In announcing that SpaceX was cleared to do more Starship launches in Boca Chica, Texas, the Federal Aviation Administration led with the red tape.
“FAA Requires SpaceX to Take Over 75 Actions to Mitigate Environmental Impact of Planned Starship/Super Heavy Launches,” the agency titled its June 13 press release.
Some of those actions concerned planning and made a certain amount of intuitive sense. For example, the FAA announced: “After consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there will be more advanced notice of launches to reduce how long State Highway 4 is closed during launch operations.”
Many of the other required conditions left observers scratching their heads.
Among the requirements to clear rockets for takeoff are that SpaceX will coordinate with a “qualified biologist” on lighting inspections to minimize the impact on sea turtles, operate an employee shuttle between the city of Brownsville and the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, and perform quarterly cleanups of the local Boca Chica Beach.
SpaceX must also contribute to local education and preservation efforts, including preparing a historical context report for the events of the Mexican War and the Civil War that took place in the area as well as replacing a local historical marker’s missing ornaments.
These latter things do not, on the face of it, have much to do with the environmental effects of space travel.
Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, believes these conditions showcase a much bigger problem than one company’s compliance with government red tape.
“It’s good that this decision is getting the attention it does because it shows just how burdensome the administrative state has become,” Lehrer told the Washington Examiner. “The problem really isn’t some person at the FAA but rather the profusion of laws and regulations we impose on anyone who wants to build or do just about anything. The ultimate finding here is ‘go ahead,’ and many of the issues the FAA looked at, such as access to parks and dealing with potential rocket debris, are quite legitimate.”
He added, “The real problem is that getting to this point took several months and required that the FAA look at a massive number of ancillary and irrelevant issues. Many of these mandates were well intentioned at the time they were implemented — things like wildlife conservation and historic preservation are good in the abstract — but they add up to a tremendous burden that wastes time and money for little or no public benefit.”
SpaceX founder Elon Musk is arguably the richest man in the world and is known to be both outspoken and biting on his Twitter account.
He is currently in negotiations to buy the social media platform, on which he has staked out positions on such subjects as free speech, low birth rates, and the direction of the modern Democratic Party. He has argued that free speech is beautiful, that we need more people, and that Democrats are becoming far too intolerant for his taste.
On May 19, he published a meme saying, “Ladies. Mansplaining is short for ‘Man Explaining.’”
Yet on the subject of compliance with FAA demands, he was uncharacteristically silent. Musk, who says he would like to move to and die on Mars, only retweeted a short message from SpaceX that linked to the announcement.
The message said simply, “One step closer to the first orbital flight test of Starship” — though possibly one giant leap for mankind.
