Main Engine Cut Off - T+219: Starship Launch Plan Clears FAA Environmental Review, with Mitigations Required

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo and there was some big news today in the world of space. This was the long awaited day that the FAA was going to post the results of the environmental review that was ongoing for the plan to launch Starship and Super Heavy out of Boca Chica. This was a review that had been going on for a very long time, delayed month to month over the last several months. And then two weeks ago, there was a two-week delay posted. So everyone realized this probably means that it's actually coming here on June 13th, which is today as I record this. And the result is that the launch plan cleared the FAA

Starting point is 00:00:52 environmental review with over 75 mitigation actions to take. And with that, SpaceX is a little bit closer to getting orbital flights off out of Boca Chica. Um, and this was, uh, there's many factors to this, right? I want to talk about here. I want to talk about, um, kind of where we stand with the Starship program overall, but I'll save that for the end about, you know, which way things are going. Um, there's the aspect of, I guess, the space culture war that rages on. That's always a thing. But there is some, you know, actual functional bits here about how much SpaceX can launch from Boca Chica, what they can do with those launches, how much they can close the facilities that they need to to actually do launches. There's a lot of

Starting point is 00:01:36 considerations on the functional side of the result here that are interesting to break down. So we'll start with a little bit of overview to catch you up previously on Starship. The FAA review has been going on for a long time now, as I mentioned, but the Boca Chica site actually dates back several years before that when it was planned for Falcon launches. And SpaceX originally did a lot of environmental paperwork back then and have modified it over time to get to where they are now with the Starship super heavy infrastructure out there. Once they were going ahead with this larger scale infrastructure, they needed to do this environmental review. And the result could have been here that the FAA was to come back, you know, in cooperation with all these other government agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Historic Services and things like that, the result could have been, right, the worst case scenario for SpaceX was if the FAA said they

Starting point is 00:02:34 needed to do a complete environmental impact statement, just like the one they prepared, you know, almost a decade ago now for Falcon launches, those things take years to complete. to go now for Falcon launches, those things take years to complete. So if that was what the FAA came back with, this was going to be a several year delay to plans out of Boca Chica. Probably would have resulted in SpaceX dropping this entirely, or at least kind of backburnering Boca Chica and moving even more heavily into Cape Canaveral. Though I think there's a lot of indication that they might be building up there just as much as they would have otherwise. But anyway, that was kind of the worst case scenario of the outcome. Best case scenario for SpaceX was the FAA just signs off on this

Starting point is 00:03:16 and says, yeah, you're good to go. This is that middle ground where it's like, you're good to go, but there's a couple of things that we need you to do. And we'll get into what those mitigations are in a minute. Some of them are really quite bizarre, you know, we'll get into those. So this is definitely that middle ground. And I mean, honestly, you're even seeing that in, like I mentioned, the space culture wars. This is obviously a huge aspect of the space culture war with SpaceX and environmentalists and Elon Musk. You're just getting the, you know, Twitter posts flying with these things. But I mean, even the way that let's just look at FAA and SpaceX, for example, the way that those different organizations talked about this are indicative of this. So the FAA posted

Starting point is 00:03:55 their statement to their website, and this is the headline on it. FAA requires SpaceX to take over 75 actions to mitigate environmental impact of planned Starship Super Heavy launches. SpaceX on Twitter, their only statement thus far, a nice photo of Boca Chica and the comment, one step closer to the first orbital flight test of Starship. Both accurate, definitely, you know, weighing in heavily on one side or the other, and you're seeing that, you know, through the various headlines that go out about this. So there's enough here for everyone to dig into if that's your shtick of like, you know, waging these wars online. There's plenty to dig into, right? FAA sticks it to capitalist Elon Musk with all these mitigation actions, or, you know, SpaceX gets the green light, we're going to be launching Starship, you know, next Tuesday or whatever. There's plenty to go on there. So

Starting point is 00:04:42 that's getting everyone all hot and bothered, I guess, online. But I think that middle ground take is really what we're seeing here is that, you know, as expected, there are some things that SpaceX needs to handle to make everyone happy to sign off on all the, you know, all those agencies to sign off on this situation. There's also the aspect that SpaceX did scale back some of the infrastructure that they were asking for to be approved. So, you know, there's some give and take here from both sides. And that's generally how these things go. And, you know, not the worst case scenario for SpaceX, not the worst case scenario for the FAA and all the environmental agencies concerned here. So, you know, assuming there's not a ton of litigation that comes out of this, this is kind of the best result we could have hoped for now to get into the specifics here

Starting point is 00:05:29 of course just jeff faust of space news had the best sum up of the situation here so i'm gonna read a little snippet from his article among those mitigations is changes in closures in the road that leads to both the spacex site called starbase as well as a public beach. SpaceX will provide more advanced notice of closures for testing and launches. It'll be prohibited from closing access during 18 holidays and will be limited to five weekend closures per year. Closures will be limited to 500 hours a year for normal operations and up to 300 more hours to address anomalies, according to FAA documents. The review is for up to five orbital launches per year, as well as five suborbital launches and ground tests. Other mitigations included in the modified FONSI, that's the, I should have mentioned, the mitigated finding of no significant impact,

Starting point is 00:06:17 is the official formal declaration of what the FAA issued here. Other mitigations included in the modified FONSI include changes in lighting at the facility, monitoring of wildlife in the area by a qualified biologist, use of shuttles to transport employees to and from Starbase to limit traffic. In addition, SpaceX modified its proposal to eliminate infrastructure such as a desalination plant and a power plant the company says is no longer needed to support launch operations. So that's an idea, this is me again, of what shape the mitigations are taking here. Importantly, this does not yet provide the final clearance for SpaceX

Starting point is 00:06:54 to actually begin those orbital launches. They do still need to implement all these mitigations and then obtain the FAA launch license. So just because there are these mitigations mentioned doesn't mean it's the end of the road. There are some other really funny mitigations that I want to read. Stephen Clark of Spaceflight Now had a really good section of his article on this that I wanted to talk about.

Starting point is 00:07:18 The FAA is mandating that SpaceX participate in local fishing, instruction activities, restore a nearby historical marker, and prepare a historical context report on events of the Mexican-American War and Civil War that took place in the area around Boca Chica Beach. SpaceX is also required to make annual contributions of $5,000 to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department fishing program. The Friends of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge adopt an ocelot program that Peregrine Fund, a nonprofit conservation initiative for birds of prey.

Starting point is 00:07:50 This is Anthony again. There are even more interesting things in that SpaceX needs to organize wildlife photography sessions on the beach there, which is kind of a funny mitigation because I'm not sure if you've been tracking the coverage of Boca Chica in the last year or two, photography sessions on the beach there, which like, uh, is kind of a funny mitigation because I'm not sure if you've been tracking the coverage of Boca Chica in the last year or two, but boy, howdy, there's a lot of wildlife photography going on in and around Boca Chica. So I feel like it's probably not an area that we're hurting for in the world is more pictures of the wildlife in and around starships. Um, but there's a part of that is like building a wildlife viewing platform,

Starting point is 00:08:24 uh, which I'm all here for. Like I'm, I is like building a wildlife viewing platform, uh, which I'm all here for. Like I'm, I'm here for the wildlife viewing platform and the photo walks of wildlife. That kind of sounds great. I would pay a lot of money for that because it just sounds fun. Um, there's also, you know, wildlife crossings over the highway and, and a lot of odds and ends like that. Um, so that's where things stand with this, right? List of mitigations, some of which are already in work because SpaceX was preparing all this paperwork alongside the FAA. Basically, SpaceX does a bunch of work, submits it, it gets cleared through different agencies. But this is not someone else writing a report to SpaceX. This was SpaceX writing a report

Starting point is 00:09:00 and providing it to these government agencies. So, you know, a lot of this stuff was already known about that they can get started on beforehand. And we'll see exactly, you know, which of these become like the long lead item to finish the implementation on. I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of coverage of exactly how far along SpaceX is with all of these mitigations. But, you know, like I said, honestly, best case scenario for almost all involved in this situation. And the descoping of infrastructure infrastructure around Starbase is a very interesting turn as well. SpaceX says they didn't need the desalination plant because they're not sure they need the water deluge system on the launch pad that they were originally planning on using. And they don't need the natural gas infrastructure anymore because they're using commercially available methane. So there's some tweaks to the Starship program overall

Starting point is 00:09:50 that have resulted in de-scoping the review that they needed to complete here. And maybe that, you know, greased the wheels a little bit to get this thing through the review. But anyway, I want to talk about some of the future looking stuff in a second. But before we do that, I want to say thank you to all of you supporting Main Engine Cutoff over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are 840 of you supporting this show every single month, making this possible. And that includes 41 executive producers. Thanks to Simon, Lauren, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Julian, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Matt,

Starting point is 00:10:30 The Astrogators at SCE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, Haymonth, Dawn Aerospace, Andrew, Harrison, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support for making this possible. If you like what you're hearing here, if you want more of it, and if you want to keep it going, head over to mainenginecutoff.com slash support and join there. If you're at the $3 a month or more level, you get access to another special RSS feed just for you that gives you access to Miko headlines. I record a show every single weekend-ish, plus or minus a day or two here, depending on how much news there is in a week. I recorded one just before I started recording this episode, giving you my thoughts on all the launches that happened this week,

Starting point is 00:11:09 what's going on up on the ISS, and the big news stories that broke that week. It's a great way to stay up on the news that's happening. Some stuff I don't even actually cover on the main show because it just doesn't deserve its own main show, but I talk about it a lot on headlines. So if you want all of that in your feed, mainenginecutoff.com slash support. Support the show, get more podcasting in your life,

Starting point is 00:11:28 and I thank you so much. All right, so future looking stuff about Starship Super Heavy. All of this paperwork that SpaceX had been filing with the FAA and the other government agencies is focused around a particular infrastructure plan, but also a particular plan of operations. How many Starship flights there's going to be, how much fuel is on board when that is happening, how many engines does it have, what's the sound levels like, how much air pollution is going on, right? There's a lot specific to the actual operational level details of the Starship Super Heavy program that went into this report.

Starting point is 00:12:06 And interestingly, you know, I mentioned it in the little Jeff Faust snippet that I read. But this current plan is for up to five orbital launches per year, as well as five suborbital launches per year, and then also ground tests. That's not a lot, right? If you've listened to anything that SpaceX or Elon Musk have said about Starship, it's like daily operations, you know, one launch of a Starship and then eight tankers that go up to support this mission. Pretty much any, other than like a single launch to low Earth orbit or single launch to GTO. And even then, like the cadence is what matters to Starship. So like pretty much any of the visions for what Starship is requires way more launches than five per year. So there's a couple of different schools of thought, right? That, okay, this is what SpaceX is realistically looking at that they would be doing over the next two or three years as they

Starting point is 00:12:59 work out Starship and its early operations, because now we're in that phase where they're going to test the super heavy launching and landing. They're going to test Starship and its early operations, because now we're in that phase where they're going to test the super heavy launching and landing. They're going to test Starship going to orbit, coming back from orbit with its heat shield. There's going to be a pretty gruesome test campaign here as both of those vehicles undergo, you know, stress testing to a degree that you see in these early programs. So there's a long way to go before they do hit operational cadence. So maybe five suborbital and five orbital launches a year is enough for the next two or three years for SpaceX, right? Because even when they were flying those starships up to 20 kilometers and doing landing tests, they were getting, you know, two, three, four off a year. So knowing that

Starting point is 00:13:40 there's so much more that goes into it with bigger vehicles, two vehicles this time, heat shielding, tons of propellant that they need to get in to actually support a launch, you know, maybe they're just realistically saying, look, we're not going to be beyond those five launches, five suborbital launches per year until, you know, 2025. So let's just apply for this right now. Because SpaceX is nothing if not agile, right? Their plans change a lot day to day, I would say. So, you know, keeping that horizon short might not be a bad thing for a program that changes so much. The other thought is that it's just an easy way to get in the door to then file amendments to ramp that number up. And, you know, it's easier to go from five approved to 15 to 25 to 55 um so the idea is that like you know let's put the paperwork together in a way that we can uh get it approved

Starting point is 00:14:35 and then ramp it up from there although i think there's probably some uh litigation that would happen if that was found to be true. So that's problematic for a couple of reasons. And then the other school of thought is something that even Elon Musk himself was talking about back in February, that Boca Chica is really good for a research and development hub for tech demonstrations, development site for new versions of the vehicle, obviously these early versions of the vehicle as well, and then use Kennedy Space Center and Launch Pad 39A, where Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Crew Dragons fly from today. Use that that's scaled for a vehicle as big as Starship Super Heavy. Use that as the actual

Starting point is 00:15:17 operational center, right, with a infrastructure there that's able to handle daily launches. Like that's something that the CAPE is generally working towards. So, you know, use that because you have all that infrastructure out there already as your operational site and keep Boca Chica as R&D. And honestly, even from a functional standpoint, that makes a lot more sense to my brain because Boca Chica, you've got like one to two launch azimuths that you can launch out of. I think it's like above Cuba and below Cuba. If you're looking at the map, you know, draw a line from the south tip of Texas, draw a line that goes between Cuba and the Bahamas and all that, and then draw a line that goes between, you know, Cuba and Jamaica and all that. Those are basically the two directions that you can launch. And, you know, there's a lot more places

Starting point is 00:16:04 to fly around orbit than just those two launch azimuths. And certainly you can do inclination changes when you're on orbit, but those get very expensive very quickly. Not the most efficient thing. And the other thing is that, like, you know, try to get to sun synchronous orbit from launching those azimuths. It's pretty much impossible. But on the Cape, you've seen SpaceX demonstrate how much flexibility there is, right? They can launch from, you know, 50-something degrees north to sun-synchronous by flying down the coast of Florida and then, you know,

Starting point is 00:16:37 dog-legging it over a little bit more west. They have a lot more flexibility there. And if you're looking at Starship as a vehicle that's able to do everything you need a launch site that can hit all the different orbits that you need to get to there's certainly a big aspect to uh the prestige of flying out of kennedy space center especially when you are the selected lander for a human lunar landing in the next five years. So I think there's just a lot going on there that the idea of Boca Chica as R&D and Florida as operations, it just tactically makes sense to me. But I also do think it's a little bit of realism

Starting point is 00:17:16 from SpaceX that, you know, these next year or two here, the cadence is going to be no more than five a year considering all of the logistics involved with a single starship launch, getting that much propellant on site is going to be a feat of its own. You know, they've, they have a ton of Raptor engines at Boca Chica,

Starting point is 00:17:36 but the number of Raptor engines they need to build and test to get that number of engines at Boca Chica from what I've heard is, you know, shocking amount. So, uh So there's definitely still things being worked out on the production side as well to be able to support more than five Starship vehicles a year. That is a thing that they are not quite there yet. So all those reasons, the five launches a year thing is not as alarming to me as as it used to be uh i'm less worried about that overall

Starting point is 00:18:05 and then obviously there's the whole thing with uh spacex having some old oil rigs that they're converting for launch and landing platforms that's sort of a wild card like how does that get used you know there's like i said the the horizon on a starship plan that you can count on is very short. They are very agile. They move quickly. They decide something's not working for them. We've got a better idea. Let's go that direction. And, you know, that's a good thing. That's what makes SpaceX SpaceX and maintaining that capability is important for the program. So submitting a bunch of paperwork that's locking you into a path that is set for the next five to 10 years is never going to be the way that SpaceX does something. Um, but you know, writing down on paper, what you can commit to that is defensible. And if plans change, plans change.

Starting point is 00:18:55 And, uh, you got to do what, you know, you got to do, um, operationally within the government infrastructure that you're working with to make sure you can do that. And I hope, you know, next time, if there's anything to learn from this situation here, you know, obviously we don't know the inner workings of all this, but there was a scenario here where SpaceX gets issued an environmental impact statement assignment from the FAA that delays them a couple of years. And it would have been because spacex tried to be a little too fast and loose right and they didn't end up there i'm really glad because that would have been a bad scenario for them because i think it would have had to have them reassess the way that they work um but seeing how it turned out uh you know i'm happy to to uh be totally wrong that that was a

Starting point is 00:19:44 possible scenario in the world and they can kind of continue on the way that they've been doing these things um and uh i guess we'll see exactly how this all shakes out we'll see exactly how many ocelots elon musk personally adopts what he names them uh what his favorite fighter planes are from the korean war era i think that would be the names that he would select for his ocelots that he's personally adopting. And we'll see exactly how that all goes. So that's a little check in on the Starship situation. And we'll keep our eyes peeled, obviously, as they get a little closer to an orbital launch, we're going to see some static fires from the Starship and super heavy vehicles, we're going to see that launch license go out, we're going to see more

Starting point is 00:20:21 testing of the ground infrastructure. There's a lot that's still going to happen to show us exactly where they are on timeline with that orbital flight, but it is getting a lot closer than it was last week. And so being out of the logjam is something that I'm happy about, and I hope you are too. But for now, that is all I've got for you. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks to all those that support over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. Hope to see you over there if you're not there yet. You also get into the off-nominal discord if you support over there at $5 a month or more. So do that so you can hop in and chat with me about this episode. Or you can hit me up on Twitter at wehavemiko or over on email anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. And until next time, I'll talk to you soon.

Main Engine Cut Off - T+219: Starship Launch Plan Clears FAA Environmental Review, with Mitigations Required

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.