Someone made a game where you manually land the Super Heavy booster. It's fun! https://mechazilla.io/
The real landing will be incredible. I'm also very excited to see Starship make it all the way through reentry fully intact. We got some amazing video last time.
Anyone know if they plan to relight Starship's engines in space this time? I think the capability for a deorbit burn is the last thing they need to demonstrate before they can do orbital missions and deploy satellites. Looks like it's not on the mission timeline though.
> Anyone know if they plan to relight Starship's engines in space this time?
No. I don't know why, but their plan for second stage is the same as before, go suborbital, reenter, soft splashdown into the Indian Ocean. Hopefully now without flaps burned through.
The autogen pressurization system for the liquid oxygen tank pollutes the tank with carbon dioxide and water ice. The same thing happens on the booster, but they have systems to manage the issue in place. Presumably they don't want to bother with this step for v1 ships or don't have the mass margin to do so.
It's not a problem for the landing as that sources from a separate clean tank.
CSI Starbase seems to think that Raptor v3 might stop using oxygen pre-burner gas for oxygen tank autogenous pressurization and use oxygen gas generated by using liquid oxygen as a coolant, like is already done on the methane side. That would reduce a lot of weight for filtering that they have had to add to prevent dry ice clogging of engine oxygen intakes.
That's a beatiful game. Mechanically it's simple enough, but the author seems to have put a lot of the work into failure effects. There are many different ways you can break the catcher, the booster, or both.
See also SpaceX's own official Starship game: https://starshipthegame.spacex.com
Does it always just say pending regulatory approval and get stuck that way? Is that the joke?
Mine finished loading, but it’s a good joke.
"Starship's fifth flight test is targeted to launch on Sunday, October 13. The 30-minute launch window opens at 7 a.m. CT.",
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
Edit: that's 12p.m. UTC, I think.
As I write this comment, it is Oct 12, 3:30 pm Central time. So the launch window starts in 15 and a half hours.
Tomorrow? It was issued only one day in advance?
SpaceX provided information about the flight profile and its impact only in mid-August to FAA.
The FAA forwarded the requests to the related agencies and had to wait (for example, what happens to the polluted water).
According to 50 CFR § 402.13, the other agencies have 60 days to give back their answers to the FAA.
15 August + 60 days = now.
The FAA mentioned they positively collaborate with SpaceX despite "upper stage failure in July and unsuccessful landing in August".
Quite exciting to see!
Interesting how it took exactly the maximum limit they are alloted.
I wonder if the people in these agencies treat it like school projects where you use deadlines as a framework for how long you can screw around before it's absolutely necessary to get started. Where it's not treated as a worst case upper maximum.
Alternatively, one or more agency may not have responded at all and so the FAA was obligated to wait the 60 days. Just speculation.
Sounds like a great way to get politicians to give the agency 3 days next time, under the guise of optimization but with the actual intent and effect to completely neuter the agency...
Sounds like a great way to make sure we don’t learn the lessons from the FAA’s lax oversight of Boeing.
They absolutely do. It's a bureaucracy. Budget is on a use it or lose it basis. FAA is requesting a 36% budget increase next year. Wouldn't be able to justify that if they stopped wasting resources nitpicking every piece of the launch plan.
Conspiracy thinking: Musk may have made some personal enemies by stealing Twitter from the left and siding with Trump's camp in the upcoming US presidential election.
> 15 August + 60 days = now
Close enough. Sixty days is October 14. Today is the twelfth. Tomorrow, 13 October, is the launch.
"End of day" shenanigans?
Not much different from the prior flights.
Flight 4 was licensed on June 4th, was originally scheduled to launch on June 5th, and actually launched on the 6th.
Flight 3 received its license on March 13th and launched on March 14th.
Flight 2 received its license on November 15th 2023, and launched on November 18th.
Flight 1 received its license on April 14th; it launched on April 20th.
The main difference here is that up until just a few days ago, the FAA was saying that they didn't plan to issue a license until late November.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-five-late-novem...
> up until just a few days ago, the FAA was saying that they didn't plan to issue a license until late November
This might be a case where the FAA's PR department should link to a press release instead of repeatig it contemporaneously.
> It was issued only one day in advance?
Officially, yes. Practically, I was hearing earlier this week that this was coming, as obviously was SpaceX given they're ready to attempt.
SpaceX has claimed they'd been ready to fly since August. It's not a surprise they'll launch very quickly after receiving the license.
Take that with a BIG grain of salt. When SpaceX says they are ready and the FAA is holding them up, it is actually Elon saying they are ready. For example, take a look at the "Starships are meant to fly" post from September: https://www.spacex.com/updates/
As someone who has been following these developments for a while, I can 100% detect Elon's fingerprints all over this post. They are basically completely dismissing government oversight as "unnecessary obstacles to progress". Keep in mind, the area where SpaceX operates Starship is a wildlife sanctuary and was only chosen because it is one of the few undeveloped, southernmost points of the US, which matters because the closer you are to the equator, the more advantage you can take of the Earth's rotational velocity.
Every launch pad in the US is a de jure or de facto wildlife sanctuary. Launch pads need a large human keep-out zone. Keeping out humans is great for wildlife.
The site was chosen because it was it could launch East over water. The rotation of the earth gives a boost to easterly launches. Boca Chica isn't a great launch location because there's a fairly narrow window of directions it can launch in without overflying land, requiring expensive dog legs to hit different inclinations. They might have been better off with a piece of coastline in Maine, but try and find a piece of Eastern coastline in the US without any development in a 4 mile radius around the site...
> Every launch pad in the US is a de jure or de facto wildlife sanctuary. Launch pads need a large human keep-out zone. Keeping out humans is great for wildlife.
Would note that ULA's Vulcan 4 October launch test at Cape Canaveral sprayed debris and presumably propellant around the same area [1]. Vulcan's GEM SRB burns a perchlorate fuel [2]. Perchlorates are toxic [3].
SpaceX isn't taking any crazy risks, particularly relative to the technology risk and potential pay-off, with its IFTs.
[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/10/04/ula-launches-second-vu...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite-Epoxy_Motor
[3] https://wwwn.cdc.gov/tsp/ToxFAQs/ToxFAQsDetails.aspx?faqid=8...
Being so far South is quite nice, gives you quite the performance boost, do you have any analysis on what the dog legs cost compared to more Northern launch sites? Would be interesting to consider. Clearly Florida was the right place to do this for the US in the 1960s.
Noob question: How comes hurricanes aren’t a problem?
> How comes hurricanes aren’t a problem?
They're slow and unsurprising. You don't launch in a hurricane.
You just launch the day before...
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/european-mission-depar...
You launch in the eye of the hurricane:
"Marooned" m.imdb.com/title/tt0064639/
As recently as last week FAA was saying no launch license before late November, and even if you don't believe SpaceX was ready in August they are clearly ready today. That's what SpaceX complained about, and it got fixed. What more proof do you need that the FAA was the holdup here? https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1fupkny/the_f...
I would guess SpaceX decided to provide everything the FAA/other agencies were asking for and thus their launch license was issued.
SpaceX already provided all the required information. FAA was not waiting for anything from SpaceX. They had inexplicably decided a new environmental review was required for trivial changes to the launch license, and today they reversed that decision in a "written re-evaluation" which as far as I can tell is not based on any new information.
Okay, I read the FAA's written reevaluation (source: https://www.faa.gov/media/85696).
My notes:
- SpaceX requested to amend its existing "Programmatic Environmental Assesment" of 2022 to support jettisoning the interstage heat shield and (importantly) using an updating sonic boom model based on flight data. In my opinion, this is the critical point of this assessment.
- The impact on endangered wildlife is reassessed based on a report submitted by SpaceX.
- There are other points like concerns about waterway closures, and the water discharged by the deluge system. I know there was some controversy about the deluge system and the cleanliness of that water, but according to this report, it's all good.
The new evaluation of the sonic boom using flight data shows that SpaceX's original assessment was way off and the intensity and area affected by these sonic booms is much larger in reality. The FAA then goes through a significant amount of rationalizations (with sources, to be fair) to justify that the predictions of the new sonic boom model are still acceptable.
The biological resources section also shows that SpaceX underestimated the effects of their launch operations on local wildlife, but some research and monitoring measures are proposed to counteract this.
All in all, my opinion is that the FAA is doing everything it can to not be an obstacle. But they do have to analyze this stuff much more rigorously than SpaceX does. That is quite literally their job after all.
So in your opinion, as soon as SpaceX uploads a PDF, the launch license should be issued immediately?
P.S.: I wish SpaceX succeeds in bringing down the cost of access to space.
Stop willfully misinterpreting it. The new 60 day window was something newly added this time just to give other agencies time to complain if they wanted.
The FAA did their normal review like they’ve done for every other starship and falcon launch in a timely manner.
Boca Chica is not the Southernmost point in the US. One if the Florida Keys is.
The main reason that area was a wildlife sanctuary was that nobody wanted it for anything else, so it was a cheap political move to make it "protected."
A launch site needs more than latitude. It needs possible launch trajectories that star by going over water to avoid possible debis falling in people or property.
Launch sites at higher altitude are better than those at lower altitude.
Boca Chica at 25°59′49″N is within 50 N/S miles of Cape Sable, Florida 25°7′6″N the southernmost point on the U.S. mainland. It's just about the southernmost place not near a town. -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_points_of_th...
Regardless of how it was preserved it is still a valuable habitat for some vulnerable species. And a recreational amenity for people. Nor would the absence of a sanctuary make it automatically ok to kill wildlife or cause pollution.
Honolulu is like 100 miles further south than the Florida keys
True. Updated my comment.
Have you been to that "wildlife sanctuary." I have. People are driving cars up and down that beach all day. Best thing that could happen to the wildlife is if it were shut down permanently for rocket launches.
I have. Really enjoyed my time there. But obviously, there are no roads to the places where the endangered species live.
> They are basically completely dismissing government oversight as "unnecessary obstacles to progress".
SpaceX works quite well with the government and doesn't mind oversight with regards to safety at all. What they don't care for is frivolous oversight/bureaucratic rubber stamping without looking at the intention behind the rules. They also don't like being surprised last minute. All of which happened in the prelude to that update post you referenced. I know a lot of people on this site are from Europe or have European sentiments, but the two places really function quite differently normally. The job of regulators isn't to be obstructionist for the sake of it. It's to create rules that actually improve safety and overall move society forward.
I understand the US and Europe work differently. Although I am European, I also have a strong dislike of bureaucracy and am sympathetic to advancing society through technological progress.
But there should be some oversight. You cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress.
> cannot just let a private company do whatever industrial processes wherever they want in the name of progress
We don't.
The question was why the FAA was enforcing rules that have nothing to do with its remit. There is protocol of regulatory agencies having each others' backs. But it was silly in this situation—it probably calls for reviewing the regime.
In August, they said the rocket was ready to fly .. but they were quite visibly still doing significant work to the catch mechanism on the launch tower.
SpaceX operates on a rapid iterative cycle where they will knowingly test with deficiencies to improve later. If they get delayed for a massive chunk of time, they are definitely going to use it to make all of the known improvements they can.
The perfect is the enemy of the good, and SpaceX lives by this. If they have time to spare, why not spend it improving nice-to-haves?
being ready to launch is one thing, being ready to catch/land is another. so technically, they weren't wrong
I think it's more that they launch as soon as they get the permit.
Flight 3 license was also issued only one day in advance.
This video explains how they plan to catch the booster with Mechazilla [1]. The team at SpaceX has some serious guts to be doing this!
I like how SpaceX is willing to take risks. Their second launch tower is still months away from being finished, and now they're trying to catch the booster using the first one.
If they blow up the first tower, it will be 3+++ months to get FAA flight clearance again, so no great loss.
FAA is doing the testing, SpaceX is sitting around watching FAA
It's going to be one helluva show. Which ever way it goes. Best of luck to SpaceX
I don't follow these things often: How is this different than the four before?
First attempt to catch the booster back at the launch site.
The "mechazilla" launch tower has two "chopstick" arms which are used to pick up and stack both stages and which are intended to be able to catch the returning booster and maybe also the returning Starship upper stage.
> has two "chopstick" arms ... which are intended to be able to catch the returning booster
Do you mean this literally? As in something like Mr. Miyagi catching a fly with chopsticks in the orig Karate Kid?
Yes. The booster has two pins that stick out at the top that are designed to hold the weight of the entire booster when empty. The plan is for the booster to return to the launch tower, position itself between the arms which will close on it and then the pins will “land” on the arms, completing the catch.
I’d say the main difference, then, is that the booster will be supported by those pins resting on top of the arms. Chopsticks use friction to hold up their load.
Main difference (besides scale) is that the booster is cooperating with the chopsticks, navigating to hover at a point between the arms.
Yes, literally, but the arms are massive and not directly controlled by humans.
How could it possibly be meant literally? Do you consider it possible for a rocket to be caught by a literal person with literal wooden sticks?
I guess I don't really understand what you are asking. There's a tower with some huge metal arms that is meant to catch the rocket. They call them chopsticks in a joking manner. Obviously, I would have thought.
What benefit does catching the booster provide? (Or, what's a good written guide to that system?)
It allows removing the landing gears on the booster, which saves wheight, which saves fuel, which increases efficiency and reduces costs. It also avoid having to fetch the booster from wherever it would have landed.
What others said is true, but I think the endgame is also to literally land on the launchpad, allowing for a quick turnaround.
Given that a lot of the landing failures we've seen started with a near perfect landing followed by the rocket tipping over, I suspect one benefit is that the contact point is now above the center of gravity and thus it can't really tip over.
Of course, it can't tip over unless something fails or the rocket ends up in the wrong spot (and fails to get caught) and the previous tip-overs also had to involve failures (of the landing strut, in the latest loss) or landing in some way that isn't perfectly aligned.
Don’t need landing legs/gear on the ship. Saves weight
This is the first time they are going to attempt to catch the booster using their launchpad.
Either you'll see one of the most impressive technical achievements in human history, or a very cool explosion.
Their launch license requires them to initially aim at the water, and only shift to aiming at their tower if both the booster internally judges it's in perfect health, and they send the signal from their control system.
I think there is a reasonable possibility that something goes wrong enough at some point for the booster to go in the drink. But if that happens, maybe it'll be close enough to the shore that we'll get some nice video of it?
This is also standard procedure for Falcon 9 landings. They would do it this way even if the launch license didn't require it, because they know the probability of some sort of failure of the booster is high, and they don't want to destroy the launch tower if they can help it.
At the moment of landing burn ignition the booster will already target the beach near the tower.
Elon has pissed me off beyond all reason these last few years but when he says “excitement guaranteed”, it’s the truth.
They're going to try to catch the first stage on part of its own launch tower.
This will be so exciting to watch, maybe as much as the first booster landing, or even more than it, if it succeeds.
What I wonder about is why they never tested catching boosters with the ones they've been using all along. They know these boosters inside out, so it would be a good platform to gain experience with.
>What I wonder about is why they never tested catching boosters with the ones they've been using all along. They know these boosters inside out, so it would be a good platform to gain experience with.
The Falcon 9 is incapable of hovering, because given the number of Merlins and their limited ability to throttle it cannot achieve a thrust/weight ratio (TWR) of 1 even on a single engine throttled to the lowest it can go. Rockets are almost entirely fuel by weight at launch, when empty they are very light. Since it has a TWR >1 when near-empty, lighting up an engine means F9 will want to go up again. So with F9 SpaceX must do a "hoverslam" to land, wherein the computer lights the engine at just the right point such that it hits relative velocity of zero right at the altitude of the landing pad (be it on ship or on land). That won't do for catching one however.
With Starship all of this was considered from the start. Raptor has better throttling capability (itself an amazing technical achievement), and of course on Super Heavy there are lots of them which is another advantage of the "many, smaller engines" approach. It means that they can effectively throttle it to just 1/33*min-throttle of max thrust. And SH is also just plain heavier construction, for good reason in an economics designed big rocket but also helpful here. Combined it is actually capable of hovering when near empty.
They've been trying to launch and land the rocket at a precise point without explosion
as for why they haven't done it yet i imagine its because you can easily over optimize for something out of order, they had bigger priorities with making the launch work in 100 other ways so until those hurdles were cleared even attempting to worry about catching wasn't worth their time and manpower yet
This might be the first launch that tops the jaw-dropping excitement of the Falcon 9 LZ-1 landing way back in 2015. Godspeed starship and best of luck to all the SpaceX team.
… and the dual landings from the first Falcon Heavy flight. Even today that footage looks like cgi
The live view of a Starship fin being attacked by plasma during reentry was pretty close too.
The dual landings for me were far superior. It was straight out of science fiction.
I only got to see the tail end of the shuttle launches (too young) but I imagine watching the first launch/landing felt something like I experienced watching those two boosters land together.
Can confirm.
> the dual landings from the first Falcon Heavy flight
Short of the moon landings that I never got to experience, the dual landing (especially that first one!) is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in space flight. Could watch again and again.
First attempt at catching the 230ft tall booster!
Based on the Oct 12 change log, "changed flight 4 to "starship super heavy" -- this reads that they can perform multiple flights with the same mission profile. So they can do a few quick test catches and avoid relicensing?
The previous license also allowed multiple launches, so this license allowing multiple launches would be consistent.
As I understand it, only if the test article is identical. Any modification, new permit required.
Watching us push forward in hard problems like this is important not only for the direct benefits, but the general belief in a better future it affords.
I appreciate anything that helps reignite wonder and hope in all of us, and a rocket launch and recapture is just more visceral (not better) than others.
Good luck to the team, I’ll be watching with bated breath.
Can anyone explain what the point of starship is? It won’t be human rated - are they just keeping launching them for keeping the funding rounds going?
Worth a read https://www.npr.org/2024/10/10/nx-s1-5145776/spacex-texas-we...
Title: SpaceX wants to go to Mars. To get there, environmentalists say it’s trashing Texas
Doesn't seem like a very good article... a good journalist puts statements in the appropriate context and that seems to be lacking here.
For instance, it mentions "high levels of potentially toxic chemicals like Zinc and hexavalent Chromium", but doesn't say what that means. What is "high"?
E.g. the quoted Prof says he "wouldn't recommend drinking it", but would he recommend drinking regular rainwater discharge from this (industrial) area (or even regular city rainwater?) and would he say its worse than that? How many grams/tons of these materials are in the discharge? What is the likely concentration by the time it gets to any animals, how much would actually get inside them and how does that compare with the known levels that would be damaging to health? How does it compare with the concentrations from rain runoff?
A good journalist should find an appropriate expert and ask these sorts of questions so they can include them in the article and give the reader context, otherwise the reader will often come away feeling informed when in fact they know nothing of substance because there is nothing to anchor these unquantified facts to.
I read it. Wasn't worth a read.
This was a particularly funny quote:
> Musk “seems to care a lot more about 100,000 years from now than now here on Earth.”
I mean.. I think Musk is an arsehole and his plan to colonise Mars is insane, but this does not feel like a criticism! This environmentalist seems to care a lot more about short term issues than the long term viability of life on Earth.
> “At least one egg in every nest was either damaged or not there,” LeClaire says.
Ok let's assume that they are keeping count of the number of eggs in every nest... One egg? If these birds are going to die out because one egg in each nest breaks they aren't going to survive anyway.
I'm not saying the environment is unimportant, but I think you have to weight it against the importance of the thing you're stopping in the name of the environment.
It's like all the solar farm projects that get stopped in the UK because people think sticking some poles in a field is going to kill all the newts. Like, what do you think is going to happen to the newts when it's 40C in the summer?
> “At least one egg in every nest was either damaged or not there,” LeClaire says.
I think this is another good example of the lack of context I complain about above. These are the closest nests, how far away is the average nest and what's the damage there? What is the normal rate of egg damage or disappearance? How many eggs do these birds lay?
The tower catch will be a highlight but technically just as important will be the second full reentry of the upper stage. Last time we had the amazing 'little flap that could' that was basically ripped apart put just valiantly continued to do its job. Musk said they had solutions for this in place, will be interesting to see how the hinge holds up. This could be a came changing flight test.
Because the rocket goes back to launch sites, lots of people will have really good cameras set up, lots of views. We will see this catch attempt with a lot of detail.
I don't think the ship being launched has all of the planned improvements to the fins/hinge. This launch is S30, with the big improvements coming with S33.
Newer versions of the ship have smaller flaps, hinging from points offcenter, so that they are protected by the body of the ship.
Images probably demonstrate this better than words.
Current: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;...
New: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;...
1st stage reusability matters more so they can reach a cost model similar to F9, second stage is really just bonus.
If they never get the second stage working with reusability they could strip the design down to a simple S2
If they struggle with first stage re-usability for a while, that merely adds cost. Further they probably want to iterate and scale anyways, so in the short term they're gonna be building a lot of first stages anyways.
Second stage reentry is necessary for this thing to ever carry people, ostensibly the mission the ship was designed for. It is a hard requirement.
Excitement guaranteed!
Do you think more than a billion people will watch the catch attempt, either live or later, in this Starship flight test?
No, I don’t think one in every eight people on earth is going to see the catch attempt or even care about it. The launch and catch attempt is exciting but I don’t think it’s something that most of the planet is following. Even in the US, I doubt many people will watch it. It’s not the next moon landing.
If we’re talking about the near future? No, most people do not care.
If it’s successful it will likely be in the history books, so maybe billions of martians will one day watch.
Over how long of a time span are we giving this? I don't think so.
https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceX/streams = most popular live stream has 33M views
https://www.youtube.com/@SpaceX/videos = most popular video has 29M views
I'm pretty sure this also includes embedded views from news articles that embed the videos.
So to answer the question: In the short term, unlikely it seems. Over the span of hundreds of years? Likely so.
Honestly I don't even see a future Moon landing garnering that many people.
Maybe a Mars landing would, but non-techie people just don't seem very interested in space.
probably not live, i imagine that many people will hear news about it though
They should call it Spruce Goose II.
I love that SpaceX has these amazing broadcasts that connect us to what’s happening. I’m surprised that the older rocket companies have no video or low res pixelated video.
Will it finally make it to orbit?
Will there be any simulated load or is it empty again?
> Will it finally make it to orbit?
No. "Starship will fly a similar trajectory as the previous flight test" [1]. IFT-4 was a suborbital flight test [2].
[1] https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
The previous one could have made it to orbit as well. They are intentionally not going there to derisk failed re-entry ignition since the focus of these tests is entirely behavior in atmosphere.
Note that this launch has been ready to go for weeks and the FAA were stalling SpaceX. Elon joked that it's easier to build self landing rockets than push papers through the FAA. I really hope if Trump wins he guts that regulatory body.
To quote user rvnx:
> SpaceX provided information about the flight profile and its impact only in mid-August to FAA. [...]
> According to 50 CFR § 402.13, the other agencies have 60 days to give back their answers to the FAA.
> 15 August + 60 days = now.
You don't send a rocket without some sort of due diligence in terms of impact. Nobody likes bureaucracy, but I don't see how we're going to make the world a better place for everyone by letting billionaires basically do whatever they want with their toys without checks.
60 days is already sheer stupidity but the FAA was also quoting November before, well past the 60 day time.
It should be a short 5 business day window where other agencies can quickly check to see if they might care and file to expand to 60 if they think it needs a review. Default hold open of 60 days just in case is purely anti progress reactionary conservatism.
> t I don't see how we're going to make the world a better place for everyone by letting billionaires basically do whatever they want with their toys without checks
There is legal recourse to get people to pay for real damages — civil penalties. This is used all the time. Perhaps too often, but that's a different conversation.
SpaceX would be perfectly happy to pay penalties proportionate to the real damage the FWS is worrying about — literally, the rocket landing on a whale, which has approximately a 0% probability. But they aren't allowed to take that (nonexistent) risk and then pay for anything that went wrong.
60 days per change is really pretty slow when you want to iterate quickly. It's probably worthwhile to figure out if we can speed that up. Perhaps by letting SpaceX pay a expedite fee (say, 2x the salary costs of the beurocracy employees who would look at it) to get it looked at faster?
Sure, but its just not "billionaires" that need to be checked. Sometimes the checkers need some checking as well...
"California officials cite Elon Musk’s politics in rejecting SpaceX launches" (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/10/california-reject-m...)
Whether you like Elon Musk or his politics... or not I hope you can see that these actions demonstrate the danger of an overly powerful regulatory body. California Costal Commission members acting in their regulatory capacity while citing Musk's politics is out of line, abusive of their power, and not consistent with guarantees of freedom of expression or the democratic process. You don't win against MAGA or Trump by becoming them... and if you try to beat Trump at his own game... you aren't any damn better.
1. It's not clear the California Costal Commission actually have veto over federal land. Federal land ultimately is not within the power of the state to regulate. So they might be powerless.
2. The federal land is aimed at launches for national defense. It's not clear how commercial Starlink missions to mostly server commercial interests fits into this mandate
3. They actually okay'd 36 just not the full 50 - still an increase.
4. There's a fit a proper test to run a company - at some point Musk is gonna get called on this at the current rate.
> It's not clear the California Costal Commission actually have veto over federal land. Federal land ultimately is not within the power of the state to regulate. So they might be powerless.
> The federal land is aimed at launches for national defense. It's not clear how commercial Starlink missions to mostly server commercial interests fits into this mandate
"'I do believe that the Space Force has failed to establish that SpaceX is a part of the federal government, part of our defense,' said Commissioner Dayna Bochco."
OK, sure let's accept that assertion... but that's besides the point: should the commissioners be deciding these matters on the basis of their legally appointed areas of regulatory oversight or on their broader political sensitivities? If we're really saying its OK for regulatory bodies with a specific area of protection/oversight to express the agendas of constituencies outside of that concern, or allow commissioners to simply make enforcement actions based broadly on their own personal preferences rather than interpretation of laws and establish regulations, such as labor relations, "bad antics", and presidential elections... what have we really become and what is the point of the regulatory body?
In the end, I think the commissioner quoted above is simply making a shallow rationalization.
Moreover, why would a federal agency seek a state commission approval if it's not actually required? Doing so would just be asking for a political firestorm: there are incentives for the state to show they aren't beholden to the feds and the feds would simply be inviting controversy in cases where the state told them "no" and they went ahead anyway. You can see this in the article where the commission says Space Force disrespected them. Why opt into that kind of low-win scenario if you don't have to?
> There's a fit a proper test to run a company - at some point Musk is gonna get called on this at the current rate.
How is this in the purview of a commission that is ostensibly created to protect the coastal environment and things like public access to beaches?
This is why I am deeply suspicious of government: I'm given reason to be based on their actions and motivations. Who knows, maybe someday we'll normalize this deviance of regulatory purpose and our laws so much that maybe I'll be denied my next driver's license renewal for having said these things.
Based on this comment alone, Elon Musk's politics should have nothing to do with their rejection of SpaceX launches.
I hope it is more successful than their previous launch. I also hope that it does less damage to the wildlife sanctuary near the launch pad than the previous attempt. They are going to spray huge amounts of water to try and avoid destroying the launch pad. There is some concern that the water may become contaminated with harmful combustion products from the launch and flow into protected areas nearby. They will be doing some testing after the launch to better understand how big a problem this might be.
The water deluge system has been in operation for all launches save the first and has been functioning well, protecting the pad from damage. It uses drinking-quality water and outflow has been sampled after each launch, with negligible traces of contaminants detected.
There was a disagreement between the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the US EPA about the specific type of permit that SpaceX needed from TCEQ for the deluge system but that was a paperwork/documentation issue only.
see:
The byproducts of this rocket’s combustion are CO2 and H2O