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Comment by CommieBobDole | Hacker News Reader

I think many of the issues that SpaceX has had with the Starship/Super Heavy project are due to the poor suitability of the launch/build site. The launch site itself is tiny and directly adjacent to protected wetlands, the only access between the build and launch sites is via a two-lane public road which is the only access to the also-adjacent state park beach, etc.

There were other sites under consideration, and I'm sure they had their reasons for passing on them, but it's hard to see offhand how they could be worse than Boca Chica.

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My family owns some land in south Texas and my subjective sense from dealing with that reality and talking to people in the area is that you can’t throw a rock without hitting a protected wetland. In practice, the ubiquity of environmentally delicate tracts of land seems to be used by the state to restrict or permit industrial activities arbitrarily, likely based on political favoritism. If you think this is hyperbole, I suggest you look into the details of the various solar power projects in Texas.

I think one could make the case that the government must compensate landowners for putative environmental restrictions. After all, if it's really that important, surely the taxpayers would be willing to pay for it, right? Why make the landowner foot the bill for something that benefits everyone else?

You'd claim large losses for being prevented from placing a toxic waste dump on your property. I'd not want to pay for that.

I can't find the article where I read it, but an interesting thing about the environment is that it's connected and we need it to stay alive.

It would be a useful way to balance the costs vs benefits. If the gov't would put a price on it, I could violate the law here but compensate 100x as much elsewhere.

My town has a law where if a tree is over 10" in diameter, there's a fine of 5k if you cut it down. But actually, it's worse, because if they find out you plan to do this, or did it intentionally, they can continue to fine you arbitrarily and force you to re-plant a tree!

So you may own some land and have approval to build human habitation on it... but the tree prevents you, and you simply cannot do it via any legal means.

Otoh if I could... pay the town 5k, and also permanent preserve say 100 trees elsewhere... I could use my own land. I love trees as much as the next one, but it's just a huge risk to allow them to grow on my land cause once they pass that threshold, I irrevocably lose control of land I've paid for and continue to pay a lot of tax on.

It's also funny that if your enemy owns land, and you "help" his trees grow that thick without him knowing, property he planned to use as say an ultimate frisbee field will be permanently unusable for him, with no way out (except begging the city council, etc. and other behavior which is indistinguishable from bribery (money or psychologically))

What happens if the tree dies on its own?

Depends on if they find the circumstances... suspicious.

I am not sure how much surveillance they do - in reality for large lots this restriction may not hold, since trees can disappear at night, be chipped up, etc. But for people in the suburbs, to cut one you need to get a crew in, and there are probably reporting requirements. Also the neighbors love to get involved.

But I do wonder if a tree imperceptibly had branches die, be removed, and then just gradually shrunk over time?

A lot of these laws don't cause much harm in a pre-surveillance world. But once there are full cameras on everything, seeing how they apply at 100% enforcement can be scary. But by that point there are defenders for each one, so they hardly change.

The way people do it is to hammer in a nail that poisons the tree.

The tree dies, and needs to be cut down because it's dangerous to leave standing

A copper nail, specifically (drill a hole first).

Some jurisdiction will make you replace the tree in that case, just to avoid this sort of mechanism.

Yeah but the tree only has to be that diameter at final size. You can plant a dozen tiny trees too close then let them stunt or choke each other out

Some jurisdictions seem to be attempting to counter this sort of thing, and an aspect is: if you can't do it properly, we will, and send you the bill at our chosen rates. And we are going to check.

My city also has a similar law for trees and I think it is the wrong approach. I think it incentivizes people not to grow trees since you might not be able to take them out later if needed. Instead we should have some sort of property tax discount per large tree or something.

Similarly, if you discover some endangered species on your property, current law encourages you to bulldoze it immediately before anyone else finds out.

Similar if your building has features that might get it designated as historically significant.

Indeed. Best to destroy old buildings and pave over natural ecosystems, just in case. This is the way of perverse incentives.

Oh, and when building new buildings, make them as unremarkable and boring as possible, so they won't become historic in the future. Why take the chance? Indeed, make them ugly so the government might decide to pay you to get rid of them.

That's exactly what Hawaii does. You can deduct $3000 from your taxes per exceptional tree. https://taxfoundation.org/blog/exceptional-tree-deduction/

> I think one could make the case that the government must compensate landowners for putative environmental restrictions. After all, if it's really that important, surely the taxpayers would be willing to pay for it, right? Why make the landowner foot the bill for something that benefits everyone else?

If you listen really close, you can hear Henry George spinning in his grave from the existence of this comment.

The right logic is the other way around. Why should the public compensate the land owner for something that also benefits the land owner?

By your logic, restaurant owners should also be compensated for not being allowed to serve spoiled food, and bosses should be compensated for not beating their employees.

If someone buys a piece of land, how does it benefit them if that land is then made unusable? If it's for public benefit, and restrictions for public benefit, then it should be owned by the public. Taking what cost a mans life savings doesn't seem the right way to go to make that happen.

This is the crux of environmental misalignment in our system. There is not actual tradeable value for environment. Most importantly, how to set a price for a view? In some cases we have comparison for a tourist economy where we value the benifit of a view, but intrinsically we have no way to measure the value of a: Pristine forest Beautiful view Clean lake Healthy aquifer Free space for camping, etc. Future worth?

A carbon tax would put a price on one aspect, no? Same with various EPA fines. It seems like we have mechanisms to do so, it just comes down to whether we leverage them.

Texas is a low service state, so I don't think they'd be interested in subsidizing you unless you want to drill.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/0...

They already benefit from it though? Eg. Wetlands ease flooding during hurricanes, and quality of life improvements by being close to nature without pollution

I could see a one time payment when the restriction is first added, but once it's there, that's priced into the value of the property, and influences who will buy it

Why should tax payers foot the bill for somebody who wants land by the wetlands because they're an avid birder?

I too could get behind a one time payment. That would hopefully prevent landowners deliberately destroying the environment just to prevent it becoming protected.

It might even start a new class of landowner who buy uninteresting land, then cultivate lots of nature and wildlife, then make a profit when the government designates it a nature reserve.

I was just reading about a converse case that involved public land that was effectively "landlocked" by private land. The private landowners had assumed exclusive access to the public land. The case was made that their private land value should be adjusted commensurate with the additional public land value, since they were the only ones with access.

With a «right to roam» law this isn’t a problem. Most land around me is private, but with the right to roam I can move over private land as long as it is not farmland or someone’s house property (garden, parking lot etc). You can also move over grazing land as long as you remember to close the gate and you can move over farmland in winter time. You can also walk through people’s garden if needed to access trails etc. usually land owners have no problem with this and works together with local groups to maintain trails and access to trails. Granted, there’s not very much good farm land here, mostly mountains.

Out of curiosity, where are you located geographically? In the US, property rights generally extend to the right to exclude others.

Norway.

It depends on your conception of what it means to own land. We don’t generally view land ownership as absolute in the way we would for say a coffee mug. In some sense all land is partly owned by society, the deed owner has many rights, but not absolute ownership.

you make it seem like the added complexity is morally sound, but as soon as you start asking about which society, you get into moral troubles

I’m not making a judgment, just explaining the world as it is.

Given that the air and water are shared with surrounding land owners, I have a hard time seeing how else it could be.

There are externalities, but also a sense aside from them that land is special.

Texas & wetland in the same sentence???

Perhaps someone can expound cos I'm a brit. Thanks

Wetlands are like swamps. Texas is a state.

The Texas coast is very long and has several islands, and many wetlands.

If you look at Texas on Google maps or earth.google.com you'll see the west half is very dry and has little vegetation, but the east half is actually quite wet and verdant.

additionally, most of the population is east of the wet/dry line, just as most of the population in the US is as a whole.

the stereotype of dusty, desert Texas applies only to west Texas

The vast majority of the Mexican Gulf coast of the US is relatively swampy. Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida all have extensive areas of swampy wetlands.

If I correctly recall, Houston has frequent issues with flooding because so much of it is built on basically paved over wetlands.

The state of Texas is about three times the size of your country, and as a result, it contains several different ecological systems. There can simultaneously be a hurricane on one side of the state and a drought on the other.

The distance between Houston and Amarillo, both in Texas, is comparable to the distance between London and Berlin. I have driven at highway speeds for 10 hours without leaving Texas before when crossing it east to West.

Interstate 10 crossing Texas (East-West) is 877 miles, 1412 km.

US Highway 83 (N-S) is 906 mi, 1458 km.

I’ve done the whole I-10. It is crazy.

I went to Scotland and couldn't see Big Ben anywhere. Very confusing!

That's just because of all the fog.

Heard an anecdote from an architect in south Texas: if you have land there, and it rains enough, your land can become a protected wetland. Now you can't build on it.

To be fair, there's also a good case for preventing people from building on land to protect ecosystems. We may not need that many rockets, and it's certainly not the only priority for society.

Our tech circles tend to paint a very one-sided picture of the rules just putting roadblocks in front of us, but there's a lot of good examples both of what unregulated progress can do to natural resources, and of preservation efforts making a real difference.

If I was a professional environmentalist/preservationist, I'd be very frustrated with the total lack of empathy by the tech community and their efforts (often cutting-edge science!) getting described as backwards or in the way of progress almost constantly ...

If you were an environmentalist / preservationist, how would you determine where the line is between what’s an appropriate level of resistance versus inappropriate (or what’s fair for spacex vs unfair for the environment)?

I am an environmentalist. The line is that SpaceX is operating a fundamentally unsustainable business. The appropriate level of resistance is that which prevents them from conducting any launches at all. Launching rockets is quite literally the last possible thing we need to achieve a sustainable and equitable future for our planet.

Before you call my opinion fringe/extreme, go ahead and speak to some low-income folks at your local dive bar. You'll most likely find that 90+% of them are vehemently opposed to space missions in general, and especially SpaceX given the absurdity of traveling to Mars when we have so many low-hanging problems to fix here on Earth.

But Elon needs to shake his willy around in public ... why would you seek to oppose that with your vague assertions about the hopes and dreams of ordinary folk here on earth?

You don't think satellites have been a godsend for environmental conservation?

Would banning space development in the U.S. help us actually fix any of those low-hanging problems?

> go ahead and speak to some low-income folks at your local dive bar.

Are low-income folks at a local dive bar particularly knowledgeable about the subtle tradeoffs involved in effective government regulation?

> Are low-income folks at a local dive bar particularly knowledgeable about the subtle tradeoffs involved in effective government regulation?

If they were, they'd be high income. Or be about to be.

> Launching rockets is quite literally the last possible thing we need to achieve a sustainable and equitable future for our planet.

I can think of a long list of other things, starting with nuclear war, that are FAR bigger concerns.

Rarely have I seen such out of touch and vacuous opinions expressed with such surety… ;-)

It's worse than that, SpaceX is a major military contractor which had been working with the Trump administration to stage weapons in low Earth orbit.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23733/spacex-exec-says...

Also see Starshield

Glancing at the article, doesn't it say something very hypothetical and prospective?

SpaceX Exec Says Company Would Launch A Weapon Into Space In ‘Defense Of This Country’

It might not be a hypothetical question for long now that Congress has asked the US military to develop anti-missile defenses in space.

Elon founded SpaceX with Michael D. Griffin and offered him the role of Chief Engineer but he declined. Griffin instead went to Washington to steer NASA funding to SpaceX, before they ever launched any rockets.

Griffin was Chief Architect of the Brilliant Pebbles 'missile defense using weapons in space' program and has been advocating for it his whole life. After NASA, Griffin started the Space Development Agency--what that article is talking about--and gave contracts to SpaceX. When Biden came in he deweaponized everything, and then the lines were clearly drawn between him and Musk.

Check out Michael D. Griffin and also Will Roper.

Anti-missile defences don't really sound like a bad thing to have though?

It has plenty of flaws and would be net destabilizing. "Iron dome in Space" doesn't work when it comes to nuclear weapons. Heck even Iron Dome can't protect against large barrage of small rockets from Gaza. It would just make first-use of nukes more likely.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/space-based-missile-defense...

There's a balance: If you have enough defense to give you first-strike capability (i.e., you could nuke the other side and could destroy their reponse), then it's destabilizing. Other nuclear powers will be very alarmed thinking that you could destroy them at any time.

But you also want to be able to destroy a few rogue missiles, such as from North Korea. If NK nukes Los Angeles, the argument that 'we must adhere 100% to the principle of no missile defense' would be unconvincing.

There are plenty of ground-based missile defense solutions for NK (aircraft and drones near NK are also an option if boost-phase interception is considered critical when their program advances).

The problem with space-based orbital missile defense is it necessarily threatens the entire planet while being predictable and easy to shoot down with relatively small missiles. Those anti-satellites attacks, which are justified by threatened countries, lead to a cascade of space debris, that leaves an unusable space environment for centuries and may in itself trigger nuclear conflict.

Not everything has a technological solution. Staging weapons in space is not a path to world peace, it just heightens the stakes and shortens the escalation. As Israel learned, you can try to seal off your border and your sky, but there are always holes. There are many ways NK or Russia can deliver nukes besides ICBMs. Dreaming of a shield in space is a false promise. Building bridges rather than walls is the only path to peace.

If the U.S. can be a model for the world, it is not it's military might to emulate, but the idea that people of all nationalities and backgrounds can come and live together and resolve their differences. It is possible!

I agree. I temporarily forgot what the topic was and was thinking of missile defense in general and not space-based particularly. My mistake.

> Not everything has a technological solution. ...

> If the U.S. can be a model for the world, it is not it's military might to emulate, but the idea that people of all nationalities and backgrounds can come and live together and resolve their differences. It is possible!

Here I abolutely agree. Even warfare ends with political solutions. It is possible, especially today. It's not the 19th century any more. It just needs us. Thank you for posting that; people need to hear it much more!

> ... the idea that people of all nationalities and backgrounds can come and live together and resolve their differences.

The idea is decent, and Australia has that mostly working ok.

Isn't the the US though well known for it's internal racism issues?

They break MAD, and there's a lot of people that justify the existence of XY,000 nuclear weapons with a yield of ~4,000 MT as 'It's fine, they'll never be used, they prevent war because of MAD.'

If MAD was what was preventing them from being used, and MAD is no longer a thing, it's no longer fine that we have them. Anybody pushing to destabilize that balance of terror is going to need a damn good and through review of that question.

This seems a strange way to say "they'd be amazing because then we could safely decommission some of our nuclear weapons".

And others would interpret it as "We could safely fire our nuclear weapons." And I'm not counting on the guys responsible for building the weapons to decide the more altruistic interpretation.

Maybe, or maybe not. It's complicated.

But what's certain is that it's politically polarized. SDI has support from [some/most?] republicans but not from [most/any?] democrats.

> Before you call my opinion fringe/extreme, go ahead and speak to some low-income folks at your local dive bar.

Now ask them for their opinions on fossil fuels.

> Before you call my opinion fringe/extreme, go ahead and speak to some low-income folks at your local dive bar.

Sorry, I don't mean to be gatekeepery here, but "low income folk at my local bar" is the last demographic I would seek the opinion of on anything scientific or of broader scope than car maintenance.

Anecdotally, my experience is that many of these people love conspiracy theories, and applying "common sense" to global problems like climate change. For example, I've heard these people say that because we got snow in October climate change is a hoax.

Whatever you think of other people's technical opinions, their opinions on the use of common resources, including land, environment, and money, are as valid as yours.

It's easy to rationalize writing off others - for politics, education, etc. - but I find they have insights that I lack, and I learn a lot by listening (and do bad things when I ignore them). Also, they don't go away, and then you're shocked and outraged when the vote doesn't go your way.

> Whatever you think of other people's technical opinions, their opinions on the use of common resources, including land, environment, and money, are as valid as yours.

The government treats them as being equally valid for the purposes of elections (as it should), but that doesn't mean "people at your local dive bar agree with me, therefore I'm right" is a compelling argument

That statement is not compelling unless you are making a claim about something within their expertise, such as their opinions.

Gatekeeping? Nice word to hide your blatant bigotry.

Western environmentalists live blessed lives even as they seek to kick down the ladder for the people of the future in order to promote fiction over reality.

What is the goal of environmentalism? Avoiding short term harm or fostering sustainability in the long term?

You don't think reaching out further into the universe will give more people the pale blue dot viewpoint and could cause more people to care more about earth when they realize how fragile and insignificant it is?

What about moving industry off the earth in the distant future? Wouldn't that be good for earth in the long run?

I would also call myself an environmentalist, yet statements like this are the major reason I've been reluctant to identify as such loudly or often. Misguided environmentalists have for a long time been steadfastly opposed to nuclear energy for example, and I have not.

The on-the-ground reality is that concern for and protection of the natural environment are relatively recent practices and must be balanced against the continued technological and sociological progress of humanity. Otherwise, the answer is easily that the best thing for "the environment" is the complete extinction of humans. While some people may want to give that a serious treatment, I've always wondered why those people don't volunteer to go first.

Likewise, poorer societies produce less pollution than wealthier ones, so environmentalists willing to forego any kind of human progress in favor of protecting the environment should at least consider migrating altogether to countries without telecommunications infrastructure.

We don't yet know what all of the benefits and costs will arise from a lower barrier to space exploration. But, humans exist all over this planet right now because exploration is part of our nature. Rejecting space exploration out of hand is to reject our very nature -- a curious argument, from a naturalist.

> The on-the-ground reality is that concern for and protection of the natural environment are relatively recent practices ...

What do you call "relatively recent"?

GPS has generated over $1.4 trillion in value in the US alone since it was opened up to the public in the 80's [1]. Millions of people use satellite TV and radio. Commercial imaging satellites are used for mapping, weather forecasting, wildfire detection, and scientific research. SpaceX's own Starlink system has revolutionized satellite internet for regions too remote or underdeveloped to be served by traditional internet providers. And who knows what we'll be doing in 50 years! Imagine if we are able to use rockets for point-to-point travel on Earth, or we figure out how to mine asteroids, or if the economics of space-based manufacturing work out.

Also, abusing environmental regulation to set space policy is just straight up a bad idea. It's fine if you think we shouldn't be investing in space, but don't try and force that belief on the rest of us in an undemocratic manner. It's very NIMBY-esque

[1] https://www.space.commerce.gov/doc-study-on-economic-benefit...

NIMBYism has no answer for the department of defense.

SpaceX and the super heavy payloads are a massive massive massive strategic advantage for the defense department. Imagine:

You want a functionally operational combined arms battalion deployed within two hours to the middle of Siberia? And then regularly supplied? Forget about having expensive foreign bases. You can deploy boots on the ground forces within hours.

Starship is a cheap platform for 100-150 tons of ... whatever ... deployed ... whereever ... whenever. To say nothing of orbital battle platforms or other stuff, simply the rapid deployment alone makes SpaceX absolutely critical to US "defense".

I can imagine the US DoD taking renewed interest in those midwestern remote ICBM sites as ready launch sites for rapid deployment forces. That's right, launch from Kansas, land whereever in hours. Australia? Africa? Antarctica? Sure.

Imagine fighting a conventional war and local general thinks they have a US affiliated fighting force pinned down. Suddenly, a combined arms battalion appears right behind his lines. The mobility Starship would provide the US military at very palatable costs is a battlefield revolution.

I don't buy it, for several reasons. In no particular order:

1) 100-150 tons is the estimated payload to LEO, not back down to the ground. For Starship to land (on Earth) it will need to be mostly if not entirely empty.

2) Even if Starship could get that much payload down to the ground, how do you unload vehicles from an upright Starship? A built in crane maybe, but it sounds like a recipe for disaster.

3) Once you land a Starship somewhere remote, how do you get it back? It can't fly back (from Earth). It's too big to realistically airlift unless maybe you have a very large runway nearby for something like a supped up Super Guppy / Airbus Beluga. Do you plan on just leaving this cutting edge hardware in Siberia?

4) Missile defense systems could easily shoot down a Starship landing near enemy territory.

5) Why is this needed? Wars tend to have weeks of warning, at least for those who need to plan them. This is plenty of time for military planners to get their assets prepared to be deployed from nearby military bases or navy ships, both of which America has in spades around the world. American military logistics are already so excellent, there doesn't seem to be much margin for improvement.

Nah, that's never going to happen. Rockets are inherently dangerous. Loading tons of people onto one is gambling with a 1 in 20 chance (possibly higher) that all of them die. Even if nothing goes wrong with the rocket per se, how do you land it somewhere where you don't already have infrastructure, or worse still, in a hot zone? On the best days landing a rocket is a delicate and error-prone procedure, can you imagine if there's someone actively trying to stop you?

>Suddenly, a combined arms battalion appears right behind his lines.

That "suddenly" is pretty funny. Can you imagine trying to sneak up on someone from aboard the loudest vehicle in the world as you're trying to gently guide it to the ground to avoid exploding? If the enemy has SAMs or artillery, your rocket and everyone in it is toast. Even if you successfully land, you better hope you've used all your fuel before the enemy has a chance to start shooting small arms. Even if a mostly empty rocket can't explode, it can still easily be engulfed in flames.

100% of people at dive bar's would hop on a rocket if a civilization ending asteroid was headed for the planet. Asteroids are also bad for the environment.

It's such a bold statement. Building a colony on Mars, in such a harsh environment, is not possible without extreme sustainability. The entire colony's existence will rely on being sustainable.

You don't have free air; you need to find a way to reuse it, or you'll die.

You can't simply source water from a river; if you don't find a way to reuse the same water multiple times, you'll die.

You can't just eat vegetables and rely on cows that graze on open land; if you don't figure out a way to produce food without using vast expanses of land, you'll perish.

You can't just build a house from a few sticks from the nearest forest or rely on minimal heating from drilled gas or oil. If you don't find a way to protect against radiation and heat your home efficiently, you'll die.

You can't rely solely on oil for energy; if you can't move between structures, sooner or later, you'll die.

Mars represents a global rethinking of our entire way of living, pivoting to a sustainability-only approach.

In many cases, the sustainable approach is also cheaper. After all, reusing resources tends to be more economical. Consider solar energy as an example. It's booming not just because of its environmental benefits, but because it's cost-effective.

And why are we building solar panels? Because NASA needed it before for space exploration.

So when I hear, "Let's not focus on space; let's fix Earth," I can't help but think of a Luddite who's inadvertently advocating for our planet to remain in its current, unsustainable state.

Politics is the art of the possible.

"Lets fix Earth". The issue is the small wee number (what, almost 8 billion) of humans on the Earth and getting them to cooperate. So far, notsomuch, and the beloved economic structure to every Hacker News, capitalism, does not have practical structures to accomodate conservation, environmentalism, restraint, or valuation of nature.

Capitalism essentially is a structure that maximizes resource use. The entire ruling elite was determined by the winners of capitalism, and their psychology is not of rational restraint, respect of the world, respect of others, or even respect for their children.

Capitalism has a side game of converging to maximal sociopathy for the individual (greed is good, selfish is good per microeconomics, that is the definition of a rational consumer) while not overly crashing the whole system, except maybe after the next quarter's earnings report.

Capitalism and the "economics intelligentsia" have no workable theory for transitioning our current economic structure to a different one. The notion of an "externality" (note that the verbiage directly places concerns of environmentalism and long term survival as a phenomenon outside/external to the functioning of economics) has only existed in a widespread fashion in the last decades, and really only begrudgingly to address the impending reality of global warming. Thus, there is no real development of economic (and certainly no practical political ones) to transition to some restrained model.

The current economic plan: let it get so bad that the actual supply/demand curves of markets are "disrupted" enough. This probably means war, famine, displacement of billions, loss of arable and livable land, etc.

The fact the elite have increased their wealth share shows that since the rise of widespread science on sustainability, the power structure has doubled down on sociopathy, selfishness, denialism, and procrastination.

This is not good. The only positive trend is the miraculous fact that EV drivetrains and solar/wind turned out to be cheaper than ICE/fossil fuels once sufficient infrastructure and research had been performed.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, stops habitat destruction, soil erosion, squandering of water resources, pollution, and mass extinctions.

Happy days!

Good job making environmentalism sounds like nonsense. Sometimes I wonder if takes like these are planted by the coal industry so that real environmental concerns are taken less seriously. But that's enough conspiracy theories for today

Those same people will microwave a meal for dinner and then make breakfast eggs on an anon-stick Teflon pan the next morning.

Modern trope rendition of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_on_the_Moon

You’ll also find that 90+% don’t care about research into basic science at all, art preservation, art creation, environmental preservation, or even obscure medical research.

It’s a bad signal because it’s from a bunch of reactionary people.

I would draw the line at being able to maintain a steady-state ecosystem in perpetuity.

We, uh, have yet to meet that line in most of the world. Pretty much anyone draining an aquifer, or having to import more soil nutrients than are produced by their land year-over-year, is doing something that's unsustainable.

> maintain a steady-state ecosystem in perpetuity

Impossible. It's not how the universe works.

> Impossible. It's not how the universe works.

The degree to which we normalize unsustainable industrial activities is impressive.

We're not talking about the heat death of the universe here. Industrial society (especially industrial agriculture) is counting down toward auto-destruct sequence on a time scale of decades, not billions of years. Look at trendlines for soil erosion, aquifer depletion, cadmium soil buildup, land salinification, etc.

It's oddly one-sided how people always ask if sustainable agriculture can replace industrial agriculture. By the very definition of the word "unsustainable," industrial agriculture cannot replace industrial agriculture.

The impact of rockets is a tiny speck by comparison. In this case rockets will effectively preempt the slow encroach from land privatization lobbying and housing development, which would be far (far!) more destructive to the wetlands than the occasional rocket detonation or ten...

Anyone who loves preserving wilderness should love rocket launch sites, as shown by the history of Cape Canaveral vs surrounding land.

Whoa. You believe that soil and aquifer issues will lead to society's destruction in a matter of decades? What evidence supports that belief?

> You believe

Not just me, this is the mainstream business-as-usual expectation. Collapse of breadbasket regions tends to be a Very Bad Thing.

What did you think "unsustainable" meant anyway?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...

https://theconversation.com/farmers-are-depleting-the-ogalla...

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458

> will lead to society's destruction

Technically by "self-destruct" I mean that the agriculture system destroys itself, by somehow undermining its own mechanisms of support. How much of 'society' gets pulled down with it? That's up to us to decide.

Are you aware that less than 6% of US farmland is irrigated, and only half of irrigated farmland (3% of total) uses groundwater?

97% of our farmland uses no groundwater. None.

If US lost 3% of its agricultural output tomorrow, we'd still be growing more food than we can possibly eat; still be filling our cars with a mix of gasoline and corn liquor as we do today.

Perhaps I should have asked this question instead: Is there any evidence that would cause you to change your belief that society is on the brink of collapse, or is that belief unfalsifiable like religious faith?

What about total amount of viable farmland? How much of that amount do those 6% constitute?

How much of farmland is situated close to cities (main cause of aquifer deterioration)? Would that farmland still have enough water after aquifers are caput?

My takeaway was that 97% of US farmland would be unaffected by aquifer collapse. The 3% that would be affected (and that's assuming every aquifer in the country goes dry, which is not at risk of happening) those farms might become completely nonviable, or they might be able to shift to less water intensive crops and methods. In either case, aquifer collapse is not a significant threat to our food supply.

Nonetheless, it is prudent to preserve those water sources.

re: farms near cities, I think it varies a lot by region. Growing thirsty crops near LA is going to be a lot harder than near Houston.

Soil erosion and other forms of degradation is bound to affect billions of people until 2050 [1].

Groundwater degradation is just as bad of an issue - in the US [2], in Europe [3] and APAC regions [4]. The sole exception is Africa, but if they follow the same pathway as everyone else in exploiting and managing it, it's not going to be sufficient [5].

[1] https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/lln-20... (full report: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/LLN-...)

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groun...

[3] https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conserv...

[4] https://www.asiapathways-adbi.org/2022/11/the-invisible-wate...

[5] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-africa-aquifers-scarcity.html

(offtopic: this is how I would ask GPT4)

Exactly. Keeping wetlands intact is very important for climate change, because draining them releases a shit ton of greenhouse gases. Of course, it's also important for biodiversity.

Nobody is draining wetlands at starbase.

And the only reason for that is because they're protected lands.

No it’s not. It’s a dumb thing to do from a construction perspective.

there was (yes was) lots of protected wetland near me, but the right politicians friends wanted it for warehousing now its no longer there... apparently it's ok to remove it for some projects just not others? who you know kinda thing in my experience

Right, but the problem with that is corruption, not regulation.

yes but regulation in the power of the corrupted is worse loose/no regulation . I've not seen a solution to the corruption problem, and I've seen even the nicest most altruistic get into politics later in their careers and become corrupted. regulation can hurt more than it helps in practice even if it seems in theory it is only a tool of good

> I was a professional environmentalist/preservationist, I'd be very frustrated with the total lack of empathy by the tech community and their efforts (often cutting-edge science!) getting described as backwards or in the way of progress almost constantly ...

Please list out all of the other wetlands being destroyed by space exploration. Then list them as a percentage of global wetlands or list out what would be endangered by this one location being used as a launch site.

The state has pretty significant water security issues. You have 30 million people and a 178 million acres of agricultural production.

Maintaining some basic protections on remaining wetlands is probably a good idea.

There are many things society can do without. Water is not one of them.

I would say this is true....

But then, Texas politics is Texas politics, so I wouldn't be surprised if there indeed turned out to be significant abuse of protections laws for political gain...

A swamp near seashore is not going to help to provide water for people or agriculture. The whole seashore is covered with swamps like this that do not have any particularly interesting ecosystems.

It's worth noting that a recent Supreme Court decision, Sackett v EPA, has somewhat curtailed the more... creative wetland designations.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-454_4g15.pdf

It's actually kind of disgusting how transparently the EPA has been playing their hand to maximize exploitable/monetizable authority and jurisdictional area without regard for real environmental concerns, development impact, or indeed their own legal mandate.

There's absolutely an element of that organization that doesn't care either way what happens to the environment or community, they just want infinite authority under the guise of environmental protection so that you to have a reason to bribe them.

> maximize exploitable/monetizable authority and jurisdictional area

You're implying corruption for monetary gain, that is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.

Of course, Texas is notoriously pro conservation and definitely not full of people who would complain about any sort of environmental protection given the chance.

Conservation in many places is about bribe-extraction and using it as a political weapon. The environment is just a useful cover

> likely based on political favoritism.

I'll be that person and ask "do you have evidence of this"?

Nope! At least, not really. Not evidence that I would find persuasive, anyway. I can only tell you that I know of a few stories from individuals who tried to get things built on their own property and hit impenetrable walls of bureaucracy at every juncture, while the next patch of land over is suddenly being developed into a $2 billion industrial plant of some kind by GloboOil.

The hypothesis that "money talks" is usually enough to explain stuff like this. Perhaps instead of political favoritism I should have simply said corporate power is always able to find a way around such obstacles and the little guy never is.

That entire category of laws are commonly used to apply selective leverage. NIMBYs love this one trick. They can be selectively waived too. In fact earlier this month the Biden administration waived 26 laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration...

The laws waived:

National Environmental Policy Act

Endangered Species Act

Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act)

National Historic Preservation Act

Migratory Bird Treaty Act

Migratory Bird Conservation Act

Clean Air Act

Archeological Resources Protection Act

Paleontological Resources Preservation Act

Safe Drinking Water Act

Noise Control Act

Solid Waste Disposal Act

Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act

Antiquities Act

Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act

Farmland Protection Policy Act

National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act

National Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956

Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act

National Trails System Act

Administrative Procedure Act

Eagle Protection Act

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

American Indian Religious Freedom Act

Federal Land Policy and Management Act

Humans using the land for recreation are far more destructive to wetlands than occasional rocket launches. Canaveral and Vandenburg have become de-facto protected wildlife refuges because humans with guns keep other humans away from them.

I know that if I was a turtle at Boca Chica I would rather deal with the occasional rocket launch than the ATV's that also use the beach.

I was under the impression that regular use of rocket fuel made a lot of land extremely toxic.

It depends on the fuel, and the number of leaks (the latter usually being relatively high). Some fuels such as hydrazine and red fuming nitric acid are indeed quite dangerous, but Starship mostly uses methane and oxygen.

I figure it would depend on the rocket fuel. LOX and Liquid Hydrogen/Methane probably isn't so bad, stuff like hydrazine I could imagine wouldn't be great.

But hydrazine makes for a great ingredient in bottled water!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/10/05/real-w...

Why would you think that methane is toxic? I know the average american knows nothing about even 6th grade chemistry but these kind of comment pop up on every thread about rockets.

> The average american...

Ah, yes, as we all know, Americans are unique in the entire world for their lack of knowledge of chemistry.

https://www.google.com/search?q=is+methane+toxic

We are unique in that we pay 10x as much to know as little as we do.

>Two of six mice exposed to 70% methane in air died in 18 min, whereas mice exposed to 70% nitrogen in air developed only ataxia. Animals exposed to 50-90% methane in oxygen showed mild depression and a marked decrease in locomotion, but no ataxia. Thus, the toxic effect of methane is much greater than that of nitrogen when available oxygen is low, but methane has little effect when oxygen is readily available.

It seems that the toxicity of methane should be discussed not alone, but rather with respect to the partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere in question.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK208285/#:~:text=Thus%2....

https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice

What is “70% nitrogen in air”?

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

“As of 2023, by mole fraction (i.e., by number of molecules), dry air contains 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.”

Did they take out nitrogen, added 7 parts nitrogen to 10 parts of air, use something else than mole fraction, …?

I guess by that measure sandwiches are toxic because if you replace someone's water intake with sandwiches they'll die.

Which rocket fuel? There's so many different ones. Methalox engines produce water vapor. Kerolox engines use refined kerosene, so lots of soot and your regular fossil fuel combustion byproducts. And then there's the hypergols, which are indeed, incredibly toxic.

That'd require:

1) regular spills of fuel, that

2) aren't burnt up in the air before they hit the ground and

3) are liquid, not gaseous, and

4) are hypergolic.

Boca Chica doesn't have any of those 4 requirements.

1) Fuel spills happen as a regular part of working with fuels (leaking pipes, loose fittings, safety purges, general clumsiness, etc) not just rocket explosions.

2) Even if a rocket explodes in the air it is unlikely all of its propellant will completely burn up (fuels aren't mixed, the ratios are optimized for a specific combustion conditions, and there are multiple tanks, etc), and there are many failure modes besides "massive explosion"

3) Just because the main component of a fuel will boil off eventually doesn't mean chemicals added to the propellant or produced in side reactions will

4) Hypergolic just means chemicals spontaneously combust on contact with one another; it has nothing to do with environmental risk.

> 3) Just because the main component of a fuel will boil off eventually doesn't mean chemicals added to the propellant or produced in side reactions will

What do you have in mind that exists in quantities large enough to make things "extremely toxic"?

> 4) Hypergolic just means chemicals spontaneously combust on contact with one another; it has nothing to do with environmental risk.

Nothing except if you look at the actual list of rocket fuels that get used.

> What do you have in mind that exists in quantities large enough to make things "extremely toxic"?

I don't know where you are quoting "extremely toxic" from but even small quantities of toxic chemicals can be cause for concern.

> Nothing except if you look at the actual list of rocket fuels that get used.

Just because a square's a rectangle doesn't make a rectangle a square. Hypergolics are toxic does not equal non-hypergolics are non-toxic. For example, hydrazine monopropellant.

> I don't know where you are quoting "extremely toxic" from but even small quantities of toxic chemicals can be cause for concern.

Look up a couple comments in the thread. "I was under the impression that regular use of rocket fuel made a lot of land extremely toxic."

And we can't just assume there are harmful additives in meaningful quantities.

> Just because a square's a rectangle doesn't make a rectangle a square. Hypergolics are toxic does not equal non-hypergolics are non-toxic. For example, hydrazine monopropellant.

Okay, technically it spontaneously decomposes upon contact with a catalyst. That's so close to the definition of hypergolic.

Also it was pretty clear what they were saying. You can nitpick the wording, but their underlying point is still valid. SpaceX isn't using toxic fuels.

> And we can't just assume there are harmful additives in meaningful quantities.

No one's assuming there are, but the onus is to prove that there aren't.

> Okay, technically it spontaneously decomposes upon contact with a catalyst. That's so close to the definition of hypergolic.

But that's not WHY it is toxic. A substance can be not only non-hypergolic, it could be completely non-flammable and still be toxic, like say Carbon Tetrachloride, which is why the parent comment that I was replying to saying "since it's not hypergolic, it's therefore not toxic" is wrong, which was the thing I was trying to correct. SpaceX isn't using toxic fuels, but not because they are not using hypergolic fuels.

> No one's assuming there are, but the onus is to prove that there aren't.

For an environmental assessment, yes. For someone casually arguing against the area becoming "extremely toxic" then we should need a reason to suspect large amounts of very bad additives.

> But that's not WHY it is toxic.

Yeah but nobody said that.

The post was giving reasons the area isn't being made toxic, and one of those reasons is because out of the list of normal rocket fuels only the hypergolic ones are terrible, and they're not using those fuels.

It's fine to point out that it's not directly because of hypergolic or not (though there are strong correlations based on how reactive things are), but it doesn't affect the actual point they were making. You made it sound like a rebuttal when it's not a rebuttal. At worst they worded it badly.

> 4) Hypergolic just means chemicals spontaneously combust on contact with one another; it has nothing to do with environmental risk.

Lmao, what are some hypergolic propellants that aren't toxic? They're insanely reactive by their very nature, that means they will react and fuck with anything that's alive. They're intrinsically incredibly toxic.

Just because hypergolics are toxic doesn't mean non-hypergolics are non-toxic, which was my point.

That being said, there are plenty of propellants used as part of hypergolic combinations that aren't toxic. For example, oxygen, used as part of the hypergolic ignition system for SpaceX's merlin engines.

Liquid oxygen as a hypergolic propellant? No. Rockets do not use liquid oxygen as a hypergolic propellant.

Merlin engines combine TEA-TEB with liquid oxygen to start the engines but do not use TEA-TEB as a propellant. TEA-TEB also spontaneously ignites with air; that shit is insane but you deliberately chose not to mention TEA-TEB because you know TEA-TEB would fuck you up (presuming you could even consume it without catching fire first!) Leaving out such a pertinent detail leaves it hard to believe you're not arguing in bad faith.

Why are we even talking about hypergolic propellants? Because a fear mongering comment upthread suggested that rocket propellants are extremely toxic. Scratch hyperbolic propellants off the list and what are you left with? Kerosene, methane, hydrogen, and oxygen. None of these present a significant toxicity threat, the worse of them is kerosene which can contaminate the soil and groundwater but all of the others vaporize harmlessly. So the fear monger was trying to cash in on the toxic reputation of hypergolic propellants to insinuate that Starship presents such a threat itself. This is complete nonsense, a bad faith argument that even a single minute of research can refute.

> Liquid oxygen as a hypergolic propellant? No. Rockets do not use liquid oxygen as a hypergolic propellant.

No, I said they use liquid oxygen as a propellant, and they use liquid oxygen as a hypergolic. The fact that this doesn't make LOX a hypergolic propellant is precisely my point.

> TEA-TEB also spontaneously ignites with air

> you know TEA-TEB would fuck you up

EXACTLY. Hypergolic is a property of the combination of chemicals, toxicity is a poroperty of a single chemical. Air is non toxic no matter what you combine it with. TEA-TEB is toxic no matter what you combine it with. Air being hypergolic with TEA-TEB does not suddenly make it toxic, nor does it suddenly make TEA-TEB non-toxic.

I'm not arguing in bad faith, you just are fundamentally misunderstanding what point I am trying to make, which again is that hypergolicity != toxicity. No more, no less.

> Scratch hyperbolic propellants off the list and what are you left with? Kerosene, methane, hydrogen, and oxygen.

You are repeating the misunderstanding about hypergolicity. Scratch propellants that can be used in hypergolic combinations off the list and you have nothing. Scratch hypergolic propallant COMBINATIONS off the list, and you still have non-hypergolic combinations of all those highly toxic propellants. Methane and oxygen are both non-toxic, but that has nothing to do with the fact that they need an ignition source to burn with one another.

"Now it is clear that anyone working with rocket fuels is outstandingly mad. I don’t mean garden-variety crazy or a merely raving lunatic. I mean a record-shattering exponent of far-out insanity.

There are, after all, some chemicals that explode shatteringly, some that flame ravenously, some that corrode hellishly, some that poison sneakily, and some that stink stenchily. As far as I know, though, only liquid rocket fuels have all these delightful properties combined into one delectable whole."

Isaac Asimov, from the leading words to John D. Clark's "Ignition!"

While technically true, in rocketry - where the term was born - "hypergolic" mostly mean "of hydrazine family", which are (almost all extremely) toxic.

So it's a moot point to talk about the fine print. What was meant is that SpaceX doesn't pollute the land with poisonous fuel of the Starship, and the one argument is that the fuel isn't poisonous to begin with.

(And I'd really like to know what kind of additive would be in liquid methane - medium cryogenic - which Musk hopes to keep adding on Mars and which is toxic.)

Methane is gas, liquified methane spills evaporate and go to atmosphere. Not perfect, but no land poisoning either.

SpaceX does use hydrazine-related components in Dragon and Crew Dragon, but they don't launch from Boca Chica (and rather small by mass) - AFAIK Starship is planned to be 100% methane-oxygen vehicle, justification for Mars flight.

That's mainly a hypergolic fuel thing.

The goal with Starship is to try to use Methalox everywhere so that's the only thing that needs to be resupplied. Long term this would be meaningful for ISRU, but short term this would be meaningful for in-space refueling and propellant depots. A more typical approach of using different fuel types for different things would create all sorts of restrictions on capabilities and would make in-space refueling more complicated.

Depends on the rocket fuel. Oxygen, methane, hydrogen are basically completely non-toxic. RP-1 is a pure form of kerosene and is non-toxic enough that it doesn't need special handling. Hydrazine, fuming nitric acid, nitrogen tetroxide... basically all hypergolic propellants are absurdly toxic.

The SpaceX tests at Boca Chica have been almost entirely oxygen, methane, and RP-1.

I don't think the plan is an occasionally rocket launch long term. I think the plan is to launch rockets as fast as humanly possible.

Not from Boca. Boca is a testing grounds, since they aren't allowed to test elsewhere.

Boca Chica is a test facility. SpaceX is only allowed 5 launches of the StarShip second stage, and 5 launches of the full stack each year (page 17 in [1]). More frequent launches will require a new environmental review. They plan production launches to occur out of Florida, and have already begun permitting and building of a launch site there.

[1]https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-06/PEA_for_Spac...

They've built Starbase there, with all the rocket assembly facilities and the new expansions. Unless they're planning on shipping all the rockets via barge, I think it's safe to assume they'll send them to Florida by launching from Boca Chica.

Why not ship by barge? It'll be far cheaper than the fees, costs and labour costs associated with a rocket launch. Both Brownsville and Cape Canaveral are well set up for barge shipping.

Also, they're expanding their factory in Florida, so they could be built on site.

There's that protected-from-open-ocean barge lane (I forget what it's called?) that I think runs right from Brownsville to Cape Canaveral, or close enough, I think they plan on using that.

Edit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracoastal_Waterway

Sure you could ship by barge. It's just that SpaceX has never said that's the plan. Looking at the expanding factory footprint at Boca Chica, it's obvious that this isn't just a test facility, but a production facility. My hunch is that the current limits of 5 per year will be expanded once they prove it "safe" to launch from the site. They'll boil that frog slowly.

They will be barging ships to Florida, and long term when you have multiple launches per day, they will be launching the ships from barges.

They've pretty much scrapped their initial plans to use old oil platforms for launches, and the size of a barge needed to launch (and retrieve the first stage) would be tremendous. That idea is a complete non-starter.

They did scrap their initial plans, because they won’t need that capability until they’re launching like 1000 times per year. That might not be until one or two decades from now. Would it make sense to try to maintain that capability starting now and then just let it rest for two decades.

They have mentioned recently that they do still plan to go to barge launching when they get to 1000 flights per year.

The idea is not crazy, at least not any more than anything else related to Starship. But it is not needed right now.

While you maybe be right, I just want to note that SpaceX isn't just expanding factory footprint at Boca Chica. They will be manufacturing Starship in Florida as well and have already started expanding there too.

They're building factories at Cape Canaveral too, the Starbase facilities have been designated as prototyping facilities. Any changes to production would be made , tested and optimized there first, then brought over to other production facilities like Cape Canaveral. Although initially they might still have to transport boosters and ships via barge to the cape.

The facilities at Starbase are far more than prototyping facilities. If that were the case, they wouldn't have needed a Megabay and be almost completely finished building a second. They would have just stood pat with the High Bay etc. Same with the new buildings replacing the temporary tents. Starbase will be cranking out LOTS of boosters and Starships.

When I say prototyping facilities, I mean as prototyping for the other factories. As Musk has previously said, since they want to mass produce Starships and boosters, the challenge is to design "the machine that builds the machine". That's why I mentioned changes to production being tested and optimized there rather than changes to the vehicles specifically.

Has Musk, Shotwell or anyone at SpaceX ever said that this was the case? I haven't seen any sign of this at all. And again, if Starbase was just for prototyping workflows, there's no need for two Megabays.

I could've sworn that Musk mentioned that Starbase would be mainly relegated to prototyping after the FAA limited them to 5 launches/year out of there. I think it was in the presentation where they announced the plans to work with T-Mobile? I'll see if I can dig it up later.

Far more? … <laughs in Union Carbide>

Quick, name the date of the event? Without checking the sources? Not 9/11, right?

Chernobyl also demonstrates this effect that humans avoiding the place are beneficial to the wildlife. While both Bhopal and Chernobyl events are pretty horrible, I think the GP has a point.

Locals probably know the date.

I got the year for Bhopal correct, I didn't bother trying to guess the day or month (mostly luck, but I remember that I was younger).

I guessed 1989 for Chernobyl, at least I got the decade correct (remember it happened in either Jr High or High school for me).

I was a year off for the Challenger disaster (I remember riding the school bus to high school when it happened which narrows it down to about 3 years).

More generally, if our goal is to help a certain type of environment, let's do that.

Let Musk buy up land a few miles away, convert it to more wetlands w/government help, permanently endow & protect it. The gov't could get 10x as much land protected as before - in exchange for giving up the few small acres near the launch facility.

It seems like everyone wins this way! Musk & SpaceX can do their work, environmental protection of land for the future & birds etc. has improved locally and nationally on net. The only ones who don't win are the bureaucrats who have approval over other people's productive work. So... this type of deal rarely ever happens.

1) There are a couple of minorly endangered species near the launch site, so EPA, FWS would be involved anyway.

2) the FAA's concern is protection of humans, and the FAA is the lead agency.

When I took the tour of Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral several years ago I was kind of shocked by the number of alligators there. It was a bit jarring to see a Space Shuttle on the launch pad and alligators all over the roads. Some armadillos and lots of birds as well.

I’ve noticed that too, it’s infested with alligators. They get under cars in the parking lot. Walking up to a deep hiss emanating from beneath your car is a bit unnerving.

I recall an article that part of the prep work for shuttles landing in Florida included the usual "Foreign Object Debris" walk through to check the surface for things that might be a problem for the shuttle... but that this often included needing to wrangle alligators (sleeping in the sun on the nice warm tarmac :-)

> I know that if I was a turtle at Boca Chica I would rather deal with the occasional rocket launch than the ATV's that also use the beach.

If only it were that simple. If the occasional rocket launch is what causes that turtle's species to go extinct because it damages the shells of their eggs or the bright light disrupts their mating schedule or whatever that is all that matters to the turtle.

If only there was some multi-year programmatic environmental assessment that could be performed by experts in the field to determine whether this would occur or what mitigations would ameliorate the concern...[1]

Nah, that's crazy talk. Instead let's just speculate wildly.

[1] https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-06/PEA_for_Spac...

Boca Chica is possibly the best launch location in the entire USA. Not many people realize that it is at the same latitude as Miami!

The major issue with Boca Chica was the (literal) handful of residents who lived there, some of which refused to move when SpaceX first came around with offers to buy their land. I don't know what is the current status of them.

Is latitude the only prerequisite for a good launch location?

When doing eastbound launches the rotation of the Earth gives you some free starting velocity. This free velocity is higher the closer you are to the equator. Also helpful in eastward launches is ocean to the east of the launch site. If something goes wrong and your rocket crashes the debris is likely to hit uninhabited water rather than a suburb.

The bonus velocity you get for launching further south can end up increasing payload mass by significant percentages or giving a smaller mass more velocity to achieve higher orbits with the same amount of fuel.

Latitude and also having ocean to the east so if something goes wrong, you can abort and not worry about debris falling on people.

I think the issues are political. Musk hasnt done himself any favors, it seems every person has a very strong opinion of him and therefore spacex, Tesla, and X. I’m sure there’s lots of “whoopsies” going on in the agencies looking at the launch license where approvals, reviews, or even emails stay in the todo pile for weeks. One dedicated person could double the time spent at any stage in the process.

This is why most CEOs and politicians never talk publicly except what the PR team and lawyers have carefully reviewed. When they give speeches they are written well in advance and carefully practiced. Once in a while a CEO or politician does and people at first like the candidness, but eventually (see Musk, Trump) they say something that someone doesn't like. Everyone has and thinks such thoughts that make us look really bad, but most of us get away with it because nobody is listening.

> This is why most CEOs and politicians never talk publicly except what the PR team and lawyers have carefully reviewed.

TBH, I find this sad. I remember when Marcus Lemonis got into trouble for a fairly benign off-hand remark. It really drove home the point how fickle people could be at the slightest perceived slight.

Then add the media that loves to fan the flames and it ends up being a really unfortunate system.

We need to find a way to get people back to honest and open dialogue.

>We need to find a way to get people back to honest and open dialogue.

When have humans EVER had honest and open dialogue about anything?

Every once in a while enough people die that the remaining living choose not to kill each other. We call it being a liberal, and it doesn't happen very often (most people confuse liberal with other political stances that at one time liberals also commonly held, but these days most people we call liberal are not)

I feel sorry for you if you think the answer is never

Plenty of people have had open and honest dialog, but those people rarely if ever make it into history books.

Well, many tech company owners and CEOs have been clearly supporting and voting democrat, yet no one ever thinks that’s a major issue, including republicans who use their companies. Facebook openly helped Obama with data, Schmidt was a massive Hillary supporter, Bezos is completely left wing, etc etc.

Seems like the intolerance of the left goes a lot further and is a lot more effective.

Amazing that the one time a tech billionaire is vocal about their views which lean right (sorry, second after thiel), suddenly everyone wants politics out of boardrooms?

Why is this restricted to "tech" billionaires? Republicans aren't lacking in billionaire supporters from other industries.

Do Republicans start a lot of tech companies?

There is no shortage of Republican billionaires having their way with American politics for personal gain and anyone who is paying attention is repulsed by it.

Look at Harold Hamm of Continental Resources oil company. He was asked to be Trump's energy secretary but he didn't want to leave the company he started which made him worth $25 billion.

Instead he has a superpac that funds Republican candidates and causes, and he flies his jet to Washington to schmooze politicians into supporting the oil industry through policy making.

He busses employees to the capital and hands them signs to protest bills which would raise taxes on the oil industry.

He emailed employees encouraging them to vote against medical marijuana because it's corrupting society.

I wanted politics out of boardrooms a long time ago!

Cape Canaveral wasn't a super attractive location in 1950 either; swamps, hurricanes, a lot of mosquitoes, hot summers.

But, same as Boca Chica, it is on US soil, relatively close to the Equator and you can launch rockets eastwards over the sea. And in both cases, closures of the sea for launches don't disrupt important sea lanes.

These days launching East isn't that important as it used to be at the height of the Space Race. However some 1/5 payload advantage is still interesting, so the factor is definitely taken into account.

Any launch site needs to be in the CONUS, as far South as possible, and not subject to complaining neighbors.

Boca Chica is perfect.

They looked at the other sites, as a requirement of the EIS and PEA. There are none better. The only other places already have people or are also basically protected reserves or whatever. You know of any prime beach real estate that DOESNT have people? SpaceX would gladly develop that instead! There are none. And the Florida launch site (already reaching capacity and not a suitable site for prototype testing) is, of course, also a wildlife refuge.

Are there any alternatives in the continental USA?

Will the super heavy need to launch from as near to the equator as possible? Or does it require higher latitudes?

Any possibility of going outside Continental USA? A boat? Mexico?

Converted oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico:

https://spaceexplored.com/2021/07/07/update-on-spacexs-gulf-...

Elon recently admitted (again) the planned frequency of Starship launches could be too high even to Cape Canaveral (10/day), so ocean-based launch platform may become necessity. By the same logic Boca Chica doesn't look like a long-term high-frequency launch place.

It does scream 'Research and Development' site way more than literal spaceport. If they get all the other issues fixed and the rockets are mostly reusable it might still be good enough as a production line.

I'm pretty sure ITAR prevents US companies from exporting orbital rocket technology, as it's dual-use. Any government with access to a SpaceX rocket could learn a lot about how to develop long range missiles.

There’s a launch site in the Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands, and I’m pretty sure we don’t share tech with them. The ESA probably doesn’t share tech with the countries who host launches, IIRC they are French “territories” anyway.

I'd be wary of putting anything on an island chain like the Marshall Island. Their max elevation is only 10 meters and it's only going to get worse and they'll be hard pressed to build the sea walls needed to keep your space port open.

It also doesn't solve the ITAR issues which are strict when it comes to rocket technology because it's so close to the tech needed for ICBMs.

Unless I'm missing something, the ESA does its launches from overseas France in French Guyana and since France takes part in building the Ariane rockets, they would already have access to the tech

It's not feasible to transport Starship or Super Heavy halfway across the Pacific. Even if you could, the launch site on Omelek Island is part of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site[1] which is controlled by the US military. The Republic of the Marshall Islands never has access to the restricted technology.

It's hard to overstate how restrictive ITAR is. For example, ITAR covers generation 3 night vision devices. The US is hesitant to allow their export to allies, even for peaceful purposes.[2] When I bought a night vision device, I had to sign an acknowledgement that I wouldn't take it out of the country or even allow non-citizens to look through it (even on US soil). People caught violating these rules can be imprisoned for years.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Ballistic_Missil...

2. From page 10 of https://www.aviation.govt.nz/assets/publications/vector/Vect... "New Zealand operators must ensure restricted access to the goggles to comply with the US requirements."

ITAR feels... outdated. Mate recently went from boat building to rocket building by acquisition. Suddenly place got retinal scans and wireless buttplugs, even tho they've been building same thing for months now.

SpaceX's first launch attempts "were launched from Kwajalein Atoll using the SpaceX launch facility on Omelek Island and range facilities of the Reagan Test Site."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1

There is also the "Kodiak Launch Complex (KLC), is a dual-use commercial and military spaceport for sub-orbital and orbital launch vehicles." Private companies Astra and ABL Space Systems have launched from it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Spaceport_Complex_%E2%...

They gave up on Kwaj mostly from the terrible logistics and corrosive environment though. If it was hard getting an F1 there, I can't imagine the pain of assembling Starship...

Yes, even Alaska is a bit much. I think south Texas is a great spot along with KSC, Vandenburg and Wallops Island VA.

In the big picture though, given part of Starship's goal is intercontinental travel, spaceflight will happen to and from everywhere on the globe.

Rumour is that SpaceX was seriously considering Puerto Rico before it secured the Boca Chica location.

USA (!) company Sea Launch managed to launch Zenit rockets from equator, so here's the precedent...

The Spaceport Company is also trying to develop a system for providing near coastal ocean launch facilities that they call it Spaceport as a Service. Their team includes a person who helped to write the Part 450 regulations while at the FAA previously.

https://thespaceportcompany.com/

IIRC it was Boeing and about a half of ex-USSR space industry. So not exactly or even mostly USA. I had a girlfriend back then whose father worked on the program. Great times those 1990s.

Yeah, that was a bit odd - the main part Boeing - seemingly! - provided was the connection to the markets and to the regulatory environment. The rocket was Ukrainian, with Russian engine and a booster stage, and the launch platform was of Norway origin. But the company was still based in USA.

It isn't completely out of the question, Rocketlab has a launch site in New Zealand for instance. But, it does involve a lot of red tape, making it more expensive and less easy to move fast with. Probably also comes with a pretty limited list of options of significant US allies in stable regions (a large number of which likely aren't meaningfully cheaper/less regulated).

Closer to the equator makes it easier to achieve an equatorial orbit and some slight benefits from the initial speed of the Earth's rotation but Super Heavy is so ridiculously over sized it doesn't need it. Things like the ISS are highly inclined so they're easier to reach from Russia's launch site as your latitude is essentially the default inclination you're be in when you hit orbit without spending the fuel to change it.

Coastal is still better from the perspective of being able to safely abort. The further inland you go the more risk you run of failed launches resulting in big pieces of the craft coming down over populated areas.

Isn’t the Space Coast launch site in Florida in the middle of protected wetlands?

I don’t think the area around Boca Chica is very important and the land around is not special or worth more than having a launch facility.

Protected wetlands are the best places to put launch sites, just look at cape canaveral / KSC, the wildlife is doing great there

This is literally true, you shouldn’t be downvoted. Rockets keep the humans away.

That's really not true, there's not a lot of open east-facing coastland anywhere in the US. Basically all coastlands are protected!

The only "safe" place to launch is in Florida on land that was grandfathered into being an EPA-free zone back in the 1960s by NASA.

Almost like regulatory capture is a real thing.

East facing also isn't even remotely a requirement for a launch, Israel launches westward on a regular basis

Launching westward - on the Earth, from a non-polar site, to non-polar orbits - carries a large delta-v penalty, which translates into a huge payload penalty.

And they lose about 20% of their cargo capacity because they're fighting the Earth's spin rather than taking advantage of it.

It's not like the west coast has large stretches of undeveloped unprotected land either.

The only real alternative is Alaska, and that's suboptimal for other reasons.

They aren't launching West because they want to, but because they _have_ to. A quick peek at the map will tell you why.

Launching westwards is working against the rotation of Earth, not the cheapest approach. Israel just does not have a large body of water, or a,large desert, to let the spent booster descend (or crash) into. I bet their launches all turn eastwards after reaching sufficient altitude.

You'd lose your bet :( .

That's pretty crazy. I'll check out.

Being able to launch from somewhere does not make that place an optimal location.

Corporations aren't entitled to optimality at the expense of the environment

You're telling me your giving up your car, and your computers, and everything else you use that comes with an environmental cost.

What's worse is non-optimal launches will have far more environmental impact because you have to do more of them or use more fuel. Talk about cutting off your own nose.

What SpaceX is doing in Boca Chica is completely irrelevant compared to other environmental damage being done completely legally ex, in Louisiana by shipping and the oil industry, simply because it is grandfathered in. Like, literally dredging thousands of acres of wetlands into the gulf as regular business.

Everything that happens affects the environment somehow, but the scrutiny here is wildly disproportionate to the actual impact, of disrupting a couple acres of beach.

The "corporation" of SpaceX is a unique national asset that no other nation currently has, and it provides incredible value to US citizens to maintain that edge (Starlink alone, and Starship would give us a launch capacity that dwarfs Russia or China).

That matters! That's important! This isn't a "corporations vs the people" issue. Industrial policy requires thoughtful tradeoffs, and this FAA/EPA action isn't one.

This. SpaceX gives the US unique advantages that the wildlife on this beach doesn't.

I'm surprised the DoD hasn't already overridden the EPA on this for matters of national security.

The DoD doesn't have veto power over the EPA, and executive leadership on industrial policy is completely AWOL.

The administration could massively accelerate it with a couple phone calls, but I doubt they are even aware of the situation.

It's a baffling suggestion anyway no matter which direction you look at it from, there's nowhere on the west coast of the US that would be friendlier regulatory environment SpaceX than Texas. They would still have to deal with the exact same federal government, except to launch west they'd also have to deal with California and that would be jumping out of the frying pan straight into the fire. So what exactly would you hope to solve by launching west? Launching west to solve SpaceX's problems at Boca Chica cannot be a serious suggestion, honestly just baffling.

There is 1000s of miles of coast on the Atlantic, hard to believe there no other easier location on the entire Eastern seaboard.

I understand that there will be a performance penalty at higher latitudes, however that really shouldn’t matter to what bocca chica is used for by spaceX

- FAA would never give licenses 100s of launches from Texas ever, volume is always planned from be Florida , just for experimental flights the penalty shouldn’t be a factor,

- given the order of magnitude change in payload capacity with Starship and reusability the performance factor shouldn’t really be critical even for production ?

The current , past and inevitable future delays at Bocca Chica is costing spaceX a lot , they are cash flow positive and far ahead of competition so they can afford it, but this is certainly does not look like the most optimal plan .

> certainly does not look like the most optimal plan

Name a better place.

They did, right in their comment; "volume is always planned from be Florida".

> volume is always planned to be from Florida

I feel doubly embarrassed making a grammar mistake, now that you quoted including that mistake and all :)

One explosion of the wrong kind in the wrong place, and most of the US' space launch capacity is shut down.

That's why R&D is in Texas.

> hard to believe

Yes, it is hard to believe, if you've done no research and choose to believe whatever you want.

Sure, I am not playing armchair rocket scientist, I claim no expertise.

From my own experience:

I drove to Bocca Chica three weeks ago and also took the fantastic helicopter tour from south padre, while it was awesome to get ridiculously close to the launchpad (walking behind the dunes gets you really up close) unlike at Vandenberg, KSC where you cannot get so close from public land this easily it definitely looked like an inconvenient site

- roads are pretty narrow and don’t look to be that high load bearing for heavy traffic and are being worked on (it is single lane in part as they are still working on it piece by piece to strengthen them), it takes a while to go from Brownsville to Starbase

- there is also a border checkpoint that takes a long time to cross during peak hours > 30 mins on the way back.

- you can actually see the Mexico border (a light house) from the OLM, I was getting cell signal from Mexico. It is less than 10 miles, so close to the border comes with its own problems was my impression .

- limited space to expand either Starbase and also at the launchpad. You can fly close only to starbase and it is quite visible from the air.

I am no expert, these are just a tourist’s observations, however in 70 years of American rocketery smarter people than me private and public have done the research and rejected places like Bocca Chica before for good reason.

Claiming that this is the perfect spot and no other feasible location and it is just that I don’t know(which I don’t) better seems a bit silly?

People can make mistakes not every decision makes perfect sense in hindsight. It does not detract from the work they have been able to do so far.

I don't think NASA's Kennedy Space Center, nor Cape Canaveral Space Force Station are exempt from EPA regulations. SpaceX has had to perform Environmental Impact Studies for all of their launch sites there as well.

NEPA and the EPA are separate things.

Why not launch from Puerto Rico or USVI? Island logistics too challenging?

Because the things that can't be changed are good. Namely, lots of empty land to expand into, near the coast for shipping, good geo-position, temperate weather, sparsely populated but still close to a city and airport. We can expand the road and the state/fed gov will sell SpaceX the wetlands to cover them with concrete if necessary.

I'm not a space person, so this may be a very basic question but how is this same rocket supposed to launch from locations on the Moon or Mars? The propulsion force is obviously less because the gravity is less there, but that really enough to overcome all of this work they have to do on Earth? At least at Boca Chica you can get a construction crew there.

There is a different version of Starship for landing on the moon. Supposedly, for Mars, the single stage part of the rocket has enough acceleration to get off of Mars on its own.

This does assume the rocket can refuel on Mars.

The large lower booster only launches and lands on Earth. The upper section (the Starship) will be able to land and launch on other bodies, but it has only a fraction the number of engines.

The more you look into it, the more it becomes apparent that Starship is optimized for launching very large constellations of LEO satellites, not for Mars colonization or even Moon missions. It's publicly pitched as a Mars colonization rocket because this pipe dream is the foundation of SpaceX's recruiting strategy. (It's easier to motivate rocket engineers with the dream of Mars colonies than with SDI contracts.)

Other than its height, what is the concern?

No other ship can launch 150+ tons in a 9m-diameter payload bay, use propellant that can be created on Mars, and can vertically land and take off again.

It seems all of these are required optimizations for Mars colonization or Moon missions. The fact that NASA selected Starship as its human landing vehicle for the US's return to the moon strikes me as a remarkable vote of confidence by a highly qualified organization with far more data than we have and a lot at stake.

Could you elaborate on how they got it so wrong?

The biggest issue with the Mars plan is there's no money in it, no customers lined up and ready to take advantage of it. And even if a serious organization of prospective colonists started organizing and got funding now (nobody has a plausible answer for how a Mars economy would work, how it would get enough Earth cash to pay for itself) it would still take decades for them to develop viable Martian colony hardware. Even test-runs of such technology in closed environments on Earth are in their absolute infancy and have virtually no funding. As a Mars rocket, Starship is a bridge to nowhere.

Yet Starship is costing SpaceX a whole heck of a lot of money to develop. I don't think that makes any sense unless they have some other business plan in mind for it. Launching massive constellations of satellites is that plan, there's a huge amount of profit potential in the near-term if they can make Starship work. Starlink alone might make Starship worth it, but fulfilling SDI contracts could be the real money cow (incidentally, SDI is politically polarized, and this might be part of the reason why Musk has "gotten political". If Musk really wants SDI contracts then he needs republicans to fund it.)

If you're inclined to believe Musk is sincere with the Mars colonization talk, then perhaps you could conclude that the plan is to make insane amounts of money building huge LEO constellations and then use that to fund Mars colonization. But from what I understand, Musk has said that SpaceX won't be building colonies and is focused on building the ships to get there instead. Who's buying?

> The fact that NASA selected Starship as its human landing vehicle for the US's return to the moon strikes me as a remarkable vote of confidence by a highly qualified organization with far more data than we have and a lot at stake.

Maybe. I'm very surprised SpaceX won that contract, maybe people at NASA really believe they can do it. Or maybe they decided to give SpaceX enough rope to hang themselves. Or maybe nobody really expects Artemis to get that far and the whole thing is basically a joke at the taxpayer's expense. Or maybe there are people at NASA who believe in SDI and want to make sure Starship is successfully developed. In any case, even if they can actually do the moon missions there's a huge gap between hanging out on the Moon for a few weeks and making a serious go at a long-term Martian colony.

I see. The important distinction that was a bit ambiguous in your post is that the Starship /program/ is better suited to LEO constellation delivery, not that the Starship rocket itself has some flaw that makes it ill-suited for Mars or the Moon.

Frankly, as someone very interested in Starship (and SpaceX in general), I don't disagree with you. But this isn't really a revelation - the strategy has always been Starlink first, HLS (NASA Human Landing System) second, Mars third. Due to delays and NASA-driven deadlines, it's arguable that HLS has moved into the top spot and limited launch activities will need to focus on fuel depot milestones instead of Starlink launches.

The Starlink business model is impressive. Two million people worldwide (as of Sept 2023) paying $200/month grosses $4.8 billion in revenue - about what NASA paid for HLS, IIRC. I don't see why pursuing that is a problem, and spending $5B on Starship to get a 30,000 satellite constellation in orbit to expand the capacity to 20 million subscribers per year or more is a slam dunk financially.

As for Mars, we know one thing: nothing will happen without a new heavy lift rocket similar to Starship. Once that's in place, doors will open - one may be to Mars, but I agree it's much further down the road than people think.

But I do believe that Musk's goal is Mars, and he's willing to spend a large percentage of his fortune to get there. In the meantime, he's betting that a lot of people will come along for the ride and address the challenges of a Mars mission (not even "colony") with new innovation.

Without Starship, there's no reason to research ISRU technologies like efficient Sabatier reaction equipment, or automated assembly, or million other Mars-specific technologies because we have no vehicle to get there.

With Starship, he's able to pull an entire industry forward. Maybe it is made of crazy dreamers, but crazy dreamers are often needed for a step-change level risk.

Perhaps it's a good thing. If they can figure out how to launch next to protected lands without damaging them, then they can set up launch facilities virtually anywhere.

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