Parabolic Arc by Doug Messier 1/17/2022
ESG Hound’s latest look SpaceX’s plan to launch Super Heavy/Starship boosters from its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas suggests the entire effort might need to be scrapped. (The US Department of Interior Drops the Gauntlet on SpaceX and the FAA: SpaceX is headed for an EIS)
The problem: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Park Service do not agree that launching the world’s most powerful rocket will have a non-significant impact on federal and state-managed wildlife refuges and national monuments that surround the Boca Chica launch site. Without their sign off, ESG Hound says the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can’t approve the plan using an ongoing environmental assessment that it aims to complete by Jan. 31. A more complicated and lengthy environmental review would be required. resulting in years of delays.
Further, if SpaceX has viable alternatives for Super Heavy/Starship launches in Florida, the company might be required to abandon the Starbase site in Texas. Developing news facilities could result in significant delays to Super Heavy/Starship and the Human Landing System that SpaceX is building for NASA to return astronauts to the lunar surface.
Confused? Let’s review a little bit of history first.
The Best Laid Plans…After performing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), the FAA approved SpaceX to launch up to a dozen Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets annually from the site. The approval also allowed Elon Musk’s company to perform flights of experimental vehicles.
SpaceX subsequently abandoned plans for the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy and began testing Starship prototypes with three engines. The FAA allowed the testing, but the agency decided that a new environmental review was required in order to approve Boca Chica for launches of Starship and its Super Heavy first stage, which would have up to 33 engines.
The question was, what type of environmental review? As ESG Hound explains:
As a summary, the debate up to this point has been whether the environmental impacts of Starbase’s future plans are below significance thresholds under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). FAA and SpaceX’s Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) is a stripped-down environmental review document built on the assumption that all impacts are either insignificant (de minimus) or can be mitigated to be such once the EA is finalized with a Finding of Non-Significant Impact (FONSI) statement from the FAA.
If any impacts are determined to be of significance, the FAA is required to initiate a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which would be a multi-year process. An EIS would be required to be drafted, reviewed, completed, and certified before any Heavy Booster static fires, Starship launches, or commitment to further launch infrastructure development can commence.…
More:
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2022/01/17/report-spacexs-boca-chica-plans-face-serious-objections-from-fws-nps/
