US Federal Aviation Administration issues draft assessment of SpaceX Super Heavy impact SpaceX took another step towards launching the orbital version of its Starship last week with the release of a Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (DPEA) from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). We want to hear from you! The FAA released the Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the proposed @spacex …
The local state regulators are going to approve anything - in Texas it's your civic duty to pollute as much as you like.
And the same supreme court that approved that the state is in charge of women's bodies is definitely going to back that the state is in charge of the local environment.
And the FAA is going to play along with this in case it does go to the supreme court and they effectively gut all federal agencies.
There are also good reasons for launch from south Texas: Near the equator which is a benefit for most launches (not polar or sun synchronous), very few people have built homes / businesses in the sea to the east and that is the direction you mostly want to launch (except for polar and sun synchronous) and lots of wildlife refuges (prevents people from building homes and hotels next to your launch site and protects the wildlife - see Merritt Island for Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Wallops Island).
>There are also good reasons for launch from south Texas:
It's nowhere near the equator, and that only really helps for GSO / going to the Moon.
The advantage of Texas is no income tax = useful for billionaire CEOs but more useful for attracting tech professionals, low house prices and most importantly a state government that doesn't care what you do (as long as you aren't a women/gay/brown)
Your tinfoil is showing.
Since you haven't bothered to educate yourself, have a look at some of the law enforcement run-ins SpaceX has had with county and state officials. They are in a bit of hot water over several issues from pollution to road closures.
Take your libtard attitude elsewhere.
From what I understood, the supreme court had no option but to accept the State legislation because there was no legal basis for them not to. As in the State legislation was written very carefully - it's almost as if the backers of it had a lot of resources to pursue their medieval agenda.
This does not mean that the medieval-esque ruling cannot be challenged, but the supreme court was not the place to do so at the time.
Yes and I'm sure the same supreme court will show a similar enthusiasm for federal over local state authority - especially when it comes to protecting the environment from big business.
If there's one thing the current court values more than women's rights it's environmentalism.
Probably ...
Dropping a few tons of RP1 in the sea is a bad idea but it's less likely to cause RUD on the pad due to a leak than tons of liquid methane, and any leakage at the launch site can be more easily contained and cleaned up than methane freely venting to atmosphere ... So it's a question of which is better - methane in the atmosphere or a (relatively) small slick of fairly volatile material at sea?
RP1 is not that far removed from JP1 used in aviation, and therefore impact is similar. This is partly because the Air Force were originally looking for minimum cost and avoiding training for alternative materials. JP1 is a relatively wide specification; and where a chemical mix in a range is good enough for most gas turbines, it's not predictable enough to shove in a rocket, hence the RP1 spec. John Clark's "Ignition" is a must read for any rocket nerd with a modicum of interest in chemistry.
Liquid methane is probably being obtained by controlling the temperature of LNG and fractioning off the various parts. It's likely to be highly refined; mostly single element. It is therefore relatively clean burning, giving off the usual mix of CO2, CO, water and energy. Given the energy and temperatures involved; probably also NOX. I have not looked at the numbers for NOX, though there's not that much call for ex-industrial gas turbine guys to do rocket numbers (especially in the UK!)
In terms of environmental damage, burning the fuel up in event of an anomaly is probably better than releasing them openly; with JP1 being slightly worse. The reason being, the global warming potential of methane left to it's own devices, uncombusted; is higher per tonne than the mix of by products after combustion of either JP1 or Methane.
There's a reason the environmentalists want us to eat Kangaroo instead of Cow... Or preferably plants. Bovine methane emissions being a fairly large contribution on global emissions scale!
During the '60s the USA was in an ICBM arms race with the Soviet Union. NASA was doing important research for the DoD into rocketry, guidance and re-entry (it seems that orbital projectiles are the easy bit, the tricky bit is not burning up on re-entry). So there would have been no chance to Mercury, Gemini or Apollo being cancelled or curtailed due to environmental concerns. After all JFK even got the USA voting public to accept a tax increase to pay for Apollo as part of a national pride exercise. (but see 'Whitey on the Moon' for an alternative reaction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4 .)
Returning much of America to an early 19thC. subsistance level as the massive reduction1 in spending cascades through the economy bankrupting many businesses followed by their banks2 that can't be bailed out because there's no government system in place to do it3.
What a gift for all the less democratic countries out there.
1 $Trillions
2 Then yet more businesses leading to more banks...
3 Unless a 90% cut in federal taxes wasn't also part of the plan and the remaining federal employees include all the current treasury dept.
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