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SpaceX's Texas Rocket Is Going to Cause a Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks

• baq 4y ago
  aged like fine wine.
  • lelandbatey 4y ago
    Piggybacking here as a broad response to some of the other comments. This parent article makes some un-sourced claims about what has happened in with the SpaceX facility permitting process, and makes un-sourced claims about the motivations of why those things happened. I've dug into the claims about "what" happened, and have found that they check out. I have not been able to find sources about the "why" claims though. Here's a key paragraph with many "what" and "why" claims, by the parent article: > SpaceX convinced FAA to approve a site that would host launching the Largest Rocket in History under NEPA’s Environmental Assessment (EA) process, which is saved for projects that do not have a “significant impact” to the environment. This action was and is eyebrow-raising, as no major spaceport has ever been authorized under this process, always requiring a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). An EIS is the default multi-year approval process specified under NEPA. The FAA piggybacked on an existing 2015 authorization for SpaceX’s operation of 2-3 annual launches of the much smaller Falcon 9 rockets to forward this streamlined Starship “low impact” approval process through the system. I have found that: - There was one Environmental Impact Study (the longer, multi-year process) of the Texas SpaceX facility done in 2014 based on assumptions of use for only up to the Falcon Heavy rocket (17.532 MN of force). See here : https://www.faa.gov/space/environmental/nepa_docs/spacex_texas_eis https://www.faa.gov/space/environmental/nepa_docs/spacex_tex... - In 2021, the FAA carried out an "Environmental Assessment", a.k.a. a "Programmatic Environmental Assessment". An "Environmental Assessment" is meant to be a "brief but thorough" examination, with the outcome being a decision to either 1. Conduct a full "Environmental Impact Study" (EIS) or 2. a "Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI)" which means no EIS will be carried out. Source for the Environmental Assessment which came to a "Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI)": https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_starship https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_star... Note also that the 2021 EA definitely does gesture broadly towards the 2014 EIS many times, without directly connecting the dots in a way that seems rigorous. I am sympathetic towards categorizing the EA as "piggybacking" on the 2014 EIS given what I've read in the 2021 EA. Something not mentioned in the parent, which seems like a GROSS oversight in the 2021 EA is that it justifies the FONSI by stating > "[SpaceX has redesigned the Raptor engines.] This change would not constitute any discernable changes in environmental impacts. An increase from 61.7 meganewtons (MN) to 74 MN would result in a less than 1 decibel change and would constitute a negligible change to the noise contours." But there's no source on where the 61.7 MN of force claim originally comes from, and how either of those new numbers (61.7 MN and 74 MN) relate at all to the original 2014 EIS maximum thrust of 17.532 Meganewtons. That seems like a LARGE jump, a tripling of the take off thrust, without any words spoken to how existing facilities or how environmental damages might change with the change in energy.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• herodotus 4y ago
  Reading this makes me so sad. We (humanity) just seem to be unable to figure out how to live a sustainable life that coexists with nature. A huge failure of the imagination. A massive thanks to Eric of ESG Hound for doing this work.
  • freejazz 4y ago
    > We (humanity) just seem to be unable to figure out how to live a sustainable life that coexists with nature. Sorry, but this is incredibly ignorant of human history. Yes, contemporary cultures cannot live sustainably, but that is not true for humans in general.
  • wahnfrieden 4y ago
    You would think it has more to do with power than general inhumanity. These decisions are made by few for many and for profit. I personally don't let some few billionaires and the state stand in for my optimism for the humanity of the general population without those encumbrances
    • kevviiinn 4y ago
      This is simply the endgame of capitalism. If we keep trying to increase profit margins, something else has to give
  • Aeolun 4y ago
    I guess we just care a little bit less about this little slice of our planet when we’re at the brink of launching the largest rocket ever into space.
  • friend_and_foe 4y ago
    If it's any consolation, judging by the author's past predictions, and sourced and cited criticism in this thread, you don't have to be sad because it's mostly bullshit.
    • clydethefrog 4y ago
• alchemist1e9 4y ago
  If even part of this analysis is accurate then the launch could be a public relations catastrophe for SpaceX. Especially as it sounds like there are options available to mitigate the issues but aren’t being taken due to costs and time.
  • tgv 4y ago
    The noise of the fanboys and bots will drown out the critics. To wit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590738
    • mardifoufs 4y ago
      [flagged]
      • brookst 4y ago
        [flagged]
        • newZWhoDis 4y ago
          [flagged]
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • whamlastxmas 4y ago
      Both pro and anti Elon HN posters are convinced the entire website is an echo chamber of whatever opinion they don’t have
      • dang 4y ago
        Quite so, for any divisive $topic. Here's an amusing (to me, at least) set of examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870
• vaidhy 4y ago
  Is there no way to appeal this in the court systems? If it is such a flagrant violation of authority, then there should be a way to hold it back, right?
  • neom 4y ago
    If the FWS pressed the FAA and SpaceX to update their models and they refused, imo the FWS should have had the power to compel them to update their models.
• powera 4y ago
  Call me jaded, but I am tired of these doomer takes. It seems like every place on earth is filled with "unique biodiversity" these days. And Musk's unwillingness to do years of extra "safety precaution" studies, bi-lingual outreach, etc. seems like a (rational) unwillingness to play by the rules of people who overtly hate Musk and want him to fail. And yes, if you take the worst possible possibility for everything, it does look potentially bad. But that's extremely unlikely. And, if it does happen, SpaceX will have to fix it before they launch a second rocket.
  • vinyl7 4y ago
    Yea these kinds of things pop up whenever people want to boot someone out. Look at the recent news about Clarence Thomas. Its just cancel culture in a more subversive manner that cant be labeled.
    • flangola7 4y ago
      More like consequence culture.
      • friend_and_foe 4y ago
        Yes, the consequence of entertaining angry screeching.
        • flangola7 4y ago
          People are not morally obligated to platform and entertain toxic and harmful ideas. Much more direct options are available than "angry screeching"; it is a moderate compromise.
• irrational 4y ago
  > I expected more from our agencies, from the press What do you call a take that reads as incredibly naive, but you suspect the author is old enough not to really be that naive? Hyperbole? Affected surprise?
  • dymk 4y ago
    Pearl clutching, concern trolling
  • charles_f 4y ago
    I don't think it's naive. There's a difference between expecting something and thinking it will happen. You can expect from a supervising agency to function appropriately. Being surprised that it doesn't happen, especially when it demonstrated its inefficiency in the past is something else, but you can still expect it to be better
• programmarchy 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • beebmam 4y ago
    The same argument could be made for the deaths of humans, too. If you consider the consequences, are the deaths of 100 humans worth it to get interplanetary travel? Some people, maybe even you, would argue that it is indeed worth it.
    • prepend 4y ago
      People aren’t birds. If hundred of people would die for this launch, I don’t think that’s acceptable. There’s a certain amount of bird/wildlife loss is acceptable, but I don’t know the amount. But there are costs to rocket launches, and wind power, and many things that will kill a small number of animals.
    • programmarchy 4y ago
      Millions of human lives have been spent on intraplanetary border skirmishes. No argument needed.
    • newZWhoDis 4y ago
      I think OP was joking, but then again this is the internet and all.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • moralestapia 4y ago
    Sure, and that line of thinking has always led us to good things ...
• fabian2k 4y ago
  One thing that surprised me reading the article is that Boca Chica doesn't have a water deluge system. I somehow expected that this would be standard once development moves beyond the early prototypes. If the noise levels are off by 20 decibels compared to the expected limits used for the application, that seems like a very valid complaint. I cannot judge how reliable the cited measurement is though.
  • toomuchtodo 4y ago
    https://youtu.be/FsqBYJd56Ko https://youtu.be/FsqBYJd56Ko Deluge system component delivery and install video, Feb 2023.
    • fabian2k 4y ago
      Hmm, so it seems there is a water deluge system in contrast to the claims in the article. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsbnYp0FYKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsbnYp0FYKU But to me that look dramatically undersized if you look at the Kennedy Space Center one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNkmwrTjKuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNkmwrTjKuo). And Starship is a very large rocket. Not sure what to make of this yet.
      • Aeolun 4y ago
        I really love how the kennedy space center one looks. But looking at the apollo launch video that links from it it doesn’t appear to be enough (or at least not enough it doesn’t instantly turn into steam).
  • sottol 4y ago
    Something about this also makes me feel a bit, hmm, I guess "concerned". I know SpaceX is very efficient and that they hustle to a degree, but their launch site looks very "min-viable" (at best). I hope this does not and will not extend to other parts of their designs.
    • allenrb 4y ago
• renewiltord 4y ago
  In terms of measurable outcome, what does "catastrophic" mean? At some point, language about everything has transformed into having zero dynamic range. Everything is either a disaster or nothing. And considering high rises by the sea side, scooters on sidewalks, and bike lanes are all "catastrophic". It would be useful to get a scale here that is continuous non-binary-value. For instance, if it's as bad as the article's claim that the FAA's failed to hold a bilingual hearing, I'm not really that concerned. Lack of bilingual hearings don't rise to the level of disaster, by my reckoning.
  • brookst 4y ago
    It all depends on your frame of reference. For someine deeply concerned with endangered habitats, a few hundred or thousand dead animals is an unbearable catastrophe. For someone focused on progress at all costs, it's not even a slight concern. It's just how the world works, that the people whose concerns are most impacted seek to advocate for their positions.
    • freejazz 4y ago
      > For someone focused on progress at all costs, it's not even a slight concern. Whose progress?
    • renewiltord 4y ago
      Well, they're the ones doing the advocacy so I won't armchair quarterback but my reaction to the thing when language like that is used without corresponding numbers is that it's a cry-wolf fearmongering scenario. Perhaps the general public is different. I think not, but we shall see.
      • brookst 4y ago
        Wait, you didn't see numbers and analysis in that article? I'm willing to believe the numbers are falsified, the analysis is biased, and the author is a dirty commie, but it seems odd to claim there are no numbers. Are you sure your head is clear on this?
• gradys 4y ago
  It doesn’t seem like this article considers any benefits from allowing this launch or specifies a threshold of damage under which the author would be okay with allowing the launch. In general, doing things like developing the capacity to launch very large payloads to space will come with costs. We wouldn’t be able to do any such things if we weren’t willing to pay those costs to get the benefits.
  • tgv 4y ago
    What benefits come from doing it there instead of picking a more suitable place? What benefits come from this launch at all? It's just vainglory.
    • prepend 4y ago
      The benefit of improved space travel and all that comes with that. This seems like a decent location in that it’s not very populated and has appropriate conditions for rocket launches. It wasn’t picked randomly so other locations were considered. I think these complaints would apply to other locations as well. Building rockets and doing awesome things isn’t vainglory any more than any expiration and technical improvements. Rockets are needed for space exploration. Space exploration is valuable on so many dimensions - resources, sustainability, research.
      • freejazz 4y ago
        >The benefit of improved space travel and all that comes with that. Can't you have that with a more appropriate launch site? I don't even understand this argument where anytime anything critical about space travel is mentioned, the response is, essentially, "but space travel!!!"
      • kevviiinn 4y ago
        Is there any reason that these launches can't take place a bit offshore?
        • prepend 4y ago
• ekkeke 4y ago
  Coming from the UK, I'd feel more inclined to listen to these ecological/environmental concerns if they weren't abused in such terrible ways. In general safety limits are calculated with significant error margins, so I'd take this kind of scary blog post about destroyed houses with a pinch of salt. The other aspect to consider is that, as humans, we need space to work and live. This inevitably will come at the expense of the natural environment. Some species will suffer, some will suffer more than others. The only way around that is to tell people to stop having children, to stop living, and to stop advancing society. We have to balance all of these when we consider land utilisation. I am far from convinced that this post takes a reasonable view of all these points. It is quite common for environmental extremists to make highly irrational decisions (germany shutting down nuclear plants in favour of coal?). Only one side of the argument seems to be considered in this post. An old boss taught me that I should never oppose an action without having an alternative viable course to propose. I think those of us who care for the environment (I care, a lot) would advance the cause by following this advice.
  • Enginerrrd 4y ago
    >An old boss taught me that I should never oppose an action without having an alternative viable course to propose. I think those of us who care for the environment (I care, a lot) would advance the cause by following this advice. I'm a civil/environmental engineer. Ironically I'm pro-progress here but the fact that they got away with construction and launch here without an EIS is absolutely laughably corrupt as far as I'm concerned. I've had to do the full EIS for projects that were far, far, far less impactful in scope, by many orders of magnitude. The FAA is simply not acting in the public interest here. This is regulatory capture in action. The alternative here is simple and IMO sensible. This should have gone deeper into the NEPA flowchart and had a full EIS, and then as a condition of approval they should have required permitting and construction of all mitigation measures prior to launches. (Water deluge / flame trenches, etc.)
    • bryanlarsen 4y ago
      They did do an EIS. Then they modified it from a 27 engine Falcon Heavy to a 33 engine Starship. The FAA ruled, with input from many other government agencies, that this only partially invalidated the original EIS.
• api 4y ago
  Wait... someone is doing something in America? We can't let this stand! I mean people might get ideas like building housing or transit without the required 20 years of paperwork!
  • brookst 4y ago
    Probably good that you edited out your praise for how Russia and China would punish anyone who raised these kinds of concerns.
    • api 4y ago
      I don't want America to become like Russia or China, but I fear that it will if we keep abusing our democratic system to create a "vetocracy" where nothing can ever be done. Eventually people will rebel and elect totalitarians to force things through. Either that or totalitarian nations will leave us in the dust while we do paperwork. Our major cities are full of tent city slums because NIMBYs won't allow housing to be built. We have hundreds of gigawatts of renewable energy in the 'planning' stage stuck behind mountains of red tape. California has spent billions on high speed rail and they've barely started to lay track and only after scaling the project back to the point that it'll be near useless (it doesn't even connect the major cities!).
      • brookst 4y ago
        Just how much veto power do you think the average person has in Russia and China when the elites choose to do something? Your argument seems exactly backward. You want people to have less power, because otherwise the elites will take away what little power they exercise?
        • api 4y ago
          Dysfunctional democracies either stagnate or turn into totalitarian dictatorships when people elect totalitarians in a desperate attempt to fix intractable problems. A "vetocracy" where nothing can ever be done is one form of dysfunctional democracy, and if it gets too bad people will elect leaders that will force things through. (I'm not even sure a vetocracy is a democracy. You could say it's a dictatorship of a small group of obstructionists.) I want people to think more about the benefits of things and be skeptical of fear-mongers whose career is built around coming up with reasons to do nothing. (P.S. I think right-wing culture war fear-mongering is also a bunch of bullshit.)
• jws 4y ago
  People don't have much feel for sound decibels. This is going to be loud, but for context, both "The Who" and "Deep Purple" have played concerts that were louder than the sample and thunder (which animals are exposed to even in wildlife refuges) is literaly 100 times more sound energy. Animals survive thunder.
  • Aeolun 4y ago
    Thunder only sounds for a few moments though. I doubt the engines will cut out after a few moments.
  • Youden 4y ago
    Thunder is around 120dB but that only lasts for a short amount of time. A rocket launch will produce continuous high-intensity noise, which is far more damaging. Animals also have ways to prepare for a storm, such as retreating to a nest or other safe space as the storm comes. A rocket launch usually occurs during good weather and has no clear advanced warning, so there's no chance for mitigation. So I don't think the comparison to thunder is apt.
• FL33TW00D 4y ago
  No wonder large scale projects in the west have atrophied with takes like this getting traction.
  • flangola7 4y ago
    What do you mean?
    • Vecr 4y ago
      I think they mean turning humanity into some sort of collective suicide cult over birds is really stupid. Humanity first.
    • kevviiinn 4y ago
      The OP is simply telling us that they're unaware of the details and they are showing their bias against reasonable regulation alongside a disdain for any environmental impact of any project
  • rsynnott 4y ago
    > in the west For reference, the flame trench shown in the article is in Kazakhstan; it was used for the first manned space launch over 60 years ago. "Be a bit careful with rockets" is not an exclusively western thing, nor is it new.
    • friend_and_foe 4y ago
      Maybe the approach is also a bit outdated? Spacex is not just building a rocket, theyre building a fully reusable, low cost, high volume space launch system. That might involve innovating and cutting fat off the design of the entire set of facilities, not just the rocket. If we were just doing things the way they've always been done on faith that the people that did it did it right the first time we wouldn't have falcon 9, much less starship.
      • freejazz 4y ago
        Weird how you project that others are doing things under the basis of faith, but "move fast and break things" somehow isn't. Totally defies common sense and all principles of reasonableness.
• allenrb 4y ago
  Everything will not be perfect the first time. Waiting for perfection guarantees that no progress is ever made. They’re going to launch, it’s going to do whatever it does (hopefully complete all test objectives!) and then we’ll have real data. Armed with real data, SpaceX and the various agencies involved will determine the next steps. I’ll be surprised if some improvements are not needed/required. But arguing it to death without doing anything? That’s just civilization suicide.
  • freejazz 4y ago
    >Everything will not be perfect the first time. I don't see anyone calling for perfection as the standard
  • anonymousab 4y ago
    But nobody said not to make progress. Like, they could say least apply the same mitigations as have been used at most other launch sites. It costs more money and takes a bit more time, which is annoying and why SpaceX doesn't want to bother. It's not a dichotomous choice of "now and success or later and failure" and it never has been.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• thegrim33 4y ago
  According to the author, the FAA doesn't know what they're doing, SpaceX doesn't know what they're doing, the National Environmental Policy Act which exists solely to protect the environment in these scenarios apparently didn't work, but this uninvolved author somehow knows better than everyone that's actually involved. Their entire argument is apparently based around other articles that this person has written in the past, and I'm not interested in following the rabbit hole of conspiracies to see where it ends.
  • adastra22 4y ago
    According to reality, they were right.
    • chrisco255 4y ago
      What endangered species were killed during the launch today? The rocket blew up in atmosphere. The launch pad obv needs a redesign, but it wasn't an ecological catastrophe, it was a little bit of shredded concrete.
      • adastra22 4y ago
        Concrete which pelted the surrounding city and infrastructure, as well has hitting quite a bit of infrastructure in Starbase. We don't know what the total damage will be, but this was not supposed to happen, and is not good.
        • chrisco255 4y ago
          It didn't pelt the surrounding city, lol. And well, of course it hit infrastructure in Starbase. The concrete was beneath the launch pad at Starbase.
        • mlindner 4y ago
          No concrete reached the surrounding city or infrastructure. There seems to be a false propaganda spreading that people were endangered by this launch. That couldn't be further from the truth.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• senko 4y ago
  Seems like the author would be able to find concern for ecological disaster if SpaceX launched the rocket from the middle of a desert.
  • brookst 4y ago
    Is that supposed to be a rebuttal of the claims in the article?
    • newZWhoDis 4y ago
      Well the article has no valid claims whatsoever, so it doesn’t exactly need rebutting.
• elif 4y ago
  i'm not an explosion expert, but i would imagine the sound from the previous test articles going boom boom pop would exceed the nominal performance of these engines.
• b800h 4y ago
  I've heard of cases of stuff like this being put out by competitors in similar scenarios in other industries.
• chasd00 4y ago
  there's a lot of emotional language in this article and words like "could", "maybe", "probably" etc. Also, the author mentions making snide remarks about Musk and obviously has other motivations. The concerns on noise may be valid but i'll wait for more actual facts before passing judgement.
  • api 4y ago
    The greatest advancement in space flight since Apollo is more important than Musk's culture war BS. Think of it this way: if Musk had drank the "woke" brand kool-aid instead of the right-wing kool-aid the far right would be bashing his rocket program instead. They'd probably find some way to link rockets and space flight to trans people or something. The far-right and far-left cults only care about your loyalty to the cause. If you are on their team everything you do is good, and if you are not on their team everything you do is bad. The first generation to grow up on Mars will learn in school about this eccentric billionaire weirdo who helped kick the space program forward by founding a company, and that's about it. All the rest of this stuff will be forgotten.
• moralestapia 4y ago
  Wait, why is this submission flagged?
• almost_usual 4y ago
  Really surprised this is flagged.
  • sidibe 4y ago
    Negative SpaceX and Tesla stories get a lot of comments and a lot of flags. You hardly ever catch them on the front page despite there being a couple every week with 100+ comments (well, at least for Tesla). A lot of people around here don't take too kindly to negative Elon-related news.
• nynx 4y ago
  The author confuses sound intensity levels and A-weighted sound pressure. These are, I believe, different physical quantities. Their argument doesn't make sense without that confusion.
• SkyMarshal 4y ago
  The lack of a flame trench to redirect exhaust for the largest rocket in human history seems like it could result in heat damage to the nearby launch facilities. Particularly the methane tanks the article mentions. I wonder what SpaceX’s calculations on that are.
  • friend_and_foe 4y ago
    Well, considering they probably don't want to blow their launch pad up, and they employ engineers, they've probably determined it's fine and found another way to protect the facilities. I'll reserve judgment on that for when it does blow up.
    • rideontime 4y ago
      Your judgment?
    • SkyMarshal 4y ago
      To clarify, it’s not really about the launch pad, it’s about the facilities surrounding it. A flame trench redirects some or much of the exhaust through a channel that safely avoids the surrounding facilities. Lack of one means the exhaust goes out in all directions. But yeah I can’t imagine they haven’t considered this and planned for it, so we’ll see.
• javajosh 4y ago
  It's (mostly) a good argument, and it needs making. I'm glad he did this. But I would still allow the project. I do not like Musk, but I like even less the tendency for projects to get delayed or cancelled because of infinite environmental impact studies. Especially when, as in this case, the impact is limited in time and space. I'm glad NASA acquired vast tracts of land in S Florida 60 years ago when no-one lived there. Holding SpaceX to a standard that high seems to speak less of an interest in safety and more of an interest in ending SpaceX. This is not an easy argument to make. Our biosphere is a precious gift from deep history, and we are fools to waste it. Elon Musk bought Twitter and became a cringe right troll, which makes it hard to defend him. But the damage to nature here is limited in time and space, and Musk's personality is irrelevant. When I weigh my own sentiments here, the annoyance at not letting things get built far, far outweighs these other concerns. As an aside, part of the argument that isn't good: to hold SpaceX to the same standard as NASA in 1960's Florida. A government agency. Florida was basically an uninhabited jungle then compared to today. This argument is "no more rockets, ever" in sheep's clothing, because those conditions will never exist again.
  • alpaca128 4y ago
    Any kind of damage to nature is limited in time and space, provided the universe is finite. Impact on endangered species is more difficult to reverse, though. You seem to imply there's no alternative for SpaceX than building their own launch site there instead of using NASA's more isolated "vast tracts of land" or other better-suited locations.
    • newZWhoDis 4y ago
      There are no valid concerns or complaints with using BC as a launch site.
• xiphias2 4y ago
  SpaceX satellites were crucial in the war against Russia. Even if they go over the noise limit, this rocket gives a clear military advantage to US, so I don't see any rational reason why SpaceX would / should stop.
• throwoutway 4y ago
  While others have commented negatively on this article, I did find this one point interesting and worth a conversation: > In addition to the siting and sizing of the pad, SpaceX does not have a flame trench, nor do they have a water deluge system used to suppress heat and sound energy from any launches, as the Army Corps of Engineering permitting required to add these civil engineering systems is itself a multi-year process. > No large rocket complex on the planet: not in Russia, nor China, and certainly not in the US, exists that doesn’t contain one or both of these energy suppression systems. Edit: Looks like it does have a small deluge system installed, contrary to the article
  • newZWhoDis 4y ago
    > it takes multiple years of permitting and approvals to build a sloped concrete wall and some water cannons Sometimes I struggle to remain optimistic about America’s future
    • charles_f 4y ago
      I wonder about that, does anyone have insights of what the reason is behind that?
• the_third_wave 4y ago
  SpaceX seems to have caught the ire of the ESG czars [1] who have put out their hounds to go get 'm. Jolly good sports, sure, just like chasing the fox over the hedges like they did in days of yore but rather tiring in seeing how potentially valid concerns about potential environmental damage are being abused by these self-proclaimed masters of the universe to make their will be done no matter what the law of the land may say. Is this thing going to be loud? You bet it is, just like the Space Shuttle before it, like Ariane 5, like the Saturn V and especially like the Soviet N1 which must have been the loudest of them all. Would I want them to launch it in my backyard? No, that'd be rather unpleasant now wouldn't it? Luckily they found some mud flats in Boca Chica where they can make a lot of noise without it being all too much of a bother. Sure, they'll scare the bejeezus out of the local duck population but so did all its predecessors which does not seem to have led to the Great Duck Exodus of 1969 from Cape Kennedy (now Canavaral) or Kourou. So I say "straighten up and fly right" to the folks of SpaceX, plug your ears to the local ducks and find yourself a more worthy cause to the ESG knight in mossy armour who seems to have been on a vendetta against SpaceX for the last few years. To infinity and beyond! [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/musks-esg-attack-spotlights-35-trillion-industry-confusion-2022-05-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/musks-...