Musk forced to meet DOZENS of ‘eco rules’ before Starship allowed to launch – including writing ‘war history report’
SPACEX will have to undertake a raft of environmental and cultural responsibilities to get the Starship Heavy program off the ground. Going to space requires the approval of Earth-bound regulators – and even Musk has to play along. One of Elon Musk’s biggest pet peeves is red tape: government agencies with overlapping authority flooding businesses […]
SPACEX will have to undertake a raft of environmental and cultural responsibilities to get the Starship Heavy program off the ground.
Going to space requires the approval of Earth-bound regulators – and even Musk has to play along.
One of Elon Musk’s biggest pet peeves is red tape: government agencies with overlapping authority flooding businesses with regulatory hurdles and licensing paperwork.
It goes against Musk’s (and Silicon Valley’s) tendency to fire from the hip and make big decisions on the fly.
“There should be some kind of active process for removal of rules. Otherwise, over time, the rules will just accumulate and you get more and more rules until eventually you can’t do anything,” Musk once said of regulators slowing the build on Tesla’s Gigafactory in Germany.
But, at the end of the day, rules are rules and even the richest man in the world is beholden to them.
The Federal Aviation Agency has said SpaceX will have to “take over” 75 environmental actions to get the next stage of its Starship program off the ground.
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The Starship Heavy is designed to be the most powerful rocket in the history of mankind – it’s the spacecraft with the most potential to put a person on Mars.
Blasting off with almost 8,000 tons of thrust, the Starship Heavy could leave a bit of mess in Texas.
The FAA has reviewed the Starship program and evaluated threats from noise and light pollution to vibrations or fallen debris damaging historical sites.
SpaceX will be on the hook for highway cleanups, annual cash donations to a Texas wildlife program, and is expected to be more front-facing with Texas administrators about launches.
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SpaceX is also tasked with other miscellaneous but achievable tasks – for example, the space agency will have to author a report on the events of the Mexican-American War and the Civil War that took place in the potentially affected areas.
Overall, checking boxes for the FAA and local governments shouldn’t be too much trouble for the second-most valuable private company in the world.
Reporters at Teslarati, a Musk-focused tech mag, wrote “Ultimately, the Final PEA SpaceX received is an extremely positive outcome, and there should be little doubt that SpaceX will complete all mitigations requested of it and help improve aspects of Boca Chica, Texas as a result.”
The same article says that local jurisdictions are taking advantage of their proximity to a SpaceX launch and milking some infrastructural deals out of it.
Though justifiable, some view hitting SpaceX with a 75-point list of assignments as bad for American business.
“In case the feds have forgotten, we are in the space race of our lives with China (and Russia), and Musk’s SpaceX is the only American space entity reliably keeping the S. in that space race,” a space expert told The Epoch Times.
SpaceX is taking the review and all the new responsibilities in stride, tweeting “One step closer to the first orbital flight test of Starship,” with a shot of the Starship on the launch pad.
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“Starship aspires to be the first fully reusable orbital launch vehicle, the holy grail of rocketry. This is the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary,” Musk said in a tweet.
It’s safe to assume that for Musk, going to Mars is too important to be sandbagged by a book report or regulatory technicality – SpaceX will likely power through this checklist but other delays are unforeseeable.
