SpaceX's Texas Rocket Is Going to Cause a Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks
blog.esghound.com
blog.esghound.com
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.
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
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.
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?
As an aside, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but it's interesting how many comments in this thread read like they were written by ESG Hound him(?)self.
This case is different in my opinion and should not be flagged because it is about a new topic that I would consider interesting on its own. Of course it'll get bogged down a bit like all discussions with Musk as part of the topic. But by far not as bad as posts about Musk himself.
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.
SpaceX: it's just some birds
NEPA: no quick quip. Maybe they were told to follow along
https://twitter.com/EmpiricalEnergy/status/16490948480776110...
The benefits of these experiments will yield orders of magnitude better results for humanity than sitting still.
Walk away from Omelas if you want, but most of us are here to watch us reach the stars.
Humans and the planet we inhabit are a stepping stone to the infinite cosmos.
As far as I can tell, they are doing nothing but accelerating damage to Earth's environment and ecosystems in order to reach a, quite literally, dead planet. It doesn't make any sense if you step outside of the hype bubble and cult of personality.
Earth is just an egg, and humans just one step in a longer story that will play out among the stars.
On the geologic scale, everything you and I know is already gone, dead and forgotten. But what comes of our world may endure forever.
How cute.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
It's pretty simple: launch from Cape Caneveral, Florida.
[1] https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...
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.
Deluge system component delivery and install video, Feb 2023.
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.
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.
Not sure who these guys are, but given that SpaceX top brass spends a good bit of their effort running schemes and cover so that Elon is bamboozled away from the actual work indicates that there is at least one clown there.
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.
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.
Animals survive thunder.
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.
Sorry, but this is incredibly ignorant of human history. Yes, contemporary cultures cannot live sustainably, but that is not true for humans in general.
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.
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.
A reason for not doing it offshore could be just that it's cheaper to do onshore. We live in a capitalistic system after all
I don’t think it’s smart to assume that just because I’m not aware of some information that it’s unknown.
This article [0] describes some of the reasons why spacex is investigating offshore launches, but choosing not to do it, for now.
[0] https://maritime-executive.com/article/spacex-suspends-plan-...
>The concept of sea launch has been used successfully before, and it makes commercial sense for some applications. Orbital launch trajectories are affected by location, and a sea-based launch allows the operator to pick the site to maximize efficiency and payload. The space company Sea Launch used a secondhand MODU to launch Ukrainian-built Zenit rockets for 15 years.
...by humans. Launching the largest rocket in the middle of a habitat of endangered species is simply a bad idea from the start.
> and has appropriate conditions for rocket launches
Except for basics like the flame trench and water deluge system.
> Space exploration is valuable
Nobody disagrees with that. The point is that space exploration doesn't have to be done from badly positioned and barebones launch sites if much better alternatives have existed for decades.
How much garbage and pollution are we going to need to get some of those "resources" from space? That's not sustainable. Space might have a lot of resources, but they're practically unreachable. And our problem, right here, right now, is CO2 (and methane). You can't fire rockets to get rid of that.
And the research: that really comes in second or third place. It's nice to have a picture of a galaxy, but far from essential.
Or problem right here, right now are energy. We need energy and to get energy we need lots of minerals that will one day be easier, cheaper, and safer to pull from asteroids and comets than some terrestrial source.
They are unreachable now, but rocket launches like this one get us closer and closer.
Can't you have that with a more appropriate launch site? I don't even understand this argument where anytime anything critical about space travel is mentioned, the response is, essentially, "but space travel!!!"
My understanding is that Boca Chica will be a factory and development/testing site and Florida the primary launch location. They are also building a rocket factory at Cape Canaveral.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
> 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
Sometimes I struggle to remain optimistic about America’s future
Here's an amusing (to me, at least) set of examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870
This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
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.
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.
It's not a dichotomous choice of "now and success or later and failure" and it never has been.
I don't see anyone calling for perfection as the standard
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-...
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.
It's just how the world works, that the people whose concerns are most impacted seek to advocate for their positions.
Perhaps the general public is different. I think not, but we shall see.
I'm willing to believe the numbers are falsified, the analysis is biased, and the author is a dirty commie, but it seems odd to claim there are no numbers. Are you sure your head is clear on this?
It is not important to me that the stand is 30 ft tall. That is numeric but not relevant.
Come now, you know that numbers don't make an analysis. But suppose you do believe they do, I will include some here for you to refute.
The SpaceX launch is safe because:
1, 2, 3, 6, 11, 23, 47, 106, 235, 551
Numbers the article mentioms:
- Approvals were done for a 62MN rocket, launch is 74
- A test at 50% thrust in February measured sound at 110db three miles away when the model used for approval estimated 90-110db for 100% thrust
- Starship will have 10x the power of Falcon 9, launched from a complex 1/4 the size
- The approval process used has never been used for a rocket complex before
And lest you think I'm some owl-loving hippie, I am pro rockets and excited for the launch tomorrow. I just think it's important to allow dissenting views, especially when they do have data. Just suppressing them with smug "rockets good, any disagree bad, and disagree numbers meaningless" rhetoric is really not in the spirit HN claims to foster.
> In terms of measurable outcome, what does "catastrophic" mean?
Does "catastrophic" mean that launch thrust is higher? Does catastrophic mean that the sound is going to be higher? Does catastrophic mean that Starship will have 10x the power? Does catastrophic mean that the approval process hasn't been used?
I mean, if the answer is that "catastrophic" was referring to one of those, then I think it's pretty clear it's hard to care right? From my perspective, having more power in a smaller size is not a catastrophic thing. That's what engineering is: doing more with less ("any fool can build a bridge...")
It's perplexing to me that you have quoted things that are complete non-sequiturs to the question and then started giving me this "not in the spirit of HN" crap. Come on. I know Internet arguments require that you double down, but I think it was pretty clear from my very first sentence what I was looking for and it's pretty clear this blog post has none of it.
Whose progress?
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.
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.
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!).
Your argument seems exactly backward. You want people to have less power, because otherwise the elites will take away what little power they exercise?
(I'm not even sure a vetocracy is a democracy. You could say it's a dictatorship of a small group of obstructionists.)
I want people to think more about the benefits of things and be skeptical of fear-mongers whose career is built around coming up with reasons to do nothing.
(P.S. I think right-wing culture war fear-mongering is also a bunch of bullshit.)
They don't, but most of them don't care, because the leaders are getting things done. They may not be the things you want done, or some other malcontents, but to say authoritarian systems are completely ineffectual is just wrong. They really do get things done.
The problem is that they usually get the wrong things done (e.g., idiotic wars in Ukraine). But most of the citizens in those places are easily misled into believing these actions are justified or necessary.
Authoritarians frequently come into power because the previous systems weren't working well, and people wanted a strong leader to take power. Just look at the Roman Empire for example.
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.