FAA environmental review to allow Starship orbital launches after changes
A Federal Aviation Administration environmental review has concluded that SpaceX can conduct orbital launches of its Starship vehicle from its Texas test site, but only after completing dozens of mitigations to reduce impacts on the environment and the public.
The FAA issued June 13, after nearly half a year of delays, what is formally known as a mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for SpaceX's proposal to perform orbital launches of its Starship vehicle, atop its Super Heavy booster, from Boca Chica, Texas. The mitigated FONSI means that SpaceX is cleared, from an environmental standpoint, to carry out those launches once it implements more than 75 measures to mitigate environmental effects.
Among those mitigations is changes in closures in the road that leads to both the SpaceX site, called Starbase, as well as a public beach. SpaceX will provide more advanced notice of closures for testing and launches. It will be prohibited from closing access during 18 holidays and will be limited to five weekend closures per year. Closures will be limited to 500 hours a year for normal operations and up to 300 more hours "to address anomalies," according to FAA documents. The review is for up to five orbital launches per year, as well as five suborbital launches and ground tests.
Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) Executive Summary for Starship/Super Heavy (43 pages)
Assessment for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at the SpaceX Boca Chica (183 pages)
Among the requirements, SpaceX will coordinate with a "qualified biologist" on lighting inspections to minimize the impact on sea turtles, operate an employee shuttle between the city of Brownsville and the facility, and perform quarterly cleanups of the local Boca Chica Beach.
[...] SpaceX has already made changes to its expansion of the Starbase facility, according to the FAA, with the company removing infrastructure plans for a desalination plant, natural gas pretreatment system, liquefier and a power plant.
Space is hard. SpaceX makes space look easy, routine and reusable. The SLS cost plus contracting spice must flow!
Also at Reuters, CNN, and Bloomberg.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14 2022, @08:09PM (1 child)
This must mean Boeing thinks SLS is ready to go. I'm sure the FAA will has some sort of further excuse to obstruct Starship in their back pocket if they need it, though.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday June 14 2022, @09:45PM
Nah, Bureaucracy is just slow - especially when talking about launching the biggest rocket ever to fly from the middle of a preexisting wildlife refuge that's home to several endangered species. (An orbital launch without sound suppression, as originally planned, would almost certainly have caused widespread hearing loss among the wildlife, shortly followed by death due to vulnerability. SuperHeavy is going to be LOUD)
SpaceX just really dropped the ball here. They should have started applying for these clearances *years* ago, when they first started building Starship, instead of waiting until they were almost ready to launch. Seems to me they gambled on getting enough momentum and local goodwill to steamroll through the process rather than doing it right, and they paid the price.
Either that, or they really weren't nearly as ready as it looked from the outside, and are really only just now getting close (I'[ve heard a lot of credible claims in that regard). Musk isn't quiet when he's unhappy - if these delays were a genuine problem I'm sure we'd have heard a lot more out of him.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14 2022, @08:22PM (4 children)
Maybe eventually get the boring machine and reroute the highway underground so closures aren't as necessary?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14 2022, @08:33PM (2 children)
Fun ensues when the tunnel collapses when a rocket drops on top of it.
Hopefully, full of the stench of squashed billionare when it happens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14 2022, @10:05PM
Sure, a tunnel wouldn't help for launches.
But are many of the closures are for more mundane things like moving a rocket?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2022, @01:09AM
It's ok. They will have deactivated auto-landing one second before impact so it won't be their fault.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2022, @11:39PM
It's in the middle of a littoral swamp. The ground is unsuitable for digging.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14 2022, @08:47PM (4 children)
He has the money. Make the sonofabitch build an island like they do in China.
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ca3563b19cd4b794360573ef132780bb5ae923cf/0_6_3872_2325/master/3872.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=d8ea0f21553009dfdf7c88f3d0a3f229 [guim.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday June 14 2022, @10:24PM (1 child)
yeah, military installation China is building in the South China Sea. I think this is even one of the islands I was looking at in Google Earth, scrubbing through the satellite images over the years. They build these very quickly. China wants full access to the Pacific. Things could get scary in Taiwan, who knows maybe this year.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2022, @12:03AM
Well, Musk as plenty of money to build one too, they should tell him put his shit out there, safety away from other human activity
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2022, @11:36PM (1 child)
He bought two old oil rigs to convert into off-shore launch platforms.
China's artificial islands are illegal under international law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @06:18PM
Yeah? Who's going to stop them? Instead of buying Twitter, Musk can build his in territorial waters up to 200 miles offshore. There is no reason for this stuff to be land based
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2022, @04:08AM (2 children)
Just came here to say we need to get the fuck off this shithole of a planet asap, so fuck the sea turtles. Progress waits for no man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2022, @11:36AM
It does, however, wait for turtles. And they're not in a hurry.
(Score: 2) by Weasley on Thursday June 16 2022, @01:38AM
Do you want Gamera? Because that's how you get Gamera.