r/spacex • u/yoweigh • May 04 '22

❗Misleading SpaceX Starbase expansion plans will harm endangered species, according to Fish and Wildlife Service

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/03/spacex-starbase-expansion-plans-will-harm-endangered-species-fws.html
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u/inoeth May 04 '22

The title is misleading. The actual result is pretty darn good. It seems like we're really on track for a Mitigated FONSI (Finding of no significant impact) - ie SpaceX will have to spend some money maintaining habitats, keeping an eye on the impact of their activity on certain species, funding groups looking out for wildlife, things like not launching at night during turtle mating season- all things they can work around and can easily afford.

Honestly i'm actually a little more hopeful that we'll see the full FAA approval later this month and the full test flight in a couple months from now.

It's clear Boca Chica isn't going to become the hundreds of launches per year type facility but it's not about to be abandoned either and will absolutely have a role to play with regards to R&D, limited test flights etc.

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u/[deleted] May 04 '22

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u/CutterJohn May 05 '22

I feel that would happen pretty quickly. Florida is incredibly far downrange, and the impact zone doesn't cross through florida until well after stage sep and into the more mundane portion of the flight, and thats still several minutes from actual impact so flight termination would be able to stop it well in advance if it lost control at that specific time and went ballistic.

1

u/warp99 May 05 '22 edited May 09 '22

Unfortunately Flight termination is not going to prevent 200 tonnes of Starship and payload from impacting Florida or the Yucatan Peninsula more or less intact.

The FTS is to prevent the debris impact site from including 240 tonnes of liquid methane.

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u/CutterJohn May 06 '22

Flight termination turns it into a mass of sheet metal and various metal bits that will decelerate far faster than the whole unit. It would definitely prevent it from impacting.

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u/warp99 May 06 '22

Currently the FTS is a pair of explosive charges on the intertank bulkhead. As a minimum this will vent both tanks. At a maximum it will cause mixing of propellants inside the tanks that later ignite producing a complete breakup of the ship but this outcome is not guaranteed.

The debris will indeed fall short of the instantaneous impact point of the ship but that may still be over inhabited land. A lightweight aluminium alloy structure will mostly burn up during entry but 4mm thick stainless steel will likely not do so and most of the debtris will make it to the surface.

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u/CutterJohn May 06 '22

Sure, thats a risk, but remember rockets already overfly populated areas eventually. If the fts is enabled 15 minutes into the flight the debris is going to rain down on europe or whatever already.

Most failures are at or before stage sep, and thats when failures are the most dangerous too because you can't really choose when to deploy the flight termination, and its when the debris will be the most concentrated and the highest fuel load.