Rocket launches are a religious experience for me, regardless of who’s launching them. So it’s disappointing to see so much selective reporting being done in se

Rocket launches are a religious experience for me, regardless of who’s launching them. So it’s disappointing to see so much selective reporting being done in service of a negative perspective on the most exciting launch ever. SpaceX operates four launch sites, so only 25% of their facilities are out of commission. All of the no-fly-restrictions being talked about are completely standard procedure after a rocket explodes; every other major corporate player in rocketry has had their rocket classes grounded at one point or another. I would bet the FAA has even grounded NASA before, although it doesn’t seem like this has been publicly reported. Damage to the launch site is not unusual for rocket launches, even when they’re completely successful. NASA has damaged and repaired many launch sites, most recently with the successful SLS launch of Artemis I. We don’t know how much damage, since NASA prohibited media from photographing the site and discouraged reporting on the scale of damage, meaning most news sites simply ran NASA’s press package of “blew off the elevator doors” - but it’s telling that there hasn’t been a launch at that pad since that SLS launch in November 2022… …is what I would say if I was also trying to use selective reporting to make you think NASA destroyed their pads too. In reality, this doesn’t tell us anything about potential damage - the last launch before that one was the successful Ares 1 launch in 2009 (which also damaged the pad). So it’s all business as usual, damage within tolerance of expectations, etc. And yet there’s a subset of news media giving themselves what I can only describe as an unsightly collective intellectual hernia, as they strain so intensely to describe launch pad damage as an unmitigated disaster. I mean, for God’s sake, stop and think for a second. Why didn’t SpaceX rip up their launchpad and do a multi-million-dollar full rebuild with diverters, trenches, water deluge apparatus, and noise/debris suppression systems? Because they were testing a superseded Starship model and they were legitimately worried it would blow up on the ground and completely obliterate the whole pad, of course! (Another moment’s thought should make it clear that the concrete that Starship vaporized is, in fact, exactly the concrete that would have to be dug up to install diverters and a flame trench. Come on!)