Every launch of a SpaceX rocket means more debris is thrown across a once pristine South Texas beach.
In assuring the public that Thursday’s brief launch was a win, SpaceX officials have underscored that they were well aware Starship might explode in the air or even right on the launchpad, without ever referring to the fact that the rocket shrapnel would likely be landing in a complicated, delicate ecosystem teaming with wildlife, the land that surrounds the launch site.
There are all kinds of reasons that he may have changed the subject. After all, we were in the final minutes leading up to the historic, if brief, launch of the largest rocket in the world, the 394-foot-tall structure that will one day tote astronauts to the moon and then on to Mars. It’s possible he just got distracted.
Admittedly, the location didn’t seem like a huge problem back in 2014 when the Federal Aviation Administration issued its Environmental Impact Statement finding SpaceX’s plans for the region “would have no significant impact on the environment” even considering the company’s tradition of “test, fly, fail, fix, repeat” and the rocket pieces that would likely be scattered across the landscape after each “unscheduled rapid disassembly.
By 2019 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had sent letters to the FAA about how SpaceX was encroaching federally managed lands near the site while another “unscheduled rapid disassembly” littered the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge with rocket pieces.
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