Photos from the SpaceX Debris Field
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blog.esghound.com
I think litter laws should apply in this case. I'm afraid it would never get enforced because the US justice system tends to let the rich get away with anything, but dumping 200 pounds or more of commercial waste in Texas carries a minimum 180 day sentence under Texas state law (https://www.ennistx.gov/Illegal-Dumping-Violations/).
Not something I think should apply in the case of a true accident, or if you had a good plan to really go above and beyond in terms of mitigating the damage (not necessarily perfect, but very good).
Well, to be even more fair Elon doesn't seem interested in a diverter or trench but in a [thick] steel plate cooled by water. That would still allow the exhaust to run along the ground far beyond the OLM. He could erect some berms covered in concrete at a some distance from the OLM to avoid damage from that.
That said, I don't think it's that big a deal, and anyways SpaceX is already paying a steep price for this mistake.
However I think we should keep some context & perspective on exactly where we're more and less OK with certain kinds of environmental destruction.
I think when you look closely at any part of this planet, every action you take causes disruption. This is part of the miracle of life on earth, it's everywhere. Paving a square yard of road causes destruction to the soil habitat, surface and deeper insects and bacteria, the birds and other animals eating those insects, plant and fungal life in the are, etc. Does that mean we shouldn't make roads at all? Probably not. Does that mean we should make fewer roads? Probably! Does that mean we should rely on trains instead of highways where possible? Absolutely!
But we can do this same exercise for a rail! The same soil is under the bits of rail and railroad ties too. Railways also divide up landscapes, causing the deaths of various grazing animals. Should we not make railways...?
I think the extreme is the Jainist perspective of sweeping the ground ahead of your feet before taking a single step. I don't think that view is a reasonable idea for all of us.
We're a hell of a long ways towards the opposite extreme right now.
/s off. This is pretty nit picky. Come on folks.
Also, that's not a Bobcat. Probably best if you're going to write a sensationalized article, at least spend 5 mins to try to get your facts straight.
How can you tell? Some quick google searches of Texas bobcats show similar looking cats. They do look a bit different from what I am used to in the upper midwest.
FYI also in the midwest, anything that is wild and meows is generally referred to as "a bobcat", save the mountain lion.
Are you shifting attention from the topic here?
It's probably not Exxon Valdez, but I doubt it's a small deal.
Most other rockets have much worse stuff inside.
See https://everydayastronaut.com/rocket-pollution/ if you want to learn more about this topic.
But thanks for the link!
Starship itself uses a silicon-based ceramic for insulation. You wouldn't want to be hit in the head by one of those tiles, but it's unlikely to poison you.
Thanks!
Just stumbled upon this - it does seem that the particulate matter scattered for miles is being investigated as being a major health risk to nearby residents and endangered species.
Breathing in non-toxic particles can be bad for you due to the effects of mechanical injury. The classic example is asbestos, completely non-toxic, but the result of how your body attempts to repair damaged cells in your lungs can cause an increased chance of cancer.
This is one of the top concerns of nanotechnology. It could potentially create a lot of grit that we really don't want to breathe...
Thanks for the chat, have a nice one
SpaceX already is paying a steep price for not waiting, since they have to spend a ton of effort and money on fixing up stage zero (and probably ground zero too). Perhaps they felt pressured by investors to show progress?
> The environmental consequences are enormous
The consequences are not enormous. Should SpaceX do things better? Yes.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/50-years-ago-soviet-s-moon-rock...
The N1 itself was obviously a disaster for other engineering reasons not related to its launch mount.
The launch mount, on the other hand, looks great, and did its job admirably. THe soviet union was not bad at building massive ugly reinforced concrete structures.
I don't think they were implying that it was directly caused by the launch itself.
Debate about "value" aside, does this not indicate some bad engineering choices? The entire failure sequence seems to have been caused by this choice, if I understand correctly.
The full-stack superheavy feels like a different situation. Seeing how little control they have over the enormous blast from that rocket is shocking. It feels irresponsible.
One youtube channel [1] showed that a piece of concrete the size of a bus was thrown 50 meters in the air straight upwards during ignition. It almost hit the side of the rocket. This stuff is insane.
If the FAA knew that SpaceX could be throwing bus-sized pieces of concrete in the air that could potentially hit the rocket's fuel tanks, I guarantee they would not have approved the launch.
Nobody had ever fired a rocket that strong. Their test firings were on par with the strongest previous rockets ever launched, and neither the test firings or those previous launches suggested that something like this was possible.
And it wasn't just them. They went through over a year of environmental review and mitigation efforts. To the best of my knowledge, the issue of how to handle the launch pad being blown over the local environment didn't come up even once.
Engineering is full of things like this. You learn that a problem is possible because it happens. Then you figure out how to mitigate it. That first time really sucks. But when it happens, you have to ask, "Was this something that should have been predicted?" And in this case I'm pretty sure that the answer is no.
They launched the biggest rocket ever made without any of the blast-mitigation techniques used on similar launches.
In a back of the envelope approximation, an object 10x as big in every dimension has 1000 times the mass and experiences 100 times the air resistance. And therefore flies about 10 times as far. (Only an approximation, there are other factors. For example gravity acts the same on both.)
Nobody anticipated the debris would include large chunks of concrete. And therefore it was able to travel much farther than expected.
I'm not aware of a previous case where the concreate launchpad shattered similarly to this. The closest thing to this possibility that I am aware of being discussed in advance was the possibility that the whole rocket could explode on the pad in a large fireball. Which existing blast mitigation techniques would not have helped with much.
They extrapolated from a half-power test, and they extrapolated wrong. Turns out that the exhaust damage is not linear with power. Physical systems are not linear, imagine that.
RULE 1: DON'T REPEAT THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST
RULE 2: DON'T FAIL IN UNEXPECTED WAYS
The slow flight termination system was especially terrifying: What should have been an unzip-boom was more like a slowly deflating balloon that took 50 seconds to go boom. If the rocket went out of control at low altitude, someone or something would have been bombed with the largest human created non-nuclear explosion (a fast FTS reduces damage by at least an order of magnitude). At least this will get resolved by the next flight.
If we don't know the impact of it on the habitat, how is it a "small price"?
Being on multiple planets (and eventually multiple solar systems) prevents a species from going extinct if something catastrophic happens to their home world
No, we're not. And whatever we end up doing to the Earth, it's still going to be vastly more suitable for human life than anywhere else in the solar system.
If you care about preventing extinction, stop looking at the stars, and start digging bunkers. Or building undersea cities, or whatever.
As even that specific nerd is also doing a big project to reduce environmental damage, this isn't an "either/or", it's an "and".
1. killed literally, not metaphorically, everything
2. and literally boiled off all the oceans, rivers, and lakes, top the bottom
3. and strip mined literally, not metaphorically, everywhere to a depth of 3,000 km
4. and removed almost everything from the atmosphere except the current level of CO2/m^3
But for similar reasons, I think we should aim for the Moon before Mars: closer, so when (and it is "when" not "if") something goes fatally wrong, it will be easier to get help.
That said, if Starship delivers on Musk's vision, we'll probably get both.
Nate Hagens (00:43:15):
"And to me it's very smart and famous people, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk among them say, "We're screwing up Earth. Climate is going to be bad. We need to colonize outer space and head to Mars." And that makes just zero sense to me, because on the worst thermonuclear runaway-climate scenario, Earth is still going to be a paradise next to Mars. I mean-"
Kim Stanley Robinson (00:43:43):
"I agree with you completely. That is a case that has to be made. And the thing about people like Hawkings, the thing about people like Elon Musk is they're smart, they aren't that smart. They aren't wise, they aren't philosophers, and they're not ecologists. Very often physicists will assume that ecology is just physics in action, and that they've got it all sussed out because they know the rules of physics and they can do rocketry. But you can't do plant biology just knowing rocketry. It's more complex, it's more interconnected, it's a more-complex science. And many physicists will arrogantly say that, "Because I know the laws of physics, I know everything." But they don't know how a marsh works. They haven't studied biology enough to understand their own ignorance. So how smart are you if you don't know how ignorant you are?"
[1] - https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/66-kim-stanle...
It bothers me when people just make up outlandish accusations.
In this specific explosion?
You understand that this test was too early, proved nothing and had little to no way to mitigate the likely explosion that they expected?
And that the impact on the nearby residents, the wildlife were not taken in consideration?
But it's fine because "surely they learned something"?
You should move next to the test site, I'm sure you'll be glad to be one of the people affected.
I'm sure this did not rush the launch. I'm sure people aren't going to get cancer because of a 420 bit.
(BTW it was the Denisovans not the Tibetans. Tibetans got the mutation from the Denisovans).
So we just suffer until the people that want to colonize other planets and trash this one?
Bit odd no?
Listen, I get it. We're not going to have a million person utopian colony on Mars in 2026. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to shoot for a small 4 person colony in 2032 to start doing research. This is currently our most promising way to get there.
Didn't spot any ludditism.
SpaceX's launch capability is not only much greater than that of competitors (including states), they're using methane fuel and do not use solid fuel boosters.
For context, ESA's Ariane 5 uses solid fuel boosters (ammonium perchlorate, aluminum, hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene) and a liquid fuel second stage (monomethylhydrazine, nitrogen tetroxide). NASA's SLS uses solid fuel boosters of the same composition and Ariane 5's. So does JAXA's H3.
If, as a species, we're going to be launching things into orbit, doing so using the SpaceX's tech is significantly cleaner than what we're using today. That's true even before considering reuse.
I feel like many are living in a world of sci fi.
Our orbit is already littered with orbital trash, we are worried we wont be able to leave orbit if it keeps going.
I don't see how this is justifiable in any way. There are very few worthwile things to do in space.
I’d say for the general public, some time in the 90s. For states, as far back as the 60s or 70s I’d say.
> And a requirement to what?
Off the top of my head? Current uses would include communications, navigation/positioning, remote sensing, research, and exploration.
Future uses will almost certainly include access to the resources of the rest of the solar system. In the grand scheme of things, we’re not that far away from being able to capture, relocate, and mine asteroids. Many of those contain resources that are extremely rare or difficult to obtain on Earth.
For example - I think we can agree that moving automobiles from ICE to EV will be a good thing for our biosphere. Cobalt is one of the raw materials that is in short supply. There are two near-Earth asteroids that combined are believed to exceed the Earth’s reserves for cobalt:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2021/10/19/th...
If SpaceX does succeed in driving down the cost to orbit, mining those (and others like them) will be much more practical.
> Our orbit is already littered with orbital trash, we are worried we wont be able to leave orbit if it keeps going.
We’re a long way from risking Kessler Syndrome, and have the technology and experience to prevent it from occurring.
EDIT: Looking at your name, are you ancap??
When do you think (ballpark) it would be realistic? I'm seeing so many problems with it - how do you get the stuff from asteroids to earth? (Mass drivers are a nice idea, but in practice I doubt the public would accept hurling tons of material towards earth). There are so many problems that we have a hard time expecting, like lunar dust[0], issues with the code used to run the equipement, as it is often to far away to be reliably controled remotely (The cassini mission is a good example if I remember correctly)
While I agree that for communications and the likes, sattelite coverage is a net benefit, you have to agree that the material benefits of exploration and research in space are undefined at best - it's entirely possible we'll find nothing useful for a bit.
I think it's important to keep things in perspective - how many order of magnitude is SpaceX better compared to the old tech? How many launches do we actually need to do yearly? Is there a point where the environemental cost starts to be equivalent?
I'd like to see how much the current space race is damaging to the environnement compared to using the old designs - imagine it's equivalent to 50 years of launches (not a real number), it then becomes much less excusable. Imagine if we stalled the current space race for 15-20 years and had everybody forced to only run simulations, I'm certain there wouldn't be as many botched tests and designs as we are seeing, other compagnies included.(For reference, since the nuclear bomb test ban all nuke design is made in simulators [1]
[0]:https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bbc.com/future/arti...
[1] :https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/virtual-nuclear-weapons-d...
It will also be necessary to launch the full size Starlink 2 satellites, which have been increasing competition in Internet access around the world, including in places that have had wars and natural disasters.
So, it has use cases.
No one needs to go to space, or probe the workings of the cosmos. Hell, 99.99% of all software ever developed is utterly pointless, yet it employs every last person on this site. Humanity does stuff because we think we can do cooler stuff than the people who came before us. And that's a perfectly noble goal, unto itself.
I think the Starship failure was a comical own-goal. But, in the end, we have to figure out what the cost of externalities like this actually are instead of hand-wringing.
Also, cars hit animals and insects. We should lower car speed limits to 5mph.
It's one thing if this is unavoidable. But it's not - they were warned, even Musk himself said a blast shield might be needed, but they didn't install one.
Clearly they will next time!
Edit: I mean that the launchpad's design and subsequent destruction was a waste, and it possibly had negative effects on the flight (engines out at launch and further failures later on). They knew that this was going to happen and responded to this risk apathetically. The rest of test (launch, attempted stage separation, etc) was amazing and had my jaw on the floor. I'm very excited for future Starship missions and I believe in the concept. But this is obvious corner-cutting and has no place in an effort this monumental.
Progress is fine, they could be more careful and thoughtful. We made it illegal to dump industrial waste in water. Blowing up exotic concrete to the point it becomes a fine dust and spreads over a large area is unacceptable. They should be allowed to continue operations as long as they make the proper adjustments.
I appreciate seeing visualizations of the "cost of progress" to ground me for a moment
But images like this are also challenging to put into context given the sheer entropy cost of being a modern human being
Take any moment or activity from the day of a First World citizen - driving ours cars, consuming overpackaged foods, turning on the HVAC system
All casual activities with direct, immediate costs to the natural world
At least SpaceX can frame their activities towards an interplanetary mission and the survival of the human race
Where my consumption of a good steak for a fleeting moment of personal pleasure doesn't even have a reconcilable PR angle beyond individualized greed
This isn't "the cost of progress", this is misconduct.
Is there an interview or a blog post or something that says this? My understanding (don't have a link or anything) was that outfitting the launch pad to be to the standard of 39A would've taken years, and getting flight data from the vehicle was more important than likely blowing up the hastily designed/built launch pad.
The reporter I heard talking about it (I think yesterday?) said that SpaceX had to file a variety of assessments of expected effects under various launch scenarios, and that the damage done by this successful launch was on par with what they'd estimated for the "fully-fueled rocket explodes on pad" outcome, and that they seem to have based their projections for a "gets off the pad successfully" scenario on results from a half-throttle test-fire and, I dunno, wishful thinking, it seems. I have not personally looked up those records to verify that, though.
This is just PR.
Only for the gullible.
Small beach fire (3.5 acre is truly tiny... for context Louisiana permanently loses an acre of marshlands every two hours). Few chunks of concrete.
Obviously there's room for improvement here, but is this really a catastrophe compared to the normal sub/urban sprawl happening everywhere else?
Also, think about what goes into making a rocket, bring all that up in the sky, and blow it up. While hard to find all health and environnemenntal risks related, I'm sure you can understand that this isn't like a 3.5 acre fire at all.
It's not the end of the world either - but accountability has to start somewhere.
You're criticizing the article for not participating in whataboutism?
Wow, you are literally doing it again. It's a fallacy because the topic of the article *is* space x, you're just interested in dismissing it for whatever reason. If you want to talk about the impact of the war, find an article about the war to do it on.
For clarity here:
what·a·bout·ism noun
the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation or raising a different issue.
We should hold commenters here to a higher standard than this.
For what it's worth, I guess you're right in that this is a whataboutism. You could take this line of thinking to the extreme, do I not cut my grass, in that I might kill some ants? Like, it needs to be cut. We need to get to space and there is going to be some costs. So, yeah, they killed some birds, a bobcat, and burnt some grass. It's worth it. Until now, I didn't realize my algorithm for caring about stuff was to prioritize my outrage via whataboutisms.
Hopefully, we can agree to disagree. Wish you well.
If Elon had gone "woke" then all the right-leaning sites would be overflowing with SpaceX and Tesla haters.
It's just political tribalism. If you take a side then the other side must vilify you and anything you touch becomes contaminated to them. If a left-winger says the Earth is round right-wingers must insist it's flat, and vice versa.
I personally believe SpaceX to be the most important venture on Earth of any kind, and it's vastly more important than Elon Musk himself or his politics. Thousands and thousands of people work for SpaceX. It's not like it's a one man show.
In a hundred thousand years whatever sentient life descended from Earth life that has populated our region of the galaxy will have no memory of Elon, Twitter, Donald Trump, or the culture war fight of the week in 2023.
Note that actual leftism is not the same thing as modern liberalism. By the economics textbook definition of the term Ronald Reagan was a modern Liberal.
In other comments, I see discussions about the event; its impacts; how to weigh those relative impacts - positive or negative; questions about why the engineering choices that were made, as they appear quite sloppy in hindsight.
Indeed, I might say someone who wishes to detach from the political side of things could easily comment that SpaceX might not be treated as a "cool" entity in this situation because they have made a failure, which might not be bad in itself, but a failure from quite a disappointing mistake. This will naturally color the discussion, don't you think? The emotional state of the audience isn't "interested in what went wrong", because that's obvious! Instead the tone is more related to the nature of mistakes - incredibly though, I don't even see a suggestion that mistakes are the new culture of Elon companies. So why are you whining?
SpaceX wants its rockets to be fully reusable, which means when they work they will not be dumped in the ocean. They're also using less toxic and less CO2-intensive propellants on Starship than most other rockets that burn RP-1 (kerosene) or worse solid or hypergolic fuels. What are the SLS boosters emitting and what happens when those fall in the ocean?
I'm not a fan of Elon's recent political turn, but I also know a double standard and a politically motivated pile-on when I see one. SpaceX is much more important than Elon or his politics, and their launch vehicles aim to be considerably "greener" than anyone else due to reusability.
If someone can back up a claim with reasonable evidence I'll hear it.
For example, I'm not sure I even care about the level of damage documented here, but I applaud the author for doing the research and presenting facts (other than the extraneous dead cat in the first photo).
Nobody else is innovating. Of course SLS works. It's 1970s technology.
> It's 1970s technology.
So's how you keep this from happening.
How did the fire-cooked eggs taste??
How about as one of the 1500 animals killed thus far in the Neuralink project? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/05/neuralink...