Coming from the UK, I'd feel more inclined to listen to these ecological/environmental concerns if they weren't abused in such terrible ways. In general safety limits are calculated with significant error margins, so I'd take this kind of scary blog post about destroyed houses with a pinch of salt.
The other aspect to consider is that, as humans, we need space to work and live. This inevitably will come at the expense of the natural environment. Some species will suffer, some will suffer more than others. The only way around that is to tell people to stop having children, to stop living, and to stop advancing society. We have to balance all of these when we consider land utilisation.
I am far from convinced that this post takes a reasonable view of all these points. It is quite common for environmental extremists to make highly irrational decisions (germany shutting down nuclear plants in favour of coal?). Only one side of the argument seems to be considered in this post.
An old boss taught me that I should never oppose an action without having an alternative viable course to propose. I think those of us who care for the environment (I care, a lot) would advance the cause by following this advice.
>An old boss taught me that I should never oppose an action without having an alternative viable course to propose. I think those of us who care for the environment (I care, a lot) would advance the cause by following this advice.
I'm a civil/environmental engineer. Ironically I'm pro-progress here but the fact that they got away with construction and launch here without an EIS is absolutely laughably corrupt as far as I'm concerned. I've had to do the full EIS for projects that were far, far, far less impactful in scope, by many orders of magnitude. The FAA is simply not acting in the public interest here. This is regulatory capture in action.
The alternative here is simple and IMO sensible. This should have gone deeper into the NEPA flowchart and had a full EIS, and then as a condition of approval they should have required permitting and construction of all mitigation measures prior to launches. (Water deluge / flame trenches, etc.)
They did do an EIS. Then they modified it from a 27 engine Falcon Heavy to a 33 engine Starship. The FAA ruled, with input from many other government agencies, that this only partially invalidated the original EIS.
There’s no regulatory capture here. SpaceX hasn’t been around long enough to do so in the first place.
Also regulatory capture is defined as putting in place regulations that you can handle but create undue burdens on competitors to prevent the entrance of new entrants.
> In general safety limits are calculated with significant error margins, so I'd take this kind of scary blog post about destroyed houses with a pinch of salt.
The discrepancy between the calculated safety limits and measured sound levels inverts this "general" practice. And the measured sound levels were from a half-power test firing.
Note: Even if there are damaged houses, part of the FAA launch license is SpaceX making sure to take out liability insurance to handle any damage claims. $500M for any damage claims. [1]
The other aspect to consider is that, as humans, we need space to work and live. This inevitably will come at the expense of the natural environment. Some species will suffer, some will suffer more than others. The only way around that is to tell people to stop having children, to stop living, and to stop advancing society. We have to balance all of these when we consider land utilisation.
I am far from convinced that this post takes a reasonable view of all these points. It is quite common for environmental extremists to make highly irrational decisions (germany shutting down nuclear plants in favour of coal?). Only one side of the argument seems to be considered in this post.
An old boss taught me that I should never oppose an action without having an alternative viable course to propose. I think those of us who care for the environment (I care, a lot) would advance the cause by following this advice.