Scientists, federal regulators and SpaceX founder Elon Musk are scrutinizing the fallout...
in Boca Chica, more than 6 miles from her Port Isabel home.
Federal regulators are investigating what went wrong and determining how SpaceX can prevent these specific issues in the future .for not requiring a more thorough review before giving SpaceX permission to launch. “It must have started with a tremendously high velocity to be able to go 5 miles,” Metzger said, “and that's the thing that we don't understand. How did this rocket exhaust get the sand up to such a high velocity?”
He said it’s possible the rocket’s engines cracked the launch pad, and gas got trapped between the sand and concrete pad. Pressure built up until it erupted upward with more force than the rocket’s engines were pushing downward. Metzger, who is in charge of safety for his lab, said sand-sized particles aren’t generally a respiratory hazard. They get stuck on the inside of a person’s nose or airway and then get sneezed or coughed out of the body. He worries about dust measuring between 1 and 10 microns – basically 1/10 the width of a single human hair – because that can get trapped in the bottom of a person’s lungs and cause cancer.
The government agency said it did not find dead birds or wildlife on lands owned or managed by the refuge. Boca Chica is a haven for birds. Algal mudflats, like those in the areas immediately north and west of the launch pad, provide invertebrates and mollusks for shorebirds to eat. Federally threatened piping plovers forage Boca Chica for nine months of the year. Roughly 300 of these birds – 4 percent of the population – have been spotted in Boca Chica on flats near the launch pad and elsewhere.
“There's only so much habitat,” LeClaire said, “and they were at Boca Chica for a reason because it was really good breeding habitat.”Musk said SpaceX wasn’t aware of any “meaningful damage” to the environment. And the debris was basically sand and rocks. He said there wasn’t anything toxic.to go under the rocket, but that wasn’t ready in time for last month’s launch.
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