Environmentalists sue FAA over SpaceX Starship launch license for Texas | Hacker News Reader

Environmentalists sue FAA over SpaceX Starship launch license for Texas

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54 pointsVagueMag36 comments

SpaceX is heavily incentivized to launch ASAP after any license is granted precisely because it mitigates the risk that any of the inevitable lawsuits will result in a legal order to suspend it.

Expectations of legal interference are accounted for and coordinated between the FAA and SpaceX during planning, I guarantee it. Personally I think the whole charade is antithetical to the goals of both sides, but you can make up your own mind about whether it's useful or not. The end result won't change: SpaceX will keep launching.

They were also incentivized to launch on 4/20 specifically

https://www.independent.co.uk/space/spacex-starship-launch-d...

The timing was also a convenient distraction from the bad TSLA earnings report on 4/19...

Starship getting high on 4/20 was truly a crime of opportunity.

The only victim, however, may be the poor bastard who was forced to write an article explaining the gag.

They attempted to launch on 4/17.

I would also note a darker angle: Starship is now critical path for Artemis so the Fed is highly incentivised to allow it to go.

The wheels of federal bureaucracy do not move in sync.

I found Elon’s reaction interesting when a reporter asked about SpaceX being critical path. It’s almost as if Elon sputtered as he stumbled over his usual false starts to answer - no, we will not be the ones delaying Artemis.

Because the EIS was skipped (creating threat of lawsuit to require EIS), is there increased incentive to also ignore other reasons to delay a launch?

(Say, some equipment anomaly was detected, which normally would mean delaying to de-risk a lot of time/money/PR. But in this case, delaying a few days might turn into a delay of months or years, due to lawsuit race condition. So someone brash demands an immediate launch anyway.)

Wasnt a EIS completed for Falcon launches from Boca Chica?

I’m just gonna go out on a limb and suggest maybe you wouldn’t just start building a building sized water cooled steel plate if you think your launch pad is gonna do ok without one. May very well have come down to the decision to knowingly trash the pad vs take the risk of getting tied up in court and never get to run the test. Still all terribly unfortunate though. It would have been inspiring to see them pull off the whole show.

Before anyone says the FAA is the biggest impediment to us being a spacefaring civilization again, please note that China just drops rocket stages in populated areas without consequence. Fine, if that is the cost of progress, we as a nation should be ready to accept it, but via democratic methods

To be fair a lot of the FAA stuff is theater, once the rocket is ready to go they somehow always have all their licenses in order. People in the government are all on the same page of what the real priorities are.

It’s a license, not a franchise. You should always be able to see ahead what is required and be able to get one in the end.

This is in contrast to countries or times when the government wished to control the amount of licensees, thus giving monopolies or franchises.

Basically, the fact that everyone gets the license in the end is intended, and progress from older times.

FAA is a massive impediment, to all sorts of things.

I'm very confused. There's so much chatter over the pad being destroyed and I feel like I'm out of the loop. Why is it such a big deal? Silicosis is obviously bad but how much silicosis did this issue cause?

The main reason is that no heavy lift rocket in history (not a single one in the last 60 years) has been launched without mitigations that prevent a launch pad from being destroyed during a successful lift-off.

SpaceX (or rather Musk in particular) decided against 60 years of worldwide experience and decided to forego such measures. The result was not just damage to the launch facility, but also debris being spread around at dangerous speeds in a significant radius around the pad. The latter should not have happened, especially considering that the launch site is partially surrounded by protected wildlife habitats.

The fuss is primarily about the negligence and borderline incompetence. The icing on the cake was that they already had plans to avoid this, but deliberately decided not to implement those before any launch attempt. The excuse that "they didn't expect this" sounds a bit strange, given that Saturn V and the Soviet N1 had quite substantial protection systems for their launch pads while being only half as powerful as Starship/Super Heavy.

It's really a culmination of many issues with the site, and this event is just the latest in a string of irregularities at Boca Chica. It started with a false license - the site was licenced to launch F9 and FH only; not experimental super heavy rockets - and included unlicenced launch activities that resulted in a major explosion (see https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/faa-defends-spacex-despite-u...).

It's not just about a destroyed launch pad, it's more about the entirety of SpaceX's activities at Boca Chica. It doesn't matter what one's personal opinion about the company as whole or its CEO is; there are some legitimate irregularities and in the end some parties decided sue.

Likely zero.

This is a bunch of Greenpeace-types that would pat themselves on the back for stopping the construction of a nuclear power plant, while blithely ignoring the new coal power plant that had to be constructed in its place.

The big deal is hurr durr Musk bad. Apart from that it’s a giant nothingburger.

SpaceX are succeeding by strategically blowing up prototypes and learning by pushing materials up to and past the point of failure. I think the majority of people watching this are celebrating and appreciate the progression of never been done before reusable rocket technology. Then of course there are losers whining about dust and a broken concrete slab. There is great drama. Which side will prevail?

You've got to wonder how many times per day nearly identical "environmental impacts" are occurring due to mundane causes such as the use of explosives in mining, building demolations, or whatever.

This is a bunch of attention seekers latching on to a famous company like leeches.

For real. I am pro environment, so I do think there is some legitimate amount of environmental impact studies that should be done. But it is clear there is some emotional/ideological agenda attached to anything associated with Musk, now the SpaceX launch is just the target of the moment. The industries threatened by innovation hire PR who prey on easily emotionally swayed individuals, and the result is a flood of parroted opinions and hit-pieces propagated all over the internet.

I'm always curious about how the people initiating suits like this get standing. IANAL but it seems like that would be a row to how.

Is it inevitable that Elon moves starship ops to Florida? It's pretty clear the Brownsville community is completely against them. The reason Cape Canaveral worked is because it was hundreds of square miles of uninhabited swamp in the 60s.

This is federal law and could really be from any concerned citizen. It could be locals but is just as likely to be groups that have never even been to south Texas.

The actual lawsuit is here: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.254... (grr, journalists who don't link to court documents).

The plaintiffs are:

* Center for Biological Diversity (nationwide nonprofit)

* American Bird Conservancy (nationwide nonprofit)

* Surfrider Nonprofit (nationwide nonprofit, has a chapter based on the barrier island in the area)

* Save RGV (nonprofit apparently focusing on the Rio Grande)

* Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas (representing indigenous groups in the immediate vicinity)

So, there's at least a few groups in there who are actively based in the local area.

It's not inevitable in the slightest. Making big changes and receiving approvals to build everything in Canaveral would be brought with the same challenges; maybe even more since the risk to adjacent infrastructure in Canaveral is unquestionably much higher.

Lawsuits to interfere with operations are de rigueur for most any government contractor today, even those who aren't blasting things into space.

Why do you say the Brownsville community is completely against them? They're the largest employer in the city, and the mayor expressed support for their presence just last week[1].

So completely against them, except for the municipal government, local businesses, and the thousands of employees?

[1] https://www.krgv.com/news/spacex-brownsville-experiencing-in...

Maybe there was a critical Tweet from a Brownsville resident.

> It's pretty clear the Brownsville community is completely against them

I visited the area a couple of years ago. Locals were mildly positive towards SpaceX.

Emphasis on _was_. Florida doesn't have any coastal areas left that are less problematic than Brownsville in terms of population, wildlife management areas, and other protected lands.

All of the dozen or so locals I talked to at Brownsville / San Padre Island were supportive of SpaceX moving in.

They're just making sure all precautions and mitigations that can be taken, are taken. In reality none of this is blocking progress. SpaceX has much bigger and harder problems to solve.

can you just launch without an faa license if all your communication is optical

FAA doesn't regulate communications (that's the FCC), they regulate aircraft. If you're flying in controlled airspace, you need a license from the FAA.

thanks for the correction

what a dumb mistake i made

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