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Debris creation and cleanup is fairly well defined in the Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) done by Spacex and signed off by the FAA and relevant agen

• crdrost 3y ago
  Yeah, so they talk about that in the link above. > 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. So the basic question I’d have would be, say, “Is the FAA going to say, ‘you need to actually cross your Ts and dot your Is’ because SpaceX comically underestimated everything about Starship in ways that contemporaries found obvious.” Your observation is kind of orthogonal to my question. It's not an uninteresting read, it's just that I was asking a metaquestion about the document you cited in the first place. Kinda like a Jehovah’s Witness tract I got last Monday that had a section “how can I know that the Bible is reliable” where the answer consisted entirely of Bible quotes, I think that's interesting internal discussion but it didn't really address the original question. A follow up article from the author, https://blog.esghound.com/p/spacexs-texas-rocket-caused-a-big https://blog.esghound.com/p/spacexs-texas-rocket-caused-a-bi... , puts the metaquestion this way: > An EA is a scaled-back, shorter, and less burdensome process. But the catch is that it can only be deployed if the Impacts described are below a level considered “Significant.” ...My argument when writing about “Starbase” from day one has been that the FAA and SpaceX didn’t seek to determine what the actual impacts from Starship development would be, but rather tailored the results of their studies in such a manner to demonstrate that the project would be “insignificant,” preventing years of further delays an EIS would require... I am certain that the Fish And Wildlife Service will, at minimum, ask these questions. FAA could say “we need an EIS now,” which would be a significant blow to SpaceX. I do not expect this to occur and instead they will reevaluate the EA and make changes to mitigate the debris field debacle we observed on 4/20. ... Litigants may seek to have the courts order FAA to complete a new EIS, or they may settle for FAA agreeing on even more mitigations, offsets or concessions. I’d be shocked if we don’t see a large, well-funded lawsuit filed in the coming weeks. So it's a question phrased in the form of prospective answers, but yeah that's the gist, I am curious to see how the permitting situation will work out in the wake of this blunder.