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The article also mentions environmental damage to nearby wetlands and a fire starting in a state park. Whilst immediate risk to life may have been low, the dama

by bpye 3y ago

The article also mentions environmental damage to nearby wetlands and a fire starting in a state park. Whilst immediate risk to life may have been low, the damage to the natural environment is very real.

inglor_cz 3y ago
"the damage to the natural environment is very real." We make tradeoffs between protection of nature and technological civilization all the time. Boca Chica has some qualities that are relevant to the cosmic industry and hard to replicate elsewhere: a mostly empty sea to the east of the site, low population, closer to the Equator than most of the US. I like nature, but I also like technological progress and it isn't obvious to me that the relatively low-level damage to the environment there (it is not as if the place was devastated Hiroshima-style) should automatically trump everything else.
- pleaselegalize 3y ago
  What is this technological progress bringing to humanity? SpaceX is a private company making private research using public funding and peoples delusions with space exploration. Maybe we won't need to colonize some other planet if we don't trash our current planet to save shareholders some dollars in the name of "technological progress" .
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    This is a pretty nihilist take. We don't "need" anything but food, water and the most rudimentary shelter in colder weather. Surely we don't "need" anything like computers, electricity and programmers gabbing on HN. But humanity in its current size definitely needs some industry, and industry is actually becoming less polluting with technological progress. I am 45 and I grew up in an industrial city; both the air and the water there have become a lot cleaner during my lifetime, because a richer and more developed society can afford better protections. When I was a kid, neither a butterfly nor a fish could survive in Ostrava, today there is plenty of both. Also, judging someone's else's interests as "delusions" is pretty rude. Who are you to distribute such labels to others?
    - pleaselegalize 3y ago
      > I am 45 and I grew up in an industrial city; both the air and the water there have become a lot cleaner during my lifetime The place you grew up at was degraded by industrialization. It would have been cleaner today if it wasn't for that. Irreparable changes have been made. I'm about half your age and I'm disgusted by the state the planet is in right now. I understand, old people do not care about a future they won't live in. But I'm going to suffer from micro-plastics more than you. You had access to more natural landscapes than I ever will. I have every right to be angry at old people for screwing up our homes and bodies. > because a richer Ah, the 1% is richer, that makes it more okay! But me, little 99% guy, I got screwed by inflation. The U.S. economy is stronger than ever my little Ethiopian fisherman, what are you crying about? Go raise funds making an unprofitable startup or work for a defence contractor to build machines to kill little brown kids remotely, you'll make good money to buy a McMansion, a Tesla, and play golf on artificial grass with friends you secretly hate. > and more developed society can afford better protections. What protections? Against the various cancers that are more and more common? Against the mental decay I see in my young peers, caused by social media? Against the huge floating pile of trash in the sea? Against the coral reef that's mostly lost by now? Against the constant threat of the atom bomb, great technological innovation brought to you by the same friendly agencies financing SpaceX nowadays? The protection I want is protection of the environment. I don't care about your money and your materialism, it'll never buy love and community. > Also, judging someone's else's interests as "delusions" is pretty rude. Who are you to distribute such labels to others? I believe the idea that we can colonize Mars is delusional. How are we supposed to terraform a planet when we can't even fix our own? Who do I have to be to be allowed to have this opinion? What is rude about that? Would you find it rude to call flat earthers delusional? At least flat earthers are not causing irreparable damages to our round planet.
      - martin8412 3y ago
        Building the damn rockets is the easy part. They could start by "colonising" Antarctica. That's an environment vastly more habitable than Mars, but still very inhospitable.
      - inglor_cz 3y ago
- alexvoda 3y ago
  Or maybe you do not need to make a tradeoff between environment and progress at all. You just need to care and spend some more to do things properly. This damage could have been easily avoided.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    "Or maybe you do not need to make a tradeoff between environment and progress at all." Of course you do, or does someone evacuate all the fish from the impact zone whenever an empty rocket stage slams into the ocean? This is only a question of the degree of the damage we are willing to tolerate. Of course the precise boundary shifts over time.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Define easily
    - alexvoda 3y ago
      Most rockets have used flame diverters. Because it is common sense that you do not want to spew debris and hot gasses in all directions (including towards your nearby fuel tanks). It is a well studied problem(1). Even tiny rockets like Electron have flame diverters (2). SpaceX decided that on the largest rocket ever they will do none of it. Zilch. Just let the exhaust hit the concrete pavement at supersonic speeds head on. The result was predictable and predicted, the rocket became a sonic drilling machine. What we didn't predict was just how far debris would fly. If they built a flame diverter of any kind they could have, get this, divert the exhaust in a direction that would not have caused issues, like towards the sea. And yes, easily, compared to other rockets. Excavation is hard for their location because of the water table. And an artificial hill takes time to settle. But they probably don't need either because they don't roll (or roll and erect) the rocket to the launchpad, they lift and place it. They just need the diverter itself. Meaning it should be easier than for any other large rocket. For the Kennedy Space Center launchpad the plan apparently already was to use a water cooled diverter (3) (4). But for Boca Chica they just didn't bother, even after the static fire tests already created problems. It is implausible that they didn't know it would be a bad idea to launch the way they did. But who cares if we damage stuff, right? They were just not moving fast enough and breaking enough things. Stop worshiping techbros. (1) https://physics.byu.edu/docs/publication/4678 https://physics.byu.edu/docs/publication/4678 (2) https://youtu.be/P_tGKxL6CLI?t=31 https://youtu.be/P_tGKxL6CLI?t=31 (3) https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/44625/starship-flame-trench https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/44625/starship-fla... (4) https://netspublic.grc.nasa.gov/main/20190801_Final_DRAFT_EA_SpaceX_Starship.pdf#page=29 https://netspublic.grc.nasa.gov/main/20190801_Final_DRAFT_EA...
- nocoiner 3y ago
  Would launching from a barge be totally impractical? Or hell, just go full Sea Dragon. Both seem preferable to destroying rare wetlands. Also, love the binary outcome set of Hiroshima/not-Hiroshima.
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    It has been done, but not with a rocket this big.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    "love the binary outcome set of Hiroshima/not-Hiroshima." I never introduced any such binary concept. I only said that the environment damage sustained was relatively trivial, because some of the reactions seem a bit hysterical to me.
    - alexvoda 3y ago
      The reactions are deserved because it was UNNECESSARY damage. There is no reason it could not have been avoided.
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
Can you go more over the damage? Afaik, there was dust in the surrounding area for few minutes, but it doesn't sound like damage to environment. Also this rocket used the cleanest fuel possible, so air pollution due to burning is also not a concern. So only damage I could think of is the debris that fell off in the ocean, but assuming most of the material is metal alloys, it doesn't cause much harm to environment.
theonlybutlet 3y ago
I'd wager highway expansion poses a much larger risk. Those are everywhere. There's very few launchpads and the infrastructure is needed. They also haven't decided to pave over the entire Boca Chica and haven't turned it into a wasteland, as long as they're cognisant of the natural environment and don't destroy it, it should be fine. These conservation efforts, I feel, are misplaced.
93po 3y ago
People and articles were lying about this damage and the causes of it - again, because outrage drives clicks

by bpye 3y ago

inglor_cz 3y ago

"the damage to the natural environment is very real." We make tradeoffs between protection of nature and technological civilization all the time. Boca Chica has some qualities that are relevant to the cosmic industry and hard to replicate elsewhere: a mostly empty sea to the east of the site, low population, closer to the Equator than most of the US. I like nature, but I also like technological progress and it isn't obvious to me that the relatively low-level damage to the environment there (it is not as if the place was devastated Hiroshima-style) should automatically trump everything else.

pleaselegalize 3y ago
What is this technological progress bringing to humanity? SpaceX is a private company making private research using public funding and peoples delusions with space exploration. Maybe we won't need to colonize some other planet if we don't trash our current planet to save shareholders some dollars in the name of "technological progress" .
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  This is a pretty nihilist take. We don't "need" anything but food, water and the most rudimentary shelter in colder weather. Surely we don't "need" anything like computers, electricity and programmers gabbing on HN. But humanity in its current size definitely needs some industry, and industry is actually becoming less polluting with technological progress. I am 45 and I grew up in an industrial city; both the air and the water there have become a lot cleaner during my lifetime, because a richer and more developed society can afford better protections. When I was a kid, neither a butterfly nor a fish could survive in Ostrava, today there is plenty of both. Also, judging someone's else's interests as "delusions" is pretty rude. Who are you to distribute such labels to others?
  - pleaselegalize 3y ago
    > I am 45 and I grew up in an industrial city; both the air and the water there have become a lot cleaner during my lifetime The place you grew up at was degraded by industrialization. It would have been cleaner today if it wasn't for that. Irreparable changes have been made. I'm about half your age and I'm disgusted by the state the planet is in right now. I understand, old people do not care about a future they won't live in. But I'm going to suffer from micro-plastics more than you. You had access to more natural landscapes than I ever will. I have every right to be angry at old people for screwing up our homes and bodies. > because a richer Ah, the 1% is richer, that makes it more okay! But me, little 99% guy, I got screwed by inflation. The U.S. economy is stronger than ever my little Ethiopian fisherman, what are you crying about? Go raise funds making an unprofitable startup or work for a defence contractor to build machines to kill little brown kids remotely, you'll make good money to buy a McMansion, a Tesla, and play golf on artificial grass with friends you secretly hate. > and more developed society can afford better protections. What protections? Against the various cancers that are more and more common? Against the mental decay I see in my young peers, caused by social media? Against the huge floating pile of trash in the sea? Against the coral reef that's mostly lost by now? Against the constant threat of the atom bomb, great technological innovation brought to you by the same friendly agencies financing SpaceX nowadays? The protection I want is protection of the environment. I don't care about your money and your materialism, it'll never buy love and community. > Also, judging someone's else's interests as "delusions" is pretty rude. Who are you to distribute such labels to others? I believe the idea that we can colonize Mars is delusional. How are we supposed to terraform a planet when we can't even fix our own? Who do I have to be to be allowed to have this opinion? What is rude about that? Would you find it rude to call flat earthers delusional? At least flat earthers are not causing irreparable damages to our round planet.
    - martin8412 3y ago
      Building the damn rockets is the easy part. They could start by "colonising" Antarctica. That's an environment vastly more habitable than Mars, but still very inhospitable.
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
alexvoda 3y ago
Or maybe you do not need to make a tradeoff between environment and progress at all. You just need to care and spend some more to do things properly. This damage could have been easily avoided.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "Or maybe you do not need to make a tradeoff between environment and progress at all." Of course you do, or does someone evacuate all the fish from the impact zone whenever an empty rocket stage slams into the ocean? This is only a question of the degree of the damage we are willing to tolerate. Of course the precise boundary shifts over time.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Define easily
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    Most rockets have used flame diverters. Because it is common sense that you do not want to spew debris and hot gasses in all directions (including towards your nearby fuel tanks). It is a well studied problem(1). Even tiny rockets like Electron have flame diverters (2). SpaceX decided that on the largest rocket ever they will do none of it. Zilch. Just let the exhaust hit the concrete pavement at supersonic speeds head on. The result was predictable and predicted, the rocket became a sonic drilling machine. What we didn't predict was just how far debris would fly. If they built a flame diverter of any kind they could have, get this, divert the exhaust in a direction that would not have caused issues, like towards the sea. And yes, easily, compared to other rockets. Excavation is hard for their location because of the water table. And an artificial hill takes time to settle. But they probably don't need either because they don't roll (or roll and erect) the rocket to the launchpad, they lift and place it. They just need the diverter itself. Meaning it should be easier than for any other large rocket. For the Kennedy Space Center launchpad the plan apparently already was to use a water cooled diverter (3) (4). But for Boca Chica they just didn't bother, even after the static fire tests already created problems. It is implausible that they didn't know it would be a bad idea to launch the way they did. But who cares if we damage stuff, right? They were just not moving fast enough and breaking enough things. Stop worshiping techbros. (1) https://physics.byu.edu/docs/publication/4678 https://physics.byu.edu/docs/publication/4678 (2) https://youtu.be/P_tGKxL6CLI?t=31 https://youtu.be/P_tGKxL6CLI?t=31 (3) https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/44625/starship-flame-trench https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/44625/starship-fla... (4) https://netspublic.grc.nasa.gov/main/20190801_Final_DRAFT_EA_SpaceX_Starship.pdf#page=29 https://netspublic.grc.nasa.gov/main/20190801_Final_DRAFT_EA...
nocoiner 3y ago
Would launching from a barge be totally impractical? Or hell, just go full Sea Dragon. Both seem preferable to destroying rare wetlands. Also, love the binary outcome set of Hiroshima/not-Hiroshima.
- alexvoda 3y ago
  It has been done, but not with a rocket this big.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "love the binary outcome set of Hiroshima/not-Hiroshima." I never introduced any such binary concept. I only said that the environment damage sustained was relatively trivial, because some of the reactions seem a bit hysterical to me.
  - alexvoda 3y ago
    The reactions are deserved because it was UNNECESSARY damage. There is no reason it could not have been avoided.

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

Can you go more over the damage? Afaik, there was dust in the surrounding area for few minutes, but it doesn't sound like damage to environment. Also this rocket used the cleanest fuel possible, so air pollution due to burning is also not a concern. So only damage I could think of is the debris that fell off in the ocean, but assuming most of the material is metal alloys, it doesn't cause much harm to environment.

theonlybutlet 3y ago

I'd wager highway expansion poses a much larger risk. Those are everywhere. There's very few launchpads and the infrastructure is needed. They also haven't decided to pave over the entire Boca Chica and haven't turned it into a wasteland, as long as they're cognisant of the natural environment and don't destroy it, it should be fine. These conservation efforts, I feel, are misplaced.

93po 3y ago

People and articles were lying about this damage and the causes of it - again, because outrage drives clicks