologies to a halt, as the regulators wait for Congress or the Courts to clarify how old laws apply to new circumstances before issuing any licenses.

Remember Oracle v. Google? How octogenarian Justices struggled to understand what an API was, when they could barely open their email? Imagine that, applied to the entire US code.

caseyy2• 2 years ago

What are the national priorities in the US right now?

In the last SOTU address, I gather to Biden one of them was healthcare/limiting pharma prices.

mempko• 2 years ago

You do realize this is a government funded project right? If the government wants to delay it by 2 months for environmental reasons, they can. It's not like Musk is paying for this himself and they are getting in the way.

pr337h4m• 2 years ago

What, if anything, prevents SpaceX from using offshore launch pads? What about launches from international waters?

acover• 2 years ago

Itar

MetaWhirledPeas4• 2 years ago

Probably nothing, but that would surely be quite the feat. Just getting the necessary people there would be difficult, let alone the supply chain and the structures. Even operations like SpaceX need some degree of efficiency.

pavon2• 2 years ago

As a US company they are required to get launch permits from the US regardless of where they launch from. Mixing jurisdictions would likely make things harder, not easier.

cwillu• 2 years ago

This launch is intended to test the ability to land on the original launching tower, which is a core ability to the intended economics of starship; launching offshore would defeat much of the purpose of the launch.

indoordin0saur7• 2 years ago

The FAA has control over them no matter where they are. They cannot escape.

dave333• 2 years ago

Musk's right wing shift and naked conservative bias do not serve Spacex well when the opposition is in power. Most commercial enterprises with operations that fall under federal control play both sides of the street.

mensetmanusman7• 2 years ago

It does serve SpaceX well if it reveals the boulder-esque bureaucracy and change occurs. The current federal system gave us Boeing rates of progress.

Thankfully they have shown us a new way.

indoordin0saur7• 2 years ago

They were already biased against SpaceX because the government and the parasitical military contractors react violently against any competence that embarrasses them when people inevitably make the comparison. How do you think this makes NASA administrators or Boeing executives feel? The latter had a nice thing going before SpaceX came along, tens billions of dollars guaranteed from the government without having to work too hard.

MetaWhirledPeas4• 2 years ago

So the FAA approved two separate 60-day reviews. Do they always take the full 60 days or could a verdict come earlier?

I agree with the poster's assessment that this is pretty stupid regardless.

ivewonyoung4• 2 years ago

It's worse:

Furthermore, the mechanics of these types of consultations outline that any new questions raised during that time can reset the 60-day counter, over and over again. This single issue, which was already exhaustively analyzed, could indefinitely delay launch without addressing any plausible impact to the environment.

MetaWhirledPeas4• 2 years ago

It's difficult for me to determine how far this deviates from the normal bureaucratic absurdity. Just because something "can" happen doesn't mean it will. They "can" shut down the whole operation if they want, right?

gps_sama2• 2 years ago

It could come earlier. Usually does to some extent. But the FAA really does take much more time than they should.

diggan2• 2 years ago

But the FAA really does take much more time than they should

What does that mean? Don't they take the amount of time they need in order to ensure safety, so that's the perfect amount of time? Or are you saying they're purposefully dragging their feet behind them just to make it slower for no good reason?

exabrial• 2 years ago

Hilarious, we used to throw SRBs from the space shuttle in the ocean repeatedly.

I do agree, there seems to be a ton of extra scrutiny on SpaceX for no apparent reason. We can only speculate and I'm sure HNers have a ton of theories.

jandrese• 2 years ago

Corporate culture of "move fast and break things" probably gets regulator's panties in a bunch.

SpaceX is doing development the right way, planning for multiple failed launches and attempting to learn as much as possible from each one as it develops the final product. This sort of rapid prototyping is orders of magnitude cheaper than trying to perfectly engineer everything right from the start. Downside is increased risk of unintended consequences on the initial test launches.

GuB-42• 2 years ago

Downside is increased risk of unintended consequences on the initial test launches.

And regulatory agencies are here to make sure these "unintended consequences" won't damage more than the company finances. Regulators don't care about rockets exploding, as long as the company can show that they have taken the necessary steps to make sure no one is hurt when it happens, it includes the environment.

"Move fast and break things" is fine if your things break. It is not fine if my things break.

seanhunter• 2 years ago

People used to smoke on airplanes. Regulations (and the approach taken by regulators to enforcement) change over time.

inglor_cz4• 2 years ago

There is a Space Race 2.0 with China on, though. The democratic world shouldn't lose that race just because of unbridled bureaucracy.

Dig1t• 2 years ago

I think what you mean to say is that regulations GROW over time.

If you only add regulations but never remove them, eventually you end up with a society where most things are illegal and the only people who can get anything done are wealthy enough to afford to deal with years-long bureaucratic processes.

ripjaygn5• 2 years ago

I wonder if the idea was to delay it beyond the election in early November.

allears• 2 years ago

Hard to see what impact a Starship test would have on the election, for either candidate.

rich_sasha• 2 years ago

Depends where it crashes

indoordin0saur7• 2 years ago

Musk's company accomplishing a heroic feat could improve public opinion of his political endorsements. I mean, I don't think this way, but it seems like the sort of thing a petty bureaucrat might fear.

woodruffw• 2 years ago

The comments on the linked Twitter thread are entirely one-dimensional, and more than a little conspiratorial on average. Is there a neutral news source for this?

daghamm• 2 years ago

That twitter thread is brigaded by a blue-mark army of Elon fans who seem confident this was done by Biden administration.

Now something off topic: I wonder if blue checkmark ratio can be used to determine the political direction of a thread. Testing thia could be a fun data science weekend project.

perihelions2• 2 years ago

[flagged]

ravedave5• 2 years ago

I bet Elon tweeting AI generated videos of the VPOTUS in soviet garb helped a ton here.

sjm-lbm• 2 years ago

I do think we need to make the US a place where builders can build, but I disagree with this justification pretty strongly. This isn't a public organization working for the public good, it's a private company doing R&D to create a spacecraft that they will own and control.

We're also, at least in the legal sense, not at war.

perihelions2• 2 years ago

It's a defense contractor with a track record of delivering things to USGov no one else is capable of (Starlink/Starshield). They're not a public service—but they do work for the US.

erupt78932• 2 years ago

SpaceX is private, however this whole Starship program has NASA (public organization) funding parts of Starship's development for lunar exploration, as part of the Artemis program

inglor_cz4• 2 years ago

Private companies can have strategic value, too. The capabilities of SpaceX is what puts the entire US on the top of the current space technology race.

Imagine having to beg the Russians to get the two stranded astronauts back to Earth.

grues-dinner• 2 years ago

We're at war

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

kilroy123• 2 years ago

What War exactly?

slenk2• 2 years ago

SpaceX is not part of our national security. They are one launch platform.

They should be punished, they keep blowing up spaceships. Know what didn't blow up on it's first trip to space? The Saturn V rocket, from the 60s!

positr0n• 2 years ago

Uh. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1

Yes they are one launch platform, and the only launch platform capable of some of the things they do!

norir• 2 years ago

For me, it is a national security risk to allow an unelected, largely unaccountable, private individual to have this much control over crucial areas of national interest.

trothamel• 2 years ago

SpaceX seems a bit salty about it, justifiably so:

https://www.spacex.com/updates/#starships-fly

diggan2• 2 years ago

Despite a small, but vocal, minority of detractors trying to game the regulatory system to obstruct and delay the development of Starship, SpaceX remains committed to the mission at hand.

Is the "small but vocal minority" the FAA here? They seem to go on the offensive instead of trying to work with the very people who can possibly decide their fate, seems a bit short-sighted.

ripjaygn5• 2 years ago

It's the media they're talking about, like writing hit pieces without doing research about mercury pollution that was because of a misplaced decimal point and making a huge deal about a couple of bird nests.

erupt78932• 2 years ago

The small vocal minority is the media, CNBC reported inaccurately about environmental issues, causing this FAA delay. More details here:

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1823080774012481862

forgot-im-old2• 2 years ago

[flagged]

gps_sama2• 2 years ago

The archive link that references Shotwell is dead. What was that pointing to?

The Heritage Foundation can say whatever they want about SpaceX-- just because they can say it, that doesn't mean that SpaceX as an entity is onboard with the position Project 2025 paints for them.

kidme5• 2 years ago

Main points from the link:

Trump has been pitching a reboot of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative using Elon's Starlink. At least publically since his reelection campaign: "the United States will build a missile defense shield to intercept nuclear weapons" https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/donald-trump-pla... It's also in Project 2025 / Heritage Foundation docs.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 with help of a CIA agent named Mike Griffin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career ) who funneled them funding (lots of citations at end of https://archive.ph/D2zIG ). Griffin worked for In-Q-Tel and also was the Deputy of Technology for the Strategic Defense Initiative, later started the Space Development Agency (SDA) which is to become Trump's SDI in 2025.

vatueil7• 2 years ago

There's a user on reddit with a bunch of alts that keeps spamming the conspiracy theory that SpaceX is a front by the military and intelligence agencies to funnel money into building a missile defense shield. They like to point to an AI chat with Twitter/X's Grok as proof.

It's true that some people connected to SpaceX were also interested in missile defense, but that's hardly unusual given that we're talking about the intersection between defense and the aerospace industry.

To the extent that SpaceX enables missile defense it's in the same way they enable any other space endeavor, as a natural consequence of lowering the cost of lifting payloads to orbit.

georgeg232• 2 years ago

sadly him playing games with the nuclear balance leave us all underlings in his game.

readthenotes1• 2 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised is Project 2025 wasn't the Steele Dossier if 2024...

No matter, the FAA (and rest of bureaucracy) is supposed to be apolitical

1986• 2 years ago

It's nothing like the Steele dossier, Heritage Foundation and others behind it have put their names all over Project 2025. Heritage is in the copyright block of the site footer!

rurp• 2 years ago

It's completely different from the Steele Dossier. Project 2025 was written by dozens of former Trump administration officials and surrogates, by an organization he has previously outsourced policy to, and largely aligns with what he and his top advisors have said they want to do. He even praised the project before it became well known.

But now the name has become toxic so he's trying to distance himself from it, but he hasn't disavowed much of the content.

No matter, the FAA (and rest of bureaucracy) is supposed to be apolitical.

Yes, and Trump has been vocal about wanting to change that. There's no conspiracy here, just listen to what he says.

vel0city• 2 years ago

the FAA (and rest of bureaucracy) is supposed to be apolitical

It won't be when they fire all the career civil servants and replace them with stooges as they've said over and over they want to do.

nycdatasci• 2 years ago

The linked post mentions 60 months instead of days.

Faaak• 2 years ago

Read the image

Animats• 2 years ago

How large an area of ocean has to be cleared for the impact?

TheAceOfHearts• 2 years ago

I've wondered about the long-term implications for the Mars goal as Elon keeps burning bridges within politics. Not that he was treated well by the current White House with regard to electric vehicles, so it's understandable that he would be upset. But turning around and endorsing the other candidate all while going on the attack against the current administration probably isn't winning anyone over.

Overall, I just don't understand why Elon has allowed the Twitter political brainrot to take hold. If he's playing strategically, then it's happening at a level which isn't legible to me. I really don't see how engaging so much in divisive political issues is going to help him advance his claimed primary goal of extending human life to Mars.

theossuary• 2 years ago

How has the current White House mistreated Elon's ventures? For Tesla, the tax credit is still there, they pushed for and adopted the Tesla charger as the North American standard; heck they even levied a 100% tax against Chinese EVs (and batteries, and solar panels). SpaceX is still getting tons of federal money, it just got a billion dollar contract to deorbit ISS at the end of its life. It seems like policy is really working in Elon's favor right now to me.

ivewonyoung4• 2 years ago

From the WSJ recently:

Then in August 2021, Biden organized an EV event, to be anchored by him signing an executive order with a target to make half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 zero-emissions vehicles.
“In the auto industry, Detroit’s leading the world in electric vehicles,” Biden said at a November 2021 event while promoting the new infrastructure bill. He then turned to GM’s Mary Barra and praised the CEO. “You electrified the entire automobile industry. I’m serious. You led, and it matters,” Biden said.
Tesla’s leaders, including Musk, were outraged. During the fourth quarter of 2021, when Biden made these remarks, Tesla delivered more than 115,000 EVs in the U.S. while GM produced just 26.

...

The reason: Biden officials didn’t want to anger the powerful United Auto Workers union, which leaned on the White House to keep its distance from Musk, according to people familiar with the matter.

https://archive.md/856RL

mensetmanusman7• 2 years ago

The EV party where Tesla wasn’t invited because of union hardball.

forgot-im-old2• 2 years ago

It was never about Mars. Look into the Mars Society leadership, they were military / Strategic Defense Initiative people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career#:~:t...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zubrin

lupusreal8• 2 years ago

Bingo.

What SpaceX hasn't done: Develop Mars habitats.

What SpaceX has done: Develop precisely the kind of rocket you need to launch mega constellations like Brilliant Pebbles.

indoordin0saur7• 2 years ago

Yeah, as much as I can understand where he's coming from in his frustrations I'm not sure it's the most productive route unless he wins in the end. As they say, if you take a swing at the king you'd best not miss.

sfink• 2 years ago

This sounds very much like an incomplete story. Knowing nothing else, I'd guess that SpaceX pissed off somebody or somebodies, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to evaluate how reasonable or unreasonable their reaction is without knowing what triggered it. It looks like somebody is using whatever tool they have at their disposal, and the question is why.

It could be a result of repeated violations of regulatory action, and this is a smackdown to show that yes, the government can fuck you up if it wants to. But that's pure speculation on my part.

Of course, Musk will try to make this look as bad as possible. If his handy tool Trump wins this fall, Musk will use this to motivate his "let's streamline government by creating a new government oversight committee!" plan, which is probably largely intended to cripple any regulatory oversight that could possibly get in his way.

NotGMan2• 2 years ago

[flagged]

dang• 2 years ago

Could you please stop posting tedious flamebait and ideological battle comments? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've also asked you to stop in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37182078.

You're probably already over the line at which we ban accounts for doing this, but I'm not going to ban you right now. We need you to fix this, though, so if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

(And no, we don't care what ideological side you're on. We care about not having tedious flamewars from any side.)

NotGMan2• 2 years ago

No, go ahead and ban me. This topic is about politicians being butt-hurt and shitting on a company that has the most potential for humanity's progress. What I've described is NOT flamebating: it's the reality of what is happening.

amluto2• 2 years ago

At times, these roadblocks have been driven by false and misleading reporting, built on bad-faith hysterics from online detractors or special interest groups who have presented poorly constructed science as fact.

People reading this should remember that Flight 1 was preceded by hysterics from online detractors who predicted, correctly, that the launch would make a giant mess. The FAA ignored them and allowed the launch anyway. The Wikipedia article would like to remind us that it wasn’t a toxic mess, but it was still a mess.

Given the lack of any acknowledgement of that incident in this PR piece, I’m a bit disinclined to fully trust it. And I can certainly see why regulators would like to give stakeholders 60 days to comment on what might go wrong, since SpaceX’s history of predicting what will go wrong with Starship launches is a bit tarnished.

sirspacey• 2 years ago

A bit tarnished with verified remediation is the regulatory framework we need to be aiming at precisely because a 60 day delay for a regulatory review process is an enormous cost on an operation of this scale.

7e4• 2 years ago

Not at all. Elon wastes much more money on his "fuck around and find out" method of engineering^H^H^H accretion. A million monkeys could do it better and more cheaply.

valianteffort• 2 years ago

Flight 1 made a mess of their own launch pad. Why is that the concern of anyone besides SpaceX? They refurbished and reinforced it for flight 2.

amluto2• 2 years ago

It's not clear to me exactly how far the mess extended, but this seems well past "their own launch pad":

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/12v7qsp/view_of_the...

Teever3• 2 years ago

Because the damage to the launch pad could have damaged the rocket in a way which could have made it damage other people's property.

mensetmanusman7• 2 years ago

Detractors have been at every step of the way, how do we know when to trust the detractors?

mlindner3• 2 years ago

People reading this should remember that Flight 1 was preceded by hysterics from online detractors who predicted, correctly, that the launch would make a giant mess.

People need to stop repeating this bad faith argument without providing facts.

No educated people were predicting disaster as a result of the launch. In fact NASA scientists said the damage was way worse than expected because of an unexpected ground water steam explosion.

vatueil7• 2 years ago

give stakeholders 60 days to comment

I want to point out that while giving people time to comment sounds harmless, it's actually a systemic problem that's at the root of many issues.

Allowing special interest groups to delay development is a major reason why it's nearly impossible to build anything on time and on budget in the US.

If they don't cancel the project outright, or prevent it from starting in the first place via chilling effects, then the delays increase the price tag enormously.

Jerusalem Demsas at The Atlantic often writes about this:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/local-gove...

Development projects in the United States are subject to a process I like to call “whoever yells the loudest and longest wins.” Some refer to this as participatory democracy.
Across the country, angry residents and neighborhood associations have the power to delay, reshape, and even halt entirely the construction of vital infrastructure. To put a fine point on it: Deference to community input is a big part of why the U.S. is suffering from a nearly 3.8-million-home shortage and has failed to build sufficient mass transit, and why renewable energy is lacking in even the most progressive states.
. . .
Every new development has so-called negative externalities: Construction is always annoying, trains can be loud and unsightly, wind farms may obstruct ocean views, and for some the simple knowledge that a nearby home is actually a duplex is enough to ruin the neighborhood character. Regardless of how valid you find any of these complaints, they should not by themselves be sufficient to block new projects, or else no mass transit, no new housing, no wind or solar farms could ever be installed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/national-e...

Signed into law in 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act and its state and local equivalents require federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of major projects before they sign off on them. Supporters argue that NEPA “empowers local communities to protect themselves and their environment.”
But NEPA is more burdensome than it may sound. As the economist Eli Dourado has documented, environmental-impact statements were initially very short—just 10 pages, in some instances. But now they average more than 600 pages, include more than 1,000 pages of appendices, and take four and a half years on average to complete.
How did this happen? Lawyers—the answer is always lawyers. Over time, the courts have embraced more and more expansive definitions of what these statements should cover. And lawyers—terrified of getting their clients caught up in lengthy court proceedings where a judge tells them they should have thought through the fourth- or fifth-order impacts of an apartment building—spend eons fleshing them out. The goal is not to mitigate environmental ill effects but to get an A+ for thoroughness.
. . .
Caution and deliberation are good in moderation, but waiting cannot relieve this uncertainty; it merely changes its form. Doing can cause harm, but not doing won’t preserve the world in amber. Neighborhoods in desirable communities that don’t build more housing see skyrocketing prices and demographic shifts toward high-income, white, and older residents. And nations that don’t build the necessary renewable-energy infrastructure will be subject to the very environmental degradation that 20th-century activists tried so hard to prevent.
The unforeseen consequences of blocking change should weigh as heavily as the ones that come from allowing it. Those lost students, missing refugees, absent neighbors, and failed government projects may never intrude on our sight line or cause us frustration during our commutes, but they cost us all the same.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/environmen...

Delays run up the cost of vital infrastructure and exert something like a chilling effect on new projects, as developers may not want to contend with the expensive legal battles that lie ahead. These laws have been used to stymie wind farms in Nantucket (residents dubiously claim that offshore wind kills whales), Martha’s Vineyard (the owner of the solar company that opposes the project lives near the proposed site part-time), and dozens of other purportedly progressive communities across the country.
. . .
Consider the way NEPA preemptively chills development or the fact that the delays themselves are costly. The economist Eli Dourado has studied NEPA’s failures for years, and he is skeptical that thoroughness and time spent should be read as a policy success: “If every review were done so thoroughly that it took 100 years to complete and the resulting lawsuit rate were zero, that would be a failure, not a success.” The problem is “the threat of litigation continuously increases the burden of NEPA review, rendering our agencies unable to make speedy decisions even in cases where it is obvious there is no significant environmental impact,” Dourado told me.

concordDance4• 2 years ago

People reading this should remember that Flight 1 was preceded by hysterics from online detractors who predicted, correctly, that the launch would make a giant mess.

Does this "giant mess" matter in any practical way?

jiggawatts4• 2 years ago

From the outside looking in, the behaviour of the FAA looks corrupt. They’re being influenced by someone (Boeing?) to slow down SpaceX because they’re too hard to compete with fairly on a technological merit alone.

Disagree?

Okay, then explain why the FAA just sits there passively seemingly giggling to themselves every time SpaceX makes a typo? Any excuse to press the multi-month pause button is mercilessly exploited.

If you think that the government is working with industry to achieve supremacy in space, is this what you would expect to see?

Can you imagine if right after signing the CHIPS act the Whitehouse just stood by while some tiny agency just held up a many-billion-dollar fab construction that’s vital to national security!?

Someone in power is out to get Elon Musk and/or SpaceX. They’re most likely a competitor or in the pocket of one.

Everything I’ve seen in the news fits that theory.

The opposite theory of “SpaceX is the world’s best space tech company but also crazy incompetent and deserving endless punishment from every agency” doesn’t hold water. If the agencies cared about the environment or the water or whatever they would be working with SpaceX instead of harming their progress in a way that appears entirely punitive.

Hasn’t anyone here been held up by a paperwork troll in your work? Haven’t any of you had this conversation?

Secops: “Firewall requests take two months to implement.”

Me: “I’m a consultant and this is a one week project. I’m finishing up Friday.”

Secops: “That’s your fault for not submitting the request ahead of time.”

Me: “It’s Monday morning! I just got here. I haven’t even finished my coffee that I got at the airport on the way here.”

Secops: “Your lack of planning is your own fault.”

Me: “Auditors prohibit me from working on any projects until the official start date, which is today. My guess though is that the rules will be: x, y, and z.”

Secops: “You need to use our form 832b and use the specific IP source and destination addresses.”

Me: “Can I have a list of your subnets and their IP ranges?”

Secops: “No, that’s a secret. For security!”

— this is how a one week project blows out to six months.

indoordin0saur7• 2 years ago

As a consultant I have experienced this exact scenario at a government contractor. My team sat in a hotel for a week because the security badges needed to go through some third agency before they could give them to us and we could be physically on the corporate campus.

7e4• 2 years ago

Why must HN become a platform for unfiltered corporate propaganda? Brainwash somewhere else, please.

throwaway42202• 2 years ago

I listened to a podcast last year featuring a FAA employee saying that the best way to delay the FAA is to complain to congress, who will demand a review. Then they have to drop everything and work on the review for a month.

This spacex release and complaint is justifiable but I wish they didn’t use such strong language it just raises the rhetoric against itself

avmich• 2 years ago

SpaceX works on the leading edge of today's aerospace capabilities, and it's reasonable to expect new problems during their work. So it could justifiably be terra incognita to regulating agencies, including environment protection organizations.

Yet it's unprofessional if they are showing up and demand delays at the last moment. It's the work of government agencies to watch companies like SpaceX closely and coordinate with them way ahead of large events.

Nobody's winning when the environment is ignored, or when the aspiring company has to stop and switch to something else while waiting for permissions for important actions in development. So far USA administrations demonstrated reasonable balance, hope they'll manage to improve the current situation.

georgeburdell• 2 years ago

It’s surprising to me that a company so important to the success of many American aspirations is getting sandbagged by environmental regulations. For a rocket whose outputs are carbon dioxide and water, no less. It’s hard to ignore the possibility that Democrats are purposely slow walking SpaceX approvals due to Elon’s politics.

somethoughts• 2 years ago

I think it's part of the uniqueness of the United States that different states can try different experiments.

If states like Texas and Florida governance want to run fast and are ok with potentially breaking things environmentally by easing regulation - we should let them.

Perhaps they are right that commercial/industrial interests should be prioritized over the state's local population if the United State's space ambitions are to be achieved.

Perhaps there's plenty of available land so not much is really being sacrificed and if something really bad happens? Elon, the leadership and engineering teams can probably move (back) to California.

codewiz• 2 years ago

As long as the environmental consequences fall entirely within the state borders, states should be allowed to decide independently.

However, when it comes to polluting rivers, sea and air, consequences of pollution are of often planet-wide. Thus, a global approach is required.

That said, the sooner Starship achieves full reusability, the sooner we'll stop burning rocket stages into the atmosphere and letting the incombustible parts fall into the ocean.

0xbadc0de5• 2 years ago

No doubt the FAA is under enormous pressure from Boeing, Blue Origin and ULA to slow things down for SpaceX.

SpaceX update regarding Starship FAA flight approval

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