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Comment by Dig1t | Hacker News Reader

Under the previous admin it took longer to get regulatory approval than it took to build it (the most advanced rocket in the world) and it involved insane things like strapping a pair of headphones onto a seal and playing rocket sounds to it.

We can only hope that the new administration will streamline the process and reduce the time needed to get regulatory approval.

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> Under the previous admin it took longer to get regulatory approval than it took to build it (the most advanced rocket in the world)

Generally it does take awhile for a third party to understand the design decisions and their impacts then the designing person. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone working on software.

> it involved insane things like strapping a pair of headphones onto a seal and playing rocket sounds to it.

Do you have a citation for this?

https://youtu.be/3SvJP5wfN4k?si=ICrN3UqdeEH8yLxe

>nonetheless we were required to kidnap a seal, strap it to a board, and play sonic boom sounds to it to see if it would be distressed. This is an actual thing that happened. I have pictures.

Then shows a picture. It sounds like another commenter is saying that the pic displayed by the Lex podcast is not the exact pic from Elon, but instead a similar pic meant to illustrate.

>The amazing part is how calm the seal was.

He said they had to do this twice.

>it involved insane things like strapping a pair of headphones onto a seal and playing rocket sounds to it

There are actual images of a seal with headphones strapped to its head online!

That doesn't mean said image matches the story told.

https://x.com/mcrs987/status/1848070131781455911 asserts it was actually a study for the Delta IV booster, not something SpaceX had to do.

Yes, I'm aware of that. My point was that SpaceX has said they've had to do this, and if it sounds so wacky that that's unbelievable, there are actually photos of the same thing happening with seals, so I feel very little need to doubt that SpaceX was held to the same standard if that's what they claim.

Not a "citation" as much as anecdotal evidence that dispels doubt.

> My point was that SpaceX has said they've had to do this...

Musk also famously tweeted "funding secured" for Tesla. "He's lying" is 100% within the realm of possibility.

Checking if seal is broken was for the Falcon Heavy booster landing pad on Vandenberg, it was not really related to the Starship program.

They take a lot longer than 6 weeks to build a Starship. They can build a Starship a month, but that's because there is significant parallelism. My guess is that there are parts on a Starship that started assembly over 1 year before the Starship is complete.

I don't know if Elon Musk or SpaceX has ever kidnapped a seal and played headphones to it, but the photos that were going around the internet for the last few years (they made the rounds in 2017 in connection to SpaceX, before Musk began referencing it in 2023/2024) were from an unrelated study in 2006: https://x.com/mcrs987/status/1848070131781455911

I'm still looking or the original study to find out what the "larger study" was about [was it an impact study related to Vandenberg? Was it part of seal monitoring, and while they had the seals they did a bunch of other stuff?], so if someone else digs it up I'd be interested in a link.

I eventually stumbled upon the Federal Register, which has some documents that talk about this, both re: SpaceX and Boeing at Vandenberg.

Boeing, probably related to the pictures on the internet: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2006/06/26/E6-1004...

SpaceX, related to the landings: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/11/15/2018-24...

I don't know exactly how often who puts headphones on seals yet, but it sounds like as part of operating at Vandenberg, it's routine to "haul out" (by which I assume they mean, capture and remove, releasing some time/distance away) harbor seals, so they aren't in the way; it sounds like they also (sometimes? always?) perform some amount of monitoring activities on the seals, since you've already got them captured.

Also, all of this activity is apparently termed "Level B harassment".

Yeah, I agree, fuck seals. The more we damage marine mammal life with loud sounds the better. If they didn’t want to get killed off in awful ways by our tech toys they should have evolved ear muffs.

> strapping a pair of headphones onto a seal and playing rocket sounds to it.

That sounds more traumatizing to the seals than the actual launch.

Anyways:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4939-3456-0_...

> That sounds more traumatizing to the seals than the actual launch.

To a substantially smaller number of seals.

that don't even exist. (see link)

Your link is about the Gulf of Mexico.

Vandenberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_Space_Force_Base) is on the Pacific Ocean, where there are most certainly seals and sea lions. https://www.vandenberg.spaceforce.mil/News/Features/Display/...

You have the wrong body of water.

Delta IV heavies also launched from Vandenburg since long before f9 existed, and is considerably louder than falcon 9. was there a need for that study?

The study was apparently for the Delta IV. https://x.com/mcrs987/status/1848070131781455911

same thread, tory bruno says it was not for delta IV

https://x.com/torybruno/status/1848797537215410627

I'm pretty sure he's talking about Starship, not Falcon 9. Starship doesn't launch from Vandenberg; neither Starship launch site has seals present.

Propellant mass 441,800 lbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy) to 906,000 lbs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy) in the respective first stages.

falcon 9 heavy has never launched from vandenburg.

But it will.

https://www.vandenberg.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/A...

(Starship hasn’t, either.)

IIRC this study was not about the lethality of Starship, it was about whether the seals were agitated or disturbed by the launch.

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