26 thoughts on “Boca Chica”

  1. Musk has been in the sights of many governmental agencies for a long time. Remember when NOAA decided it owned the rights to non-NASA orbital imagery? They made that stick and SpaceX has to turn off the cameras on non-NASA flights other than payload deploy cameras not aimed at the Earth.

    I wonder how much of this is Marxist Progressive bureaucrats in action? It’s everywhere. Here in Granville Co. NC (a tiny jurisdiction north of Raleigh) the local budget includes numerous social justice items.

  2. This stuff marks the beginning of the end for the USA.
    I wonder how EIS interference will be allowed to stand in the way once the Chinese have taken over? Plenty of room along the wall. The caliber is high enough you can stack 3 deep.

  3. I thought this was likely/possible- I solely blame the FAA.

    It remains only option is to launch from the Ocean, but it seems
    the FAA “probably” will also fail in this regard also.

    I suggest using my pipelauncher as a better way to launch any kind of
    rocket from anywhere. But I first check with FAA to see if they are too stupid to realize this.

    1. Looks like the FAA is ducking for cover under the Biden Admin.

      But honestly who’d you rather have doing your EIS? The FAA with a vested interest in Aviation/Space & innovation in those areas, or the Dept. Of Interior / National Park Service, with a vested interest in CHANGING NOTHING?

      1. The FAA WHAT?

        The only vested interest the FAA has is in prolonging the pain the FAA causes, to generate their paychecks.

        And I say that as a Certificated FAA Pilot, ATP, with a half-dozen type ratings and 12,000 hours experience.

        NO TRUST FAA. FAA IS ASSHOE

  4. This is fucking nuts. I imagine a hold like this last several years would bankrupt the Starship program, and maybe SpaceX as well. Though I have to wonder if Elon saw this coming and that was why he was already building out a launch platform at Kennedy.

    I concur with the others above. The US is done for many reasons. I would laugh if Elon eventually licensed the Starship tech China.

  5. BANANA: Build Anywhere Not Anywhere Near Anyone

    Let’s take a Reality Check: would you rather have a place that could have Big Booms™ and a weather forecast of “occasional raining metal fragments” over land kept empty of people or over land with people living there?

    1. Snails and lizards don’t have proper representation- so, over land with people living there.
      China and Russia are the enlightened folks.

  6. “It will be interesting to see if FWS and the National Park Service bow to political pressure and change their positions.”

    Perhaps they already did and that is how we got here.

  7. Move Elon’s project 50 miles south and build a 5 section tower with the center tower twice as high as the others.

  8. SpaceX should have know that a skyscraper’s worth of exploding propellant might significantly impact species in the wetlands all around. Not sure what they were thinking when they knew all along that the plan was to launch Starship from there.

    1. There are wetlands at the Cape…Doesn’t seem to be an issue there.

      But to be extra safe, we should launch nothing, anywhere.

      1. I vaguely remember that one of the things that had to do to prepare the runway for a shuttle landing was to chase off the alligators.

        “There are wetlands at the Cape…Doesn’t seem to be an issue there.”

        From an Audobon Society website that obviously needs an update:

        ” The [Merritt Island] Refuge and the Air Station are rocket launch facilities, and Space Shuttle missions are launched from the Refuge’s Kennedy Space Center. Much of Merritt Island was purchased in the 1960s by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for its massive space launch complex. NASA later deeded much of the property to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service to increase public use of non-essential acreage. Parts of the Refuge are off-limits to the public at all times, and other areas are closed when a Space Shuttle is scheduled to be launched.”

      2. Doc, believe it or not but the FAA is actually the most reasonable aviation bureaucracy on the planet. Try dealing with Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) aka Cretins Against Sane Aviation). They have just about destroyed the low end of general aviation and this in a country with low population density, long distances, poor roads, lacking high mountains for the most part and with generally benign weather i.e. perfectly suited for private aviation.

    1. No, he doesn’t. But he and ESG Hound seem to be making a great deal of soup out of very little bone. The DOI letter alleges no actual harm to wildlife. Instead, it alleges incomplete cleanup of metal scrap from previous Starship tests and whines about tourists being occasionally kept from a Civil War historic site and its own minions being likewise blocked from at-will access to parts of the wildlife refuge. Both such objections are eminently remediable. This is not an Extinction Level Event for Starbase.

  10. Does Elon Musk have any significant political clout in the Biden administration or Congress? I know he didn’t like Trump much that might help him with current administration (though he may have buyers remorse currently).

    1. I don’t know what Musk’s personal opinion of Trump is. Trump appointed Musk to a couple of manufacturing-oriented advisory panels early in his administration and Musk initially accepted. Musk quit these panels after Trump withdrew U.S. approval of the so-called Paris Climate Agreement. I thought this showed poor judgement on Musk’s part even given that he’s been a long-time brigade commander in the War on Warmth.

      But despite Musk’s climate warrior credentials, he is anathema to the progressive left these days for the non-unionized workforces of his enterprises and his pushback against Covid Reich restrictions at Tesla’s Fremont works in CA. It probably doesn’t help that Musk has lately taken to referring to progressive political “philosophy” as “the woke mind virus.” During the 2020 campaign, he was a financial and rhetorical supporter of the Kanye West campaign.

      So, no, Musk has no friends in the Biden administration and has more than a few enemies. The complete absence of Tesla, or even any mention of the company, at Biden’s big pep rally for electric vehicles a few weeks ago in Detroit is all the evidence one needs of the enmity toward Musk of the currently ruling Putsch. So it’s no accident – or surprise – that dubious allegations of rampant racism and misogyny have recently been leveled against both Tesla and SpaceX or that SpaceX now seems to be a target of Green extremists in the Dept. of the Interior anent the FAA-led environmental assessment currently ongoing about Starbase.

      1. They want his money and control of his businesses. Most other companies would have caved by now and hired a bunch of DNC activists to staff the company and created an NGO for the DNC to use as a slush fund.

  11. Messier runs a nice space news site but he appears to be a left wing global warmunist. None of this environmental concern is actually about the environment it is just another tool to collapse western civilization with.
    Most environmental remedies proposed by the enviroloonies end up having the opposite effect intended and result in greater environmental damage.
    Boca Chica is a salt water marsh FFS, the sort of place you’d have got a medal for filling in and reclaiming 70 years ago. Looking at Google Earth it doesn’t seem to be all that unique either. Should we just bulldoze all our cities and return them to pristine wilderness?
    (OK D.C. etc might be a good idea.)

    1. Doesn’t Messier realize, space solves any climate issue?
      And that is minor aspect related to space exploration and becoming
      spacefaring civilization.
      A spacefaring civilization will live in the skies of Venus- and doesn’t
      need to change Venus average temperature. But it could change Venus average temperature, easily.
      But I like Venus the way it is, other than we should mine the acid clouds. And Mercury is also nice, and don’t need to change it.

  12. The DEEP STATE has an agreement with the Roswell Space Aliens
    to keep mankind ON the PLANET as we are TOO dangerous, you know! 👽

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