FAA Stresses Required Environmental Mitigation Actions in Finding No Significant Impact From SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launches
WASHINGTON (FAA PR) — The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will require SpaceX to take more than 75 actions to mitigate environmental impacts from its proposed plan to launch the Starship/Super Heavy vehicle from Boca Chica, Texas.
The actions are part of the agency’s environmental review. The environmental review must be completed along with public safety, national security, and other analyses before a decision on whether to grant a launch license can be made. The license application is still pending.
After consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there will be more advanced notice of launches to reduce how long State Highway 4 is closed during launch operations. The highway traverses Boca Chica Beach, Texas State Parks and the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge. Closures will not be allowed on 18 identified holidays, and weekend restrictions are limited to no more than five weekends per year, ensuring robust access to the refuge and park throughout the calendar year. The FAA will also require real-time notifications when access restrictions begin, end or are cancelled.
Additional measures to address impacts to fish, wildlife and plants, and resources protected by the National Historic Preservation Act will be required. Some examples of these measures include:
- Ongoing monitoring of vegetation and wildlife by a qualified biologist;
- Ensuring notification of surrounding communities in advance about potential engine noise and sonic booms from launches;
- Coordinating with state or federal agencies to remove launch debris from sensitive habitats;
- Adjusting lighting at the launch complex to minimize impact on wildlife and the nearby beach.
The required actions are part of the FAA’s Programmatic Environmental Assessment, Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI), and Record of Decision (ROD). The documents are available at The SpaceX Starship Super Heavy Project at the Boca Chica Launch Site page.
The environmental review is one part of the FAA Launch Operator License application process. SpaceX also must meet FAA safety, risk, and financial responsibility requirements before a license is issued for any launch activities. The review was completed in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act and all applicable laws, regulations, and agency guidance.
61 responses to “FAA Stresses Required Environmental Mitigation Actions in Finding No Significant Impact From SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launches”
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Most of the mitigations are minor, like adding some new signs to mark the old battleground and to monitor vibrations in the soil that might “disturb” it, at least until the next hurricane rearranges everything again.?
The city of Brownsville stepping up to provide the power with a new high transmission line and the water needed from its desalination plant pulled the environmentalists fangs on their protesting the power plant and desalination plant SpaceX was going to build…
Another good thing is that in its FAA license description it includes activities from offshore platforms like Phobos and Deimos so SpaceX may not need to do a new FAA license when it switches over.
Needless to say all of the environmentalists are livid so expect the lawsuits to start flying soon.
This was always going to be the outcome, it was only a matter of time. Surprised so many people were tricked into taking the drama by ESGHound and others.
ESGHound is claiming victory since the gas processing facility is gone, but all that does is increase the amount of green house gases released and other environmental impacts from all the truck traffic required, so it made its impact environmentally worst rather than better…
Meanwhile SpaceX is looking at build a second crew tower at LC-40 at the Cape in order to make NASA happy when it starts launching the Super Heavy/Starship from Pad 39A
Only because it wasn’t necessary, at least right now. If they scale up ops and require local gas facilities i’d bet a lot of money it will happen. Only a matter of time that the facilities are in place to support both NASA and Spx objectives.
Not to mention ESGHound’s latest talking point about how the noise assessment was for raptor 1 but now raptor 2 is much louder was explicitly debunked. SpaceX pointed out this increases the noise contours by 1 decibel, which isn’t a significant increase at all. The reasoning for removing the power plant, LNG, and purification systems was because raptor required more refined methane than what was commercially available. They were able to improve raptor so they can truck methane in instead, so the LNG stuff was dropped.
Indeed ESGHound was always a histrionic grifter. The ability to drop purification helps reduce CAPEX and OPEX for the project most importantly. But down the line they still may need a pipeline for scale and whatever they can source locally may still need some local processing.
When SS/SH begins launching on a cadence, and the local biology is understood to a fine degree with the impact of a lunch understood as well as your points about limiting the locals from tearing up the landscape, all the limitations will be revisited over the years. This program seems sane. The monitoring program will be the quantified way the program will be allowed to expand.
Mitigated…
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Good. Now maybe a certain billionaire can refocus his attention back on the projects that makes him one of the good guys.
I would say that if he cleans up Twitter it would be a good thing for society…
Hhahhaha, you might as well go to TruthMedia or FrankTalk. It will become a conservative monoculture with your whack jobs out trolling for people who are not religiously conservative enough and striking out at them driving everyone away except people with the most stupid set of grievances. Anyone with a semblance of a level head with get chased away the ad dollars with go with them. It’ll be the most monumental waste of 40 billion dollars.
Actually only a minority of Twitter users use it for politics with PEW studies showing about 6% of users doing the vast majority of political tweets although that is what gets the media’s attention.
The vast majority use it as intended for quick Tweets to their network of friends while businesses use it for keeping in touch with their loyal customers.
If that 6% decides to leave and go elsewhere I think it’s great as it will do a lot to clean up the platform and return it to its original function while improving its overall image. At the moment it is like going to a shopping mall or museum and having to put up with a bunch of political activists demonizing and screaming at each other.
That’s now. That’s with Twitter’s post control and account exclusion. When it opens up and goes to gloves off anything goes. …. That experiment is already done…. Think about it, you’re asking for the rules to change, yet use the current system under the current set of operating rules to meter what the effect of the new rules will be. I think you’ll find it does not work that way. Editorial boards really do set the environment of a forum.
Elon Musk says that he wants to make money from Twitter and getting rid of politics is the best way to do so, IF he is as smart as his followers say he is, so we will see if they are right about him.?
Personally I think that he should just focus on space and not only avoid Twitter, but dump Tesla now that it is big enough to move forward on its own. Indeed, it probably would do a lot better with a CEO who is a good administrator as it has more than enough “vision” for it to implement.
But like Henry Ford, who should have left Ford in the early 1920’s to others, Elon Musk will probably hang on at Tesla far longer than he should.
I agree with a lot of that. I think this $40 billion is a disaster of his making that he won’t be able to control. Secretly Libertarians believe in Asimov’ian Psycho History where all you need to do is set the machine up, tweak a few initial conditions, and then let the system run free and everything will work out. It won’t. Musk’s constant reference to being a Doge, even naming his currency after it, tells us he sees himself as a business man gangster-duke.
Libertarians are more Heinlein people than Asimov people. Or at least they used to be. Since the lefties took over the LP you might be right by now.
I’ve never seen a reference to Musk referring to himself as a Doge. He did refer to himself as “The Dogefather” on SNL. The remark was intended to be funny as SNL is, at least allegedly, a comedy show.
Dogecoin is not Elon Musk’s creation. It was created as a sort of prank which seems to have gotten away from its creators. One of them, by the way, has a running feud going with Elon.
Elon “sees himself as a business man gangster-duke.” Is that what the voices in your head are telling you now? Methinks it’s time to get back on your meds.
Ford was demonstrably injuring his own creation by the 1920s. Musk is not, to say the least, injuring Tesla.
Half that 6 percent are bots too.
Rogozin just used Twitter to advocate genocide against Ukraine. Apparently that’s OK these days. Can’t see how letting Trump back on Twitter would clean up anything. The man is toxic and addicted to social media. It would be like giving alcohol to an alcoholic.
Neither should be allowed on Twitter and in fact All political posts should be banned from it as I point out below.
That is neither possible nor desirable.
It is possible as it is a private platform excepted from the Bill of Rights which only applies to government activities. And it’s desirable for the shareholders as it will likely improve revenue, which is the first legal responsibility the managers have to shareholders.
Toxic? Clean up?
Then why do you allow Gary / Duquesne / RaceBannon / Michael / MichaelatNASA / Billgamesh / Bilgamesh / Conway Costigan / Adjure / Richard Seaton / caught you again / SLSFanboy , to post on your site?
After visiting a thread that Gary has poisoned and destroyed, ya feel like you need to take shower.
Not exactly conducive to a professional, functioning web site.
Censorship isn’t so simple in your own back yard, is it?
Yes, Twitter is a toxic sewer.
That’s a good point. I keep banning and he keeps coming back.
I’m one person running two websites now. I don’t have a large staff or algorithms.
That’s why you designate moderators to act on your behalf in your absence.
You are among the myriad examples of why the Founding Fathers chose to make fundamental human rights beyond the reach of any single man to extinguish.
Why didn’t be pour $40 billion into Space X and not into Twitter? Sounds to me like Twitter is a big project. I’m going to guess that Musk is going to try to form a ‘digital nation’ for him to lord over. if so Twitter will be his main project for quite some time.
Your Musk-hate is leaking.
Andrew’s hot takes sometimes cool too quickly and crack up.
Gosh, SLS GUy says I’m an acolyte. Damn, can’t please anyone…..
Perhaps you can have the voices in your head take a meeting with the voices in his head and settle things.
And perhaps a bit of cerebro-spinal fluid too.
Twitter could be a very good tool for making money from data mining applied to focused marketing, but more likely he will try to make it into a massive “free speech” online “public square” and it will just become a massive online barroom brawl instead. It will be interesting to watch. I just hope that it won’t impact SpaceX which is the only part of his empire that is of importance to the future.
They will need grid storage on the Moon and Mars, and vehicles, and tunnels. Throw in some neural linkage for good measure. Mars Twitter?
Watch how fast everyone leaves the brawl to leave it to the brawlers. We don’t disagree. I think Elon wants into political office. He might try to turn Twitter into a digital nation to reach out and influence the real world. But I think you’re right, hes fan base is going to set fire to the place and burn it down. We’re going to get a preview of what Mars will look like under The Doge.
Why is it that every lefty seems to be better at projection than your typical multi-plex?
Hey this is like our arguments close to launch time of a new prototype. If the purchase goes forward, we’ll see what happens. I think the experiment is going to be run.
What is funny is that one of the mitigations is for SpaceX to put up markers honoring the last Confederate Victory in the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Ranch, while other such monuments honoring the Confederate forces are being torn down. Ah, nothing like bureaucracy at its finest…?
Honoring? Not if it’s done properly. It will mark the battlefield like we do other Civil War battlefield.
Not sure why it’s a bad thing to tear down Confederate monuments. The Confederacy’s only reason to exist was to perpetuate slavery. Why celebrate that?
You miss the point that at the very time those monuments to the Confederacy are being torn down the government is ordering SpaceX to put up one to mark a Confederate victory.
Ah, yes, if it is done properly” but that will be hard to do in this case in which a Union commander attacked Confederate troops who were waiting to surrender under a truce agreement after the war had officially ended and said
Confederate troops succeeded in their counter attack with the help of French artillery to defeat to him.
It is going to be hard to make any signs that will make the Union Army look good, especially as the Confederate forces included a unit made up of First Nation soldiers from Oklahoma where many of the First Nations held slaves, but that is another story.
BTW did you get to visit the site while on Boca Chica?
no marker is going to be put up honoring the confederacy
It will depend on the wording the NPS approves, but hopefully it won’t be taken that way.
But really the NPS should have just let sleeping ghosts be…
death to traitors. my 6th Grandfather upon hearing that Texas went with the confederacy took all the horses he was going to supply to the Union…to ABQ and gave them to the Union. after the war. The Union paid him.
it was a hard 5 years…but he made the right chioce. Trump world is about the old south
Remember, the ancestors of many of the local Hispanic population fought with those traitors hoping to get some of the land back the Texans stole from them after the Texas Revolution.
I learned a long time ago to never try and assess the motives of people long dead who you simply dont know as people much less a group…unless there is “some” supporting evidence 🙂 in the case of Thurman Oler and his “family” its at least pretty solid family legend that the folks of that era were very anti slave. Newspaper records from both Galveston and Houston as well as what would become Bay City always refer to the “anti slave settlements” of Alta Loma. Two of his brothers rode north and fought (and died) with the Union army another one rode to New Mexico and fought at Gloretta…and ended up settling there. At that point in our religious history they (and the church we go to) were Lutherns..which was anti slave.
there doubtless were other reasons for the action. I doubt they thought much of confederate money and its value it was a sizeable horse heard. the interesting thing though is that the family legend (and documentation) is that they got an IOU from the Army in ABQ. that came in handy after the war though 🙂
Always with the loony Trump hatred. I suspect the next few years aren’t going to be good for your blood pressure.
doubt it I think its going to be a tough time for right wing nuts
Hopefully the Recession that is starting will clean out the nut cases on both sides and return the nation to the middle of the road. Unemployed folks who have to pay $10 a gallon for gas are not going to be interested in abstract political finger pointing or the environmental evils of Starbase. They will be looking to throw all the bums out on both sides and start over with folks willing to work together to fix the economy.
there is no bi modal distribution of craziness the GOP has it all
I didn’t get a chance to visit it.
We have museums on the National Mall dedicated to African Americans and Native Americans that deal with far worse things. Also the Holocaust Museum. Lay out what happened honestly.
That the Union Army violated a truce to attack the Confederates and lost the battle. That the commander of the Union forces who wanted to build his reputation was retired in disgrace after losing in the court martial he filed against his second in command in which the Confederate commander testified as to the events.
It delayed the end of slavery in Texas by nearly a month, to June 19th, 1865, by boosting the moral of the Confederate armies which hadn’t surrendered yet and giving them the hope that Mexico, which was profiteering hugely from exporting Confederate cotton to the U.K., would join with Texas in fighting the Union Army.
I guess you could just say on the sign it was the last battle of the Civil War and leave all that out…
So, they kept fighting on even after Lee surrendered and it was clear the war was lost? Dumbasses.
The record of the Union forces in the West wasn’t all that good with the Union Army getting driven out of Brownsville just a few months before while believing that Mexico, which had a huge French presence, might join in to fight to get the lands the U.S. took from it only a generation before was not irrational. That is why General Sheridan quickly flooded Texas with large number of troops after the eastern surrender and told the ones there to just stand by and not make any attacks.
The Confederacy’s only reason to exist was to perpetuate slavery.
Well, I’m sure that’s what your Yankee teachers told you in school, but it existed for many reasons other than slavery. You might want to actually research it. Slavery was unforgivable. But many of the things the North was doing to the South were unforgivable as well.
no slavery was at its core. the confederacy existed for nothing else
Wrong
any other theory on the confederacy goes against what its “keen minds” said at the time and at best is wishful fantasy for a group of people who cannot face reality
Read the documents the Confederate states passed to secede. Slavery was front and center in all of them.
There was tensions between North and South on tariffs and other issues. But, they were not fatal to the republic. They were politically manageable. The rupture came over slavery. If Lincoln hadn’t been elected, the states wouldn’t have seceded. The conflict over slavery would have at least been delayed.
This is dumb as usual. Monuments are for other things than celebration if you are a grownup and the Confederacy was more complicated than that anyway.
More complicated than what? Read the secession documents that states passed when they left the Union. Slavery at the core of everything. They fought for slavery for four years right down to the bitter end at Appomattox Court House. The South’s meager industrial capability was destroyed along with its economic system.
The Union was complicated. In four years it went from fighting to preserve to emancipating the slaves with a Constitutional amendment. It contained border states that remained loyal despite being slave states. Union grew stronger and more industrialized and populated despite large losses on the battlefield. Congress also passed a series of groundbreaking measures (land grant universities, homesteading, transcontinental railroad) that transformed the country after the war.
Union was complicated. Confederacy was fairly straightforward. It fought a counter revolution based on continuing to own human beings.
The mitigations pointed out are very…sensible.
The process was slow but actually works. As has been shown for decades by Kennedy Space Center, not to mention Vandenberg, with some thoughtful mitigations, a launch center and wildlife can successfully co-exist.
Looking forward to a launch license and the first Starship launch!