6 ms·

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 sol

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.
  - mongol 4y ago
    How can you tell without combing through the area carefully?
    - chrisco255 4y ago
      The flame from the engine did not spread outside the base. Outside of that, the rocket was over the ocean and in the atmosphere when it exploded, as rockets sometimes do. This was a test launch for research purposes, nothing completely unexpected happened here re: the rocket. The launch pad will need to be refactored. I'm sure they'll have it done within weeks.
      - adastra22 4y ago
        The flame is not what anyone here is worried about. 16 million lbs of force applied to disintegrating concrete results in a lot of chunks of heavy material launched at supersonic speeds at random, low flying trajectories away from the launch site. See this picture of the damaged fuel tanks, which are (for obvious reasons) much further from the launch site than this telephoto picture would have you believe: https://twitter.com/EmpiricalEnergy/status/1649094848077611018 https://twitter.com/EmpiricalEnergy/status/16490948480776110...
        echelon 4y ago
        Chalk it up as a necessary evil or negative externality of a far greater good. The benefits of these experiments will yield orders of magnitude better results for humanity than sitting still. Walk away from Omelas if you want, but most of us are here to watch us reach the stars. Humans and the planet we inhabit are a stepping stone to the infinite cosmos.
        adastra22 4y ago
        Or we can build a goddamn flame trench like they should have done in the first place.
        bmitc 4y ago
sho_hn 4y ago
I don't think you need to have a conspiracy brain to wonder if some of this may be plausible. Musk's companies are famous for a self-described "move fast and break things" strategy, and local authorities are often incentivized to let them for what their presence does for local economy, e.g. job creation, infra buildout, further growth opportunities, etc. There are precedents for this. I encourage you to read a little into the brouhaha and corruption revolving around Tesla's Gigafactory in Brandenburg, nearby Berlin. This was and is mired in environmental issues, from sapping the region of water to pollution concerns, yet Tesla at times kept building the thing in violation of having to wait for approvals, then environmental authorities were pressured and leaned on by local state gov to fast-track and grandfather approvals. The above rises above the level of cospiracy theories - there are protocols, there are government employees who went to the press to complain, there is solid investigative journalism. And yet there is a car factory. You can be on the other side of the arguments on the issues themselves perhaps (i.e. maybe your engineering/science opinion differs), or you can put humanity and economy over nature (this would be a political opinion), but rules being bent and better knowledge being ignored in favor of letting companies forge ahead at costs is a thing.
- hefferbub 4y ago
  Nearly all of the breathless doom mongering has been from one or two small environmental groups who opposed the plant from the start and who keep inventing objections to attempt to support their foregone conclusion. They use every possible opportunity to slow down progress irrespective of the merits of their complaints, and judges have rejected most of them. For example, water use. Tesla has built a complete onsite water reclamation plant that will allow it to build twice as many cars using the same water allocation they are already granted. Also “they are killing the forests!”. What is not said is that this so-called forest is actual one of many vast tree farms located throughout Germany which are planted with quick-growing monocultures of identical trees and harvested regularly. Tesla is planting an identical size plot of new trees elsewhere, and that effort was 62% complete as of May 2021
- woleium 4y ago
  Part of this is how things work in Germany though. I was asking a German friend what would happen if you drove with a suspended license in Germany, he said "But why would you drive with a suspended license?”. I said ”maybe there's an emergency, maybe you have to get to the hospital”. He replied "but you have a suspended license so you can't drive"... This went on for some time. He really couldn't wrap his head around the fact that someone with a suspended license may in fact still drive a car. I suspect that there are so few cases where folks break rules like Tesla did that the administration just doesn't really know what to do about it.
AlexandrB 4y ago
To be fair, it's not crazy to assume that the FAA doesn't know what they're doing after the 737MAX fuckups. As a regulatory body, they may be largely captured by industry at this point.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  > As a regulatory body, they may be largely captured by industry at this point. You're not wrong. But if Boeing were to exert its influence on the FAA, it would exert pressure to delay or prevent the flight, not to permit the flight. The fact that the FAA permit the flight flies in the face of the idea of regulatory capture. And to be clear, Boeing and Lockheed are in positions to influence the FAA, but not SpaceX. SpaceX has not been around long enough for the revolving door to make a full swing.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  People massively overstate the importance, expertise, and involvement of regulatory bodies. They can enforce some things, but not much, and often only after the fact.
caconym_ 4y ago
This person has a strange vendetta against SpaceX and has in the past made some extremely doomy predictions that didn't pan out, e.g. that the FAA's environmental review of the BC site was going to end badly for SpaceX. I think they have a very strong confirmation bias in this direction that colors everything they write, and so they are probably not worth paying attention to regardless of what you think about SpaceX.
- brookst 4y ago
  Perhaps, but the fact that this article was so effectively suppressed on HN makes me wonder how what other dissenting opinions and claims of malfeasance the Musk fan boys have suppressed. I didn't know there even were significant concerns (even if possibly wrong) until I happened to see this article before it was flagged for removal. What else is being whitewashed?
  - jason-phillips 4y ago
    It was "suppressed" because it's malodorous garbage.
    - johnklos 4y ago
      It's interesting that nobody here seems to refute any of the assertions and would rather hand-wave.
      - caconym_ 4y ago
        Why bother when the source has previously shown itself to be biased and unreliable? That's what happens when you pretend to be a journalist without applying journalistic standards: people will stop taking you seriously, and with good reason. As an aside, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but it's interesting how many comments in this thread read like they were written by ESG Hound him(?)self.
        deleted 4y ago
consumer451 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. I read TFA and that's not what I got from it at all. I read that Musk optimized for speed and cost, so he skipped normal things like a flame trench and water suppression. (although I recall the latter being hastily installed prior to the last test) As a huge SpaceX fan and tank watcher, I can say that those are all things that I and many others have been concerned about as well. But don't worry, this piece is flagged now so people won't have to worry about any of these silly things.
- kuschkufan 4y ago
  Kann nicht sein was nicht sein darf.
frouge 4y ago
In case you missed it, there is a global climate emergency on planet Earth. Governments and agencies are letting it happen. So you can argue that they are doing their jobs and solving the problem as it's their job, but it's also possible that they're not doing it. And do you think Elon Musk will throw away millions in investments because of birds?
- almost_usual 4y ago
  How does launching rockets into space prevent climate change?
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    The Starship is worst-case carbon neutral (burning methane generated from CO2 in the atmosphere) and best-case carbon negative. It can be carbon negative because methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is expensive to recover, with little economic value, and largely brought up to the surface from underground oil wells. Thus, this methane is often vented right to atmosphere. Actually burning it in Starship converts it into CO2, which has about 1/20 the long-term climate effect as would the otherwise-vented methane.
Zigurd 4y ago
The part about the FAA being incompetent strikes me as the weakest analysis. They are being permissive. Maybe even maliciously permissive. The FAA has taken a lot of heat from Elon's fan base. Maybe they are not inclined to stop an illustrative example.
readthenotes1 4y ago
FAA: Boeing knows what they're doing SpaceX: it's just some birds NEPA: no quick quip. Maybe they were told to follow along
dravine 4y ago
Apparently in your fictional universe, the US Government is competent and and effective. How cute.

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.
- mongol 4y ago
  How can you tell without combing through the area carefully?
  - chrisco255 4y ago
    The flame from the engine did not spread outside the base. Outside of that, the rocket was over the ocean and in the atmosphere when it exploded, as rockets sometimes do. This was a test launch for research purposes, nothing completely unexpected happened here re: the rocket. The launch pad will need to be refactored. I'm sure they'll have it done within weeks.
    - adastra22 4y ago
      The flame is not what anyone here is worried about. 16 million lbs of force applied to disintegrating concrete results in a lot of chunks of heavy material launched at supersonic speeds at random, low flying trajectories away from the launch site. See this picture of the damaged fuel tanks, which are (for obvious reasons) much further from the launch site than this telephoto picture would have you believe: https://twitter.com/EmpiricalEnergy/status/1649094848077611018 https://twitter.com/EmpiricalEnergy/status/16490948480776110...
      - echelon 4y ago
        Chalk it up as a necessary evil or negative externality of a far greater good. The benefits of these experiments will yield orders of magnitude better results for humanity than sitting still. Walk away from Omelas if you want, but most of us are here to watch us reach the stars. Humans and the planet we inhabit are a stepping stone to the infinite cosmos.
        adastra22 4y ago
        Or we can build a goddamn flame trench like they should have done in the first place.
        bmitc 4y ago

sho_hn 4y ago

I don't think you need to have a conspiracy brain to wonder if some of this may be plausible. Musk's companies are famous for a self-described "move fast and break things" strategy, and local authorities are often incentivized to let them for what their presence does for local economy, e.g. job creation, infra buildout, further growth opportunities, etc. There are precedents for this. I encourage you to read a little into the brouhaha and corruption revolving around Tesla's Gigafactory in Brandenburg, nearby Berlin. This was and is mired in environmental issues, from sapping the region of water to pollution concerns, yet Tesla at times kept building the thing in violation of having to wait for approvals, then environmental authorities were pressured and leaned on by local state gov to fast-track and grandfather approvals. The above rises above the level of cospiracy theories - there are protocols, there are government employees who went to the press to complain, there is solid investigative journalism. And yet there is a car factory. You can be on the other side of the arguments on the issues themselves perhaps (i.e. maybe your engineering/science opinion differs), or you can put humanity and economy over nature (this would be a political opinion), but rules being bent and better knowledge being ignored in favor of letting companies forge ahead at costs is a thing.

hefferbub 4y ago
Nearly all of the breathless doom mongering has been from one or two small environmental groups who opposed the plant from the start and who keep inventing objections to attempt to support their foregone conclusion. They use every possible opportunity to slow down progress irrespective of the merits of their complaints, and judges have rejected most of them. For example, water use. Tesla has built a complete onsite water reclamation plant that will allow it to build twice as many cars using the same water allocation they are already granted. Also “they are killing the forests!”. What is not said is that this so-called forest is actual one of many vast tree farms located throughout Germany which are planted with quick-growing monocultures of identical trees and harvested regularly. Tesla is planting an identical size plot of new trees elsewhere, and that effort was 62% complete as of May 2021
woleium 4y ago
Part of this is how things work in Germany though. I was asking a German friend what would happen if you drove with a suspended license in Germany, he said "But why would you drive with a suspended license?”. I said ”maybe there's an emergency, maybe you have to get to the hospital”. He replied "but you have a suspended license so you can't drive"... This went on for some time. He really couldn't wrap his head around the fact that someone with a suspended license may in fact still drive a car. I suspect that there are so few cases where folks break rules like Tesla did that the administration just doesn't really know what to do about it.

AlexandrB 4y ago

To be fair, it's not crazy to assume that the FAA doesn't know what they're doing after the 737MAX fuckups. As a regulatory body, they may be largely captured by industry at this point.

dotancohen 4y ago
> As a regulatory body, they may be largely captured by industry at this point. You're not wrong. But if Boeing were to exert its influence on the FAA, it would exert pressure to delay or prevent the flight, not to permit the flight. The fact that the FAA permit the flight flies in the face of the idea of regulatory capture. And to be clear, Boeing and Lockheed are in positions to influence the FAA, but not SpaceX. SpaceX has not been around long enough for the revolving door to make a full swing.
robertlagrant 4y ago
People massively overstate the importance, expertise, and involvement of regulatory bodies. They can enforce some things, but not much, and often only after the fact.

caconym_ 4y ago

This person has a strange vendetta against SpaceX and has in the past made some extremely doomy predictions that didn't pan out, e.g. that the FAA's environmental review of the BC site was going to end badly for SpaceX. I think they have a very strong confirmation bias in this direction that colors everything they write, and so they are probably not worth paying attention to regardless of what you think about SpaceX.

brookst 4y ago
Perhaps, but the fact that this article was so effectively suppressed on HN makes me wonder how what other dissenting opinions and claims of malfeasance the Musk fan boys have suppressed. I didn't know there even were significant concerns (even if possibly wrong) until I happened to see this article before it was flagged for removal. What else is being whitewashed?
- jason-phillips 4y ago
  It was "suppressed" because it's malodorous garbage.
  - johnklos 4y ago
    It's interesting that nobody here seems to refute any of the assertions and would rather hand-wave.
    - caconym_ 4y ago
      Why bother when the source has previously shown itself to be biased and unreliable? That's what happens when you pretend to be a journalist without applying journalistic standards: people will stop taking you seriously, and with good reason. As an aside, I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but it's interesting how many comments in this thread read like they were written by ESG Hound him(?)self.
      - deleted 4y ago

consumer451 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. I read TFA and that's not what I got from it at all. I read that Musk optimized for speed and cost, so he skipped normal things like a flame trench and water suppression. (although I recall the latter being hastily installed prior to the last test) As a huge SpaceX fan and tank watcher, I can say that those are all things that I and many others have been concerned about as well. But don't worry, this piece is flagged now so people won't have to worry about any of these silly things.

kuschkufan 4y ago
Kann nicht sein was nicht sein darf.

frouge 4y ago

In case you missed it, there is a global climate emergency on planet Earth. Governments and agencies are letting it happen. So you can argue that they are doing their jobs and solving the problem as it's their job, but it's also possible that they're not doing it. And do you think Elon Musk will throw away millions in investments because of birds?

almost_usual 4y ago
How does launching rockets into space prevent climate change?
- dotancohen 4y ago
  The Starship is worst-case carbon neutral (burning methane generated from CO2 in the atmosphere) and best-case carbon negative. It can be carbon negative because methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is expensive to recover, with little economic value, and largely brought up to the surface from underground oil wells. Thus, this methane is often vented right to atmosphere. Actually burning it in Starship converts it into CO2, which has about 1/20 the long-term climate effect as would the otherwise-vented methane.

Zigurd 4y ago

The part about the FAA being incompetent strikes me as the weakest analysis. They are being permissive. Maybe even maliciously permissive. The FAA has taken a lot of heat from Elon's fan base. Maybe they are not inclined to stop an illustrative example.

readthenotes1 4y ago

FAA: Boeing knows what they're doing SpaceX: it's just some birds NEPA: no quick quip. Maybe they were told to follow along

dravine 4y ago

Apparently in your fictional universe, the US Government is competent and and effective. How cute.