Short Wave - Are Starship Launches Trashing Texas?

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

SpaceX's Starship rocket took off again Tuesday for its sixth test flight. Crowds, including President-elect Donald Trump, gathered at the launch site in Texas to watch it fly part way around the world to the Indian Ocean. Starship – the largest rocket ever built – is the dream of Elon Musk, who hopes to make humans a multiplanetary species. But building the rocket is having a real impact on Earth. The launch site is located in the middle of one of Texas' largest wildlife sanctuaries and environmentalists say every launch is causing damage. Plus, how government regulation of launches may change in a second Trump administration. Want to hear more on the future of space exploration? Email us your ideas to [e-mail] — we'd love to hear from you! Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. On Tuesday, the largest rocket ever made took off again. It's called Starship. It's built by the commercial company SpaceX. And this flight, its sixth test flight, was pretty amazing. Starship flew part way around the world to the Indian Ocean, where it hovered just above the water before splashing down. And we have ships in the Indian Ocean.

Starship is the dream of the world's richest man. Elon Musk. Musk wants to make humans a multi-planetary species. I think this is just an incredibly important thing for the future of life itself. He wants to start building a city on Mars. And to do that, he needs starship. The holy grail breakthrough that's needed is a rapid and completely reusable rocket system. But building this rocket is having a real impact on Earth.

The launch side in Texas is located in the middle of one of one of the first. of the state's largest wildlife sanctuaries. And environmentalists say every launch is causing damage. So today on the show, we're going to talk to NPR's science correspondent Jeff Brumfield about everything Starship, what the latest test shows it can do, what the environmental consequences of the test program might be, and what it could mean for Starship now that must close ally, Donald Trump, is headed back to the White House. I'm Regina Barber.

You're listening to Shorewave, the science podcast from NPR. science correspondent, Jeff Brumfield. Hello. Hello, Regina. Welcome back. How did the launch go this week? I mean, this was a very successful sixth test flight for SpaceX. So basically what happened was the rocket took off.

It's super heavy booster, just powered it up partway to orbit. And then the booster broke off and came back towards Earth. Now, the booster was actually supposed to come back and land at the launch pad. Basically, these two giant arms on the launch tower. They call it Mechazilla. I love that so much. We're supposed to come in as the booster hovered and sort of grab the booster and gently lower it back to the pad. Unfortunately, there was some damage to the launch tower during liftoff.

It triggered and abhorred. And so the booster went back and landed in the Gulf of Mexico. It still sort of did that hover maneuver, but it landed in the water. Meanwhile, Starship went up. It went partway around the world. It did something, which was pretty important. and it relit one of its engines during flight. And then it reentered over the Indian Ocean and came down near Australia and also kind of conducted this vertical hovering landing over the ocean that was very impressive.

Okay. Like, let's go back to what you're talking about with this like booster coming back down. Like, why do they want it to come back right down to the launch, like right away? Yeah, I know. It's a really strange way to do it because, you know, other rockets just drop their boosters or in the case of the space shuttle sometimes they would go out and. into the ocean and retrieve the boosters. The idea here is very, very rapid reusability. And the reason they want rapid reusability is that Starship is supposed to be able to fly over and over again very quickly. So the idea is you catch the booster, you just lower it back on the launch pad,

fill it back up with gas, and then you can go. And, you know, Elon Musk says he wants this thing launching as often as three times a day. Why does it need to launch like so quickly? So there's two reasons they want to be able to relaunch so quickly. First is cost. I mean, the faster you reuse a rocket, the cheaper it is to operate. But the other reason is really, really interesting. So, you know, Starship is supposed to carry people to land on the surface of the moon. And Elon has said over and over, he wants it to go to Mars.

But here's the thing. To do that, you have a little bit of a trick, right? This is a very heavy rocket that runs off of liquid fuel. And so once it goes into space, it's basically almost out of fuel. So you need to refuel it in space. But because it's liquid fuel, as you know, Regina, when liquids are in vacuum, they tend to boil. Right. So you can only hold the fuel in orbit for so long.

So basically, the plan here is to launch a bunch of starships full of fuel and then launch another starship quickly enough and have it dock with a couple of starships and fuel itself up and then go on to the moon or Mars. That's sort of the way this is supposed to work. Okay. But the only way that can happen is if you can launch them back to back to back very quickly so that you can fuel it up before all the gas boils away. So, okay, Musk wants to launch these things like three times a day. What does that mean for like where they're launching these things?

That's a great question. So in the long term, Musk has said that he wants these launch from the middle of the ocean, because, of course, launching a giant rocket is very disruptive. I don't know if floating platforms will ever be able to launch starships. I mean, I think that might be a little unrealistic. But in the near term, what they're planning to do is launch a lot more from this site in Texas. Now, this year, they are authorized to launch five times. Next year, they want to go up to as many as 25 times.

And recently, just a few days ago, SpaceX executive Gwen Shotwell, said that she would not be surprised if the company launched Starship 400 times in the next four years. What? And this has gotten environmentalists really worried because SpaceX's launch site in Texas is in the middle of a state and federal wildlife refuge. I mean, how is that even allowed? Yeah. Well, it's a really interesting situation. So basically, this site is near the city of Brownsville. Right next to it is this large area known kind of colloquially as Boca Chica. It's a mix of state, land and federal land and little parcels of private land sort of tucked away in there.

So about 10 years ago, SpaceX bought these little patches of private land. And, you know, on one site, they have their production facility. And on another site, just up the road, they have their launch facility. Wow. And you actually went there, right? Like, what did you see? It's really a fascinating place to visit because it sits about a half hour outside of Brownsville along this two-lane highway.

It's sort of cutting through these native grasslands near the Gulf of Mexico that's home to hundreds of bird species, including many that stop over during migrations to Central and South America. I got to say, the first impression of this place is it's absolutely beautiful out here. Much prettier than I was expecting. And, yeah, there's star base right there sticking up out of these tidal flats. It's really quite remarkable. So this is the weird thing about the setup is, you know, because there's public land, land right next to all of SpaceX's facilities, you can pull right up next to the launch complex and park there. And that's exactly why I did.

Wow. And, you know, it was so weird because you, like, get out of your car. You're just parked on the side of the road next to a sand dune. And there's this, ah, it's just so big, this huge rocket right there. It was just there. Like, just the rocket. You can just see it. Just standing right there on the pad.

And, you know, I met Justin LeClaire there. He's a biologist with a nonprofit. off at coastal bays, bends, and estuaries, which monitors wildlife in Bocchika. We nailed it today. Look at this. The whole rockets here. Indeed.

It's always different out here. The biggest building back at production with all the glass and stuff in the front, that was not anywhere near that close to being done. Last time I was here, like a month and a half ago. So they just fly through everything. So Justin and I started climbing back into the dunes next to the launch pad. Wow. So this is all coastal prairie. We're getting kind of into the dune habitat here as well.

And as soon as we get back there, we start seeing these enormous chunks of concrete. You can see some rebar kind of poking up through the grass all over over here. Those are ones that haven't picked up. But it was basically a minefield of debris out here after the April 2023, that first flight test. So the first flight of Starship was particularly damaged. to the local environment because the rocket was so powerful. It actually blew a hole in its launch pad. Wow. I mean, when you say there's just debris everywhere, I just imagine like animals walking through there, like just chunks of debris flying everywhere.

Yeah, I mean, it was a lot. And part of the reason this happened was SpaceX, in their rush to get starship flying, did not install a standard piece of equipment known as a water deluge system. Okay. Now, this is designed to suppress the power of the rocket engines. Basically, it's a giant upside-down shower that sprays hundreds of thousands of gallons of water under the rocket as it launches. So they put one of these things in, and that solved that problem, but it also created a new problem because the launch pad is completely flat. And so every launch, the water goes everywhere. Quite a lot does spill off.

Either is projected off or kind of runs off. Into the wetlands. Now, SpaceX says, look, this is drinking water used in the system. It's not dangerous. But the fact of the matter is it does contain some harmful chemicals after it comes in contact with the rocket exhaust. And the EPA classifies as water as industrial wastewater. So just letting it spill out into wetlands violates the Clean Water Act. SpaceX knew this before two other launches earlier this year, but they launched anyway and they later got fined by the EPA and local regulators.

So what does SpaceX say about all this, like how they're affecting the environment? Yeah, I mean, SpaceX didn't talk to me directly, but they did put out a lengthy statement on this issue in September. And they said, quote, the narrative that we operate free or in defiance of environmental regulation is demonstrably false. SpaceX is committed to minimizing impact and enhancing the surrounding environment where possible. And they went on to list a number of things they do that they claim minimum. minimizes the impact of all this. Okay, Jeff, SpaceX is like racing ahead here, right? But Donald Trump has been reelected and he and Elon are buddies. So like what's the impact likely to be? Yeah, you know, I've been speaking to people about that this week. And I think there's likely to be sort of two areas where we're going to see some changes in SpaceX's relationship to the government. The first is regulation. So Starship is regulated by the federal aviation administration and consultation with other agencies like that. the Environmental Protection Agency, and those regulators have been perceived as slowing down

Starship's launches due in part to these environmental concerns. I spoke to Lori Garver, a former deputy administrator of NASA under Barack Obama, and she thinks all that's about to change. The FAA and the EPA will not be raising flags as they have been these last couple years. Now, there may still be barriers. Environmental groups are already suing the FAA for failing to conduct an adequate environmental review of starship's impact on Boko Chica, and those suits are still going to go forward. But in terms of the regulators, that may ease up quite a bit. Okay, so less regulatory oversight.

What else might change? Well, the other thing is money. SpaceX gets billions in government contracts, including money for Starship, but it's not the only player. So, for example, NASA has spent nearly $100 billion trying to get astronauts back to the moon, A sliver of that money has gone to Starship, which is theoretically going to work as a lunar lander like we talked about. Tim Ferrar is president of a consulting firm called TMF Associates, which tracks SpaceX's business. He says it's quite possible Musk is going to try and push more money from other parts of the Moon program into Starship. There are many different companies involved in building things, and Musk would say, well, do we need all of those?

you know, why don't you give us the money and we'll do all of this with Starship instead. And, you know, SpaceX has already surged ahead in the launch market in recent years with its other rockets. Wow. And Ferrer says its power is going to grow almost inevitably. Must influence will presumably only boost that dominance. The most visible sign of all this change is going to be Starship. We'll see if they actually get up to 25 launches next year. But even if they only do a fraction of those, the program will make huge strides with its goal of rapid reusability for space exploration.

And it's also going to have big environmental consequences for the grasslands that surround the launch site. Well, we're going to have you back next year and you can tell us more. Sounds good. All right. Thank you so much, Jeff. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Maggie Luthar was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director

and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shorewave from NPR.