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Comment by thegrim33 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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.

Interesting, why did VW fraudulently misrepresent their emissions then, if Germans are so perfect: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/foreign/201...

Germans wouldn't drive with an expired license because that'd be a felony over here.

Plenty of people in the US drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol despite that they could face felony charges.

Not sure about Germany, but most legal systems have "lesser evil" provisions, so, if you drive a car with an expired license in order to save a life, that should be considered.

That could quickly backfire should it turn out you decided to drive someone to the hospital yourself in spite of having been found not to be trusted with steering a vehicle, and not having called professional help and first-aid on-the-spot, i.e. called the ambulance as you should have done. Assault / injury and failure to render assistance are the terms here.

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

> 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.

Kann nicht sein was nicht sein darf.

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.

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?

It was "suppressed" because it's malodorous garbage.

It's interesting that nobody here seems to refute any of the assertions and would rather hand-wave.

Why bother when the source has previously shown itself to be biased and unreliable? That's what happens when you pretend to be a journalist without applying journalistic standards: people will stop taking you seriously, and with good reason.

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.

Funny, usually HN comments reply to factually incorrect articles with well informed rebuttals rather than just shouting them down and insulting everyone.

Those people tend to comment on substantive articles not written by people with a history of emotionally laden axe grinding.

Posts that are critical of Musk do get flagged quite often in my observation, e.g. posts around various pieces of Twitter drama caused by Musk. That part is intentional by HN, as these posts tend to produce rather low quality discussions and in the end are almost always the same. I don't particularly like how this rule results in a kind of criticism shield for Musk and similar cases, but I understand why HN has it.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

According to reality, they were right.

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.

Concrete which pelted the surrounding city and infrastructure, as well has hitting quite a bit of infrastructure in Starbase. We don't know what the total damage will be, but this was not supposed to happen, and is not good.

It didn't pelt the surrounding city, lol. And well, of course it hit infrastructure in Starbase. The concrete was beneath the launch pad at Starbase.

No concrete reached the surrounding city or infrastructure. There seems to be a false propaganda spreading that people were endangered by this launch. That couldn't be further from the truth.

How can you tell without combing through the area carefully?

The flame from the engine did not spread outside the base. Outside of that, the rocket was over the ocean and in the atmosphere when it exploded, as rockets sometimes do. This was a test launch for research purposes, nothing completely unexpected happened here re: the rocket. The launch pad will need to be refactored. I'm sure they'll have it done within weeks.

The flame is not what anyone here is worried about. 16 million lbs of force applied to disintegrating concrete results in a lot of chunks of heavy material launched at supersonic speeds at random, low flying trajectories away from the launch site. See this picture of the damaged fuel tanks, which are (for obvious reasons) much further from the launch site than this telephoto picture would have you believe:

https://twitter.com/EmpiricalEnergy/status/16490948480776110...

Chalk it up as a necessary evil or negative externality of a far greater good.

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.

Or we can build a goddamn flame trench like they should have done in the first place.

What are the benefits to humanity of these "experiments", exactly?

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.

All life on this planet will eventually come to an end. We should reach for the stars. Evolve beyond these bodies bound to the gasses and nutrients of our gravity well. Conquer death, explore the universe.

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.

That practically reads like religious prophecy. Yeech

Nothing religious about wanting more than this short stupid primate life.

That's actually exactly what religion sells

Small chunks of debris flinging a few hundred feet from a rocket are well within the realm of anticipated ordinary risks of any rocket launch. It is effectively a missile or bomb with the amount of fuel that's loaded into it, it could do far worse like explode on the ground. That's why observers have to sit like 2-3 miles away.

FAA: Boeing knows what they're doing

SpaceX: it's just some birds

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

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.

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?

How does launching rockets into space prevent climate change?

The Starship is worst-case carbon neutral (burning methane generated from CO2 in the atmosphere) and best-case carbon negative. It can be carbon negative because methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is expensive to recover, with little economic value, and largely brought up to the surface from underground oil wells. Thus, this methane is often vented right to atmosphere. Actually burning it in Starship converts it into CO2, which has about 1/20 the long-term climate effect as would the otherwise-vented methane.

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

How cute.

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