Elon Musk, as part of his jihad against FAA red tape, has been telling this story lately:
SpaceX had to do a study to see if Starship would hit a shark. I'm like "It's a big ocean, there's a lot of sharks. It's not impossible, but it's very unlikely." OK fine, we'll do it, but we need the data, can you give us the shark data?... Eventually we got the data, and the sharks were going to be fine. We thought we were done.
But then they hit us with: 'Well, what about whales?" When you look at the Pacific, how many whales do you see? Honestly, if we did hit a whale, the whale had it coming, because the odds are so low.
Is this story true? It's very hard to check. Is Musk talking about Starship launches, which happen in Texas, or booster splashdowns, which are typically in the Indian Ocean? It's vanishingly unlikely that any US agency would be worried about a splashdown in international waters 10,000 miles away. On the other hand, hitting stuff in the water isn't a big concern during launches. Trying to figure out this story is made all the harder by Musk's reference to the Pacific Ocean. Starship launches go out over the Gulf of Mexico and splashdowns are in the Indian Ocean, so what is he talking about?
I'm assuming that Musk is talking about Starship launches from his Starbase facility in Boca Chica at the southern tip of Texas. The first thing you need to know is what this looks like:
As you can see, Starbase is neighboring three different protected areas in the middle of a vast network of wetlands. Ecological concerns have obviously been top of mind since the very start.
The second thing you need to know is that SpaceX has broken or skirted FAA rules for its launches constantly since the first launch:
On at least 19 occasions since 2019, SpaceX operations have caused fires, leaks, explosions or other problems associated with the rapid growth of Mr. Musk’s complex in Boca Chica. These incidents have caused environmental damage and reflect a broader debate over how to balance technological and economic progress against protections of delicate ecosystems and local communities.
....Mr. Musk and the company had pledged a different sensibility when setting up operations in Boca Chica. The project, SpaceX told local officials, would have a “small, eco-friendly footprint” and “surrounding area is left untouched,” meaning it “provides for an excellent wildlife habitat.”
A small facility was never Musk's plan. He intended to build a gigantic facility. The FAA mostly let him get away with this because they were sympathetic to SpaceX and its importance to the US space program. This is the irony: far from burying Musk in red tape, the FAA has been mostly in his pocket for years. What's more, the FAA is always under considerable pressure to approve Musk's plans from friendly members of Congress. Because of this, Musk was routinely able to carry out launches without full approval or without carrying out all of the FAA's orders.
This all came to a head after Starship's first test launch, in April 2023, which ended four minutes later in a huge fireball and the destruction of the launchpad, sending steel sheets, concrete chunks, and shrapnel thousands of feet into the air. What made it worse was that Musk had gone ahead with the launch despite explicit orders from the FAA not to. The FAA apparently treated this like a "boys will be boys" incident, while officials at the Fish and Wildlife Service were furious.
In any case, this naturally got everyone's attention and the FAA demanded a lengthy investigation along with lots of changes to the rocket assembly—which included adding a "deluge" system that dumped millions of gallons of water on the launchpad during takeoffs. This didn't make Musk happy. Then, in October, the FAA began working to gain approval from the Fish and Wildlife Service, which capitulated and gave its full blessing on November 15. Starship's second launch was scheduled for three days later.
Here's where things get tricky. I assume this is the sequence of events Musk is talking about, and I assume it's the Fish and Wildlife Service that allegedly asked for the shark and whale studies. But did they?
If they did, it was almost certainly not because they were afraid of sharks being hit by falling debris. Rather, they were concerned about runoff from the deluge system and how it might affect endangered species. For your edification, here is their final determination:
They also concluded that metals released into the water from launches was minimal and would have "no long-term negative effects to ecological communities."
Now, if you've actually read all the way to here, you may notice that we have information about plovers and ocelots and turtles, but we still don't really know if sharks or whales were involved in any of this. If they're not endangered they won't show up in the table above, so that doesn't tell us anything. What would tell us something is the final report from the Fish and Wildlife Service, but this doesn't appear to be public. So we don't know.
Still, what really seems to have happened is this: Musk eventually burned through his goodwill even with the FAA, which was tired of his antics and his refusal to follow orders. For that reason—and because his rocket exploded—they started clamping down a bit. Musk can't abide that, and that's what prompted his recent attacks against supposed government red tape.
But sharks and whales? I dunno.
He's a shark and a whale. It's projection.
Assume Musk is lying until proven otherwise.
Pretty much.
But also Kevin is weirdly wrong here: the launch pad wasn't destroyed. It suffered about the same level of damage as the SLS launch or the Atlas V launches. It was just the concrete that broke instead of the steel.
That much power is hard to dial in, and not all material failures are predictable.
Kevin should have given up after the early question of which ocean this could possibly be. The rest dignifies the allegation more than it deserves. These are facts, and the right and its wealthy nutcase have no need for those any longer.
Yes. Elmo can be ignored.
What is amusing to me is pravda
https://news-pravda.com/usa/2024/10/20/798365.html
and american pravda
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/elon-goes-campaign-blitz-against-government-regulations-vows-reveal-bizarre-alleged-schemes
boosting this
The FAA loves probabilistic risk assessments, i.e. how likely is it to hit a shark or whale per flight. If they can provide the shark or whale data, it would be a few hours worth of work to provide a credible estimate that a fatality is "extremely improbable"...the term the FAA probably wants to hear.
Pretty much.
Musk is a bit like Rick Sanchez.
Rick thinks he's the smartest guy in the Universe, he leaves Cronenberged worlds behind him, and he absolutely refuses to accept any responsibility for the harm he does.
Musk wishes he was like Rick Sanchez. Musk is more like a dim Tony Stark from the Most Aggravating Timeline.
Drug-addled racist makes statement.
Using the drug complaint is both ableist - he's always sounded like this, because of his autism - and supporting the military-industrial empire which uses drugs as an excuse to sideline scientists and engineers and 'hippies'.
And this is about Elmo on the West Coast. He and people don't even show up at the meetings.
https://www.independent.com/2024/10/17/poodle-barks-spacex-using-santa-barbara-space-force-base-to-get-richer/
It's bullshit. The coastal commission doesn't have input over Vandenberg - which is also not in Santa Barbara.
The sea lions are only slightly bothered by the rockets, but like anything else, they get accustomed to it.
I don’t know about sharks but I’m pretty sure whales and other ocean going marine mammals are under the jurisdiction of the National Marine Fisheries Service (which is part of NOAA) rather than Fish and Wildlife. The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 is pretty specific about whales.
There are regions of the ocean where whales hang out, depending on the season and conditions, so yes, you need these studies. Indeed, there are a number of migratory patterns, so the speak, in the ocean and various swarms of fish follow the plankton and currents.
Could this have something to do with the California Coastal Commissions rejection of SpaceX wanting to do more launches out of Vandenberg? The launch site is on the coast north of Santa Barbara. I wouldn't be surprised if one's proposal would have to address the impact on marine life. Given Musk's unconcern for collateral damage to nearby nature refuges at the SpaceX launch site in Texas, one can understand why they might be concerned about his actions in California.
This is what the mention of the Pacific brought to my mind too. Though I'll admit that I only know about it because Popehat and (the near-insufferable) Josh Barro devoted so much time to mocking the CCC on their most recent podcast.
Anyway, to the extent that the Pacific is involved, this would come closest to making sense of Elmo's complaint (not that that's always the rational thing to do). But it wouldn't necessarily implicate any federal agency red tape, and it isn't clear that the CCC has any authority either to require studies or to affect the feds' ultimate decision even if they could mandate them.
Call me crazy, but I think Elmo just likes to complain a lot these days about the government is oppressing poor poor pitiful he.
Who cares? If it's not this, it would be something else. I'm assuming there's a connection to regulations and the election. Again, who cares? With any luck he and Trump can crawl back under the rock of insignificance after the election.
I think multiple federal agencies should stop treating Elon Musk with deference. Time to bring the Teddy Roosevelt big stick to this dude.
I just can't wait to the facility is abandoned and decaying so some really good paintball action can be had.
Why would you want the cheapest and most environmentally safe path to space yet to be abandoned?
Because the hope is that it will be superseded by something better?
And maybe that something better will have little to do with a cranky hyper-billionaire who is aggressively supporting a would-be autocrat for president?
Do you ever get tired of fluffing Musk?
From time to time, I have seen conservatives complain about some conservative getting banned from YouTube because "YouTube hates conservatives". If you looked into it, though, what you would find is that said conservative violated terms of service, which were quite explicit. Maybe they violated them after warnings.
The most curious part of this is that they insisted even after I pointed this out. They *need* that story of persecution somehow.
one test launch was to land off of hawaii, land of many migrating whales. i am sure that is the reference. https://beatofhawaii.com/destination-hawaii-flight-of-spacex-starship-to-splashdown-nearby/
"Musk had gone ahead with the launch despite explicit orders from the FAA not to"
This is an utter fabrication. The FAA issued a license a week earlier, saying "After a comprehensive license evaluation process, the FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy, payload, airspace integration and financial responsibility requirements".
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/14/world/spacex-starship-launch-license-scn/index.html
This.
With reference to this document, you can see what he was complaining about.
https://www.faa.gov/media/27236
It appears that as part of obtaining earlier approvals, Spacex did have to calculate the probability that the Booster would "take" a whale.
At some later point, they planned to drop a hot-stage ring into the ocean at a different location. My understanding is that they had to re-calculate a probability that the hot-staging ring would "take" a whale.
When they proposed changes to the flight profile that would cause the hot-staging ring to land in another location in the ocean, they were asked to re-calculate the probability that the hot-staging ring would "take" a whale.
In none of these cases were the probabilities remotely worthy of the effort or expense required to obtain them (particularly the second or third time).
"In none of these cases were the probabilities remotely worthy of the effort or expense required to obtain them (particularly the second or third time)"
Why, exactly? I think space travel is cool, too, but that's no reason to give it special treatment. And "take" doesn't mean just killing a whale. Disturbing whales by, say, disrupting their feeding or causing them to move to a new location because a company is dropping large pieces of equipment into the ocean and/or making colossal amounts of noise offshore would also potentially qualify as illegal "take" under the MMPA or ESA.
So Musk had to pay a few lawyers and scientists to do some more analysis to bring the risk of harming wildlife down a bit and/or demonstrate that the risks were legally acceptable. What's the big deal?
Okay. So based on the evidence I linked to, can we agree that the following take is wrong:
"Still, what really seems to have happened is this: Musk eventually burned through his goodwill even with the FAA, which was tired of his antics and his refusal to follow orders. For that reason—and because his rocket exploded—they started clamping down a bit. Musk can't abide that, and that's what prompted his recent attacks against supposed government red tape."
It seems that Spacex was required to determine the risk of "taking" a whale. From this it seems reasonable to infer that Spacex was also required to determine the risk of "taking" a shark.
Kevin's description is narratively driven, overly personalized, and factually incorrect. It's a soap opera -- a tall tale that flatters his sensibilities, not a reasonable description of how a government agency reached a decision.
In this case, it appears that minor changes to the flight trajectory can trigger reviews that potentially require weeks or months. Even when the initial analysis established that the risk is miniscule.
And such delays pose a problem. It's not a question of paying a few lawyers or scientists, it's a question of halting operations and having everyone sit on their hands while someone verifies that the probability of "taking" a whale is still approximately 1e-4.
Spacex has been immensely successful with a development process built around frequent tests and rapid iteration. The regulatory regime should be designed to support that approach, while providing reasonable safeguards.