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Comment by foobarqux | Hacker News Reader

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Can you link me to those processes? From everything I've seen, the shuttle basically had a much much more toxic exhaust and they just treated the pH of the water before dumping it or letting it evaporate.

Here's a start:

https://www.tceq.texas.gov/permitting/wastewater/industrial

https://www.tceq.texas.gov/downloads/permitting/wastewater/f...

Thanks for that explanation. I haven’t been able to keep up.

My god heaven forbid people don’t go through THE PROCESS

Please remember that comments are supposed to get more interesting as they nest more. That guideline helps keep discussions from turning into flamewars or reddit style jokes.

It is telling, though, that the strongest argument against SpaceX seems to be whether they followed all the correct procedures rather than whether there was actually any harm.

If the facts aren't on your side, then pound the law I guess.

The process is not some bullshit exercise, it is to prevent contamination of the drinking and food supply.

The area around the launch sites is used for neither.

As others have said, the letter of the law is being applied in a way that appears either punitive or corrupt. In all honesty if a few decades later it turned out that Bazos or Boeing were behind this I wouldn’t be shocked in the least.

“We can’t beat them with technology so we’ll beat them with red tape!”

You are badly confused, they are officially part of the "Waters of the United States" and obviously mix with what becomes your drinking water.

In your bizarro world you could just dump toxic water in most places.

The water is tap water. If it's toxic, then the source of the tap water should be punished for poisoning the civilian population, not the users of the tap water.

The fuel is just natural gas. Again, if it contains toxins such as mercury, then the source of the fuel should be punished because they are certainly delivering it to civilian users for cooking, or to industrial users elsewhere.

Why are we not hearing about those other linked pollution incidents!?

Or, is it that the pollution doesn't exist -- it is merely a sufficiently plausible fiction that is being used as an excuse to halt their progress?

Because from where I sit, it definitely looks like the latter.

Before you respond: Please very specifically explain why it is perfectly logical that there is no uproar about the "poisons" in cooking gas or the town water supply, but SpaceX's use of the same justifies stopping multi-billion dollar projects. But... not in any way investigating where the "poisons" might have come from. Just stopping SpaceX. No other actions. Just that.

How does this mixing happen? Consider the location of the deluge system and consider its right next to the ocean (which you really really shouldn't be drinking).

Do you actually think it plausible that any human could get sick when trying to drink their home water due to this discharge? Or are you just being contarian here?

Except the press release outlines how they literally have their outflow water tested. Are you lying?

SpaceX did not obtain a permit from the EPA to discharge industrial process water into the ground and therefore did not go through the steps the EPA requires to show that they aren't contaminating the water. I don't know if the tests they ran are reasonable or acceptable to the EPA --- we have expert agencies for a reason --- but in any case are only a part of the permitting process, where I imagine you have to show a number of things like how the contaminants will not build up over time, documenting mitigation and ongoing testing procedures, change processes etc.

It's funny too that apparently it's simultaneously tap water and also water that contains contaminants not found in tap water and that requires testing.

Thank you for the clarification.

I guess at the end of the day I prefer the American government does everything it possibly can to fast-track these SpaceX launches. And I prefer the American government and the American citizen prioritizes space supremacy over the local environment of a launch site facility.

I think studies should be done to understand the environmental effects of the launch site. I think mitigations for pollutants (etc) should be put into place. I think there are reasonable requests that the government can make, and SpaceX (being a business) has different incentives. But I also see a clear political bias from the current administration, and we can't have that sort of thing preventing real and obvious technological progress. Our children need to see America achieve something great and that achievement needs to be tangible. Not a commodity. Not something ephemeral or stuck in "the cloud" somewhere. I understand that Kamala Harris wishes she had the censorship machine that Twitter provided her in 2020, but those days are gone and she and her boss need to put America first and find a way to put some rockets into space.

There are significant questions about how they do their testing. Apropos of anything else, the water is generally superheated which causes issues with microorganisms in the soil.

Saying "hey, below level trace contaminants over here, later on" isn't conclusive.

SpaceX IS being deliberately deceptive when they say (and emphasize in bold, in case we're dense): "Again, this is drinking water". Great. Let's do what they did in Flint, and have Musk and SpaceX take a drink from that "drinking water".

Remember, according to Tesla, FSD is already dozens to hundreds of times safer than human drivers[1].

[1] On the subset of roads, in the subset of weather, in the subset of driving conditions where it may be activated, when compared to "all human drivers, on all roads, in all weather, in all conditions". And don't forget, if airbags don't deploy, it's not an accident, according to Tesla.[2]

[2] This includes collisions at 20mph or more where the passenger restraint subsystem determines that it is safer not to deploy airbags (first gen airbags were dumb - impact above a certain force, deploy. Current airbags take into account angle of impact, deflections, etc., before deploying). Tesla amazingly also doesn't consider it to be an accident for their stats when the airbags didn't deploy because the vehicle was so damaged or destroyed by the accident that the system could not or did not deploy.

So forgive some of us for taking any Musk venture condescending press release with a grain of salt.

Drinking contaminated water to show it is safe is such a bad trope and doesn't prove anything; it's just the sort of stunt Musk would love to pull and we just may see it.

It doesn't prove that it's safe.

However, REFUSAL to drink this water indicates that it may not be as safe as is being claimed.

Besides, according to SpaceX, it's not contaminated water...

> Again, this is drinking water

(That 'again' really rubs me the wrong way - it's like they think they're speaking to a dense child.)

Unfortunately that is not how it will be perceived. If he drinks the water it will be taken to be proof that there is no problem with the water. This stunt has occurred before where a CEO drinks water that is later shown to be contaminated to prove it is safe.

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