5 ms·

It's a joke the FAA take longer to shuffle paperwork than SpaceX take to design and build an entire spacecraft.

by matthewfelgate 3y ago

hef19898 3y ago
No, because said paper work is there to ensure nobody gets hurt when said spacecraft explodes, as it did.
- quotemstr 3y ago
  It's being launched over an ocean with nobody on board. These reviews are just obstruction.
  - blamazon 3y ago
    That seems a bit reductive, example from article notes how rocket flight paths do pass over public lands from certain locations and trajectories: > For example, the company's Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base sometimes fly over Jalama Beach, which is due south of the spaceport in California. SpaceX has been performing calculations, based on flight path and breakup analysis, to determine whether the beach needs to be closed. But because this work would compete directly with the FAA's Starship analysis, it has put the Jalama Beach review on hold and attempted to find nighttime launch windows when the beach would be empty.
- macinjosh 3y ago
  And no one was hurt so everything worked out?
  - jsiepkes 3y ago
    I took an extra mortgage with my house as collateral and went to the casino with that money. I won a lot of money, so that made it a smart decision, right?
    - hedora 3y ago
      If you can do that with high probability (9 times out of 10?), then yes. All safety critical stuff comes down to high-stakes gambling. One approach that I've seen work well is to estimate the expected number of terrible events per year (which is just the mean time to failure of the system). Things start to be reasonably at about a 0.01 probability per year. (So, we'd expect SpaceX to crash in a populated area once a century. If they launch roughly 100 rockets per year. That means that there has to be a less than a 1 in 10,000 chance that a given rocket crashes and that it kills someone in the process.) (The 0.01 is picked as an example. I have no idea how many zeros the actual FAA regulatory process aims for, or if they go by expected deaths vs. incident rates, etc.)
      - hef19898 3y ago
        If memory serves well, it something like 10^(-9) propability for a catastrophic failure for civil airliners. No idea about bon-people carrying space rockets.
        hedora 3y ago
        If that is per flight, then it starts to look like 10^-3 per year.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    This isn't really great logic. Lofting concrete chunks over populated areas isn't exactly "everything worked out" or "safe" even if everyone happens to survive.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      That was sand, not concrete.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > That was sand, not concrete "...many large concrete chunks, stainless-steel sheets, metal and other objects were 'hurled thousands of feet away,' along with a plume of concrete particles that resulted in the miles-away scattering. A 3½-acre fire also started on Boca Chica State Park, south of the launch pad, the agency said." https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-04-26/spacex-starship-explosion-blasted-concrete-up-to-6-5-miles-away https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-04-26/spacex-sta...
        bryanlarsen 3y ago
        That does not contradict what I said. The concrete chunks did not get as far as populated areas. Also articles dated 4-26 significantly predated any lab analysis of the particles that reached Boca Chica Ranch and Port Isabel. It was presumed they were concrete particles, but they were just sand.
        mlyle 3y ago
        Even if things are "just sand", silicosis is a thing and drowning a populated area in it is not super great.
        bryanlarsen 3y ago
        Silicosis from 30 seconds of exposure to a small amount of sand is not a thing.
hedora 3y ago
You've obviously never built a house in California. They're complaining about 6-8 month turnarounds to review a rocket permit. That's well below the typical turnaround time for new house construction around here. Heck, I've heard of generator permits taking longer than that. To be clear how absurd that is, a generator permit is one that gets you permission to pour a concrete pad, place a store-bought residential generator on it, and then trench and run electrical lines between it and an existing electrical panel. I empathize with SpaceX, but there are similar issues with far larger economic impact throughout all layers of the US government. Ever hear the story about the access road in Marin that they needed to build for Golden Gate Bridge maintenance? It took longer to permit and cost more to build than the bridge (inflation adjusted).

It's a joke the FAA take longer to shuffle paperwork than SpaceX take to design and build an entire spacecraft.

hef19898 3y ago

No, because said paper work is there to ensure nobody gets hurt when said spacecraft explodes, as it did.

quotemstr 3y ago
It's being launched over an ocean with nobody on board. These reviews are just obstruction.
- blamazon 3y ago
  That seems a bit reductive, example from article notes how rocket flight paths do pass over public lands from certain locations and trajectories: > For example, the company's Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base sometimes fly over Jalama Beach, which is due south of the spaceport in California. SpaceX has been performing calculations, based on flight path and breakup analysis, to determine whether the beach needs to be closed. But because this work would compete directly with the FAA's Starship analysis, it has put the Jalama Beach review on hold and attempted to find nighttime launch windows when the beach would be empty.
macinjosh 3y ago
And no one was hurt so everything worked out?
- jsiepkes 3y ago
  I took an extra mortgage with my house as collateral and went to the casino with that money. I won a lot of money, so that made it a smart decision, right?
  - hedora 3y ago
    If you can do that with high probability (9 times out of 10?), then yes. All safety critical stuff comes down to high-stakes gambling. One approach that I've seen work well is to estimate the expected number of terrible events per year (which is just the mean time to failure of the system). Things start to be reasonably at about a 0.01 probability per year. (So, we'd expect SpaceX to crash in a populated area once a century. If they launch roughly 100 rockets per year. That means that there has to be a less than a 1 in 10,000 chance that a given rocket crashes and that it kills someone in the process.) (The 0.01 is picked as an example. I have no idea how many zeros the actual FAA regulatory process aims for, or if they go by expected deaths vs. incident rates, etc.)
    - hef19898 3y ago
      If memory serves well, it something like 10^(-9) propability for a catastrophic failure for civil airliners. No idea about bon-people carrying space rockets.
      - hedora 3y ago
        If that is per flight, then it starts to look like 10^-3 per year.
- mlyle 3y ago
  This isn't really great logic. Lofting concrete chunks over populated areas isn't exactly "everything worked out" or "safe" even if everyone happens to survive.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    That was sand, not concrete.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > That was sand, not concrete "...many large concrete chunks, stainless-steel sheets, metal and other objects were 'hurled thousands of feet away,' along with a plume of concrete particles that resulted in the miles-away scattering. A 3½-acre fire also started on Boca Chica State Park, south of the launch pad, the agency said." https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-04-26/spacex-starship-explosion-blasted-concrete-up-to-6-5-miles-away https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-04-26/spacex-sta...
      - bryanlarsen 3y ago
        That does not contradict what I said. The concrete chunks did not get as far as populated areas. Also articles dated 4-26 significantly predated any lab analysis of the particles that reached Boca Chica Ranch and Port Isabel. It was presumed they were concrete particles, but they were just sand.
        mlyle 3y ago
        Even if things are "just sand", silicosis is a thing and drowning a populated area in it is not super great.
        bryanlarsen 3y ago
        Silicosis from 30 seconds of exposure to a small amount of sand is not a thing.

hedora 3y ago

You've obviously never built a house in California. They're complaining about 6-8 month turnarounds to review a rocket permit. That's well below the typical turnaround time for new house construction around here. Heck, I've heard of generator permits taking longer than that. To be clear how absurd that is, a generator permit is one that gets you permission to pour a concrete pad, place a store-bought residential generator on it, and then trench and run electrical lines between it and an existing electrical panel. I empathize with SpaceX, but there are similar issues with far larger economic impact throughout all layers of the US government. Ever hear the story about the access road in Marin that they needed to build for Golden Gate Bridge maintenance? It took longer to permit and cost more to build than the bridge (inflation adjusted).