SpaceX can continue developing and testing its giant Starship vehicle in
South Texas, provided the company takes pains to mitigate its impact on the
environmentally sensitive area, a long-awaited review by the U.S. Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) has found.
That FAA review, called a programmatic environmental assessment (PEA), had
been gauging the environmental impacts of Starship activities at Starbase,
SpaceX's facility near the city of Brownsville.
The PEA was originally expected to be released by the end of 2021, but the
FAA pushed the deadline back multiple times, citing the need to confer with
other agencies and analyze the thousands of public comments submitted in
response to a draft version that was published in mid-September.
That work is finally done, the FAA announced today (June 13). And the result
is mostly good news for SpaceX: The company can continue its Starship work
at Starbase, which currently centers on prepping the huge vehicle for its
first orbital test flight, without the need for an environmental impact
statement, a stricter and more time-consuming review.
Indeed, SpaceX responded to the PEA release today with a celebratory tweet:
"One step closer to the first orbital flight test of Starship."
But the final PEA doesn't give SpaceX free rein to do as it sees fit in and
around Starbase, which sits along the Texas Gulf Coast in a biodiversity
hotspot. The company must take more than 75 actions to reduce its
environmental impact on the area.
"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. The highway traverses Boca Chica Beach,
Texas State Parks and the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge," FAA
officials wrote in an emailed statement today.
"Closures will not be allowed on 18 identified holidays, and weekend
restrictions are limited to no more than five weekends per year, ensuring
robust access to the refuge and park throughout the calendar year," they
added. "The FAA will also require real-time notifications when access
restrictions begin, end or are canceled."
SpaceX must take other measures as well, including allowing a biologist to
monitor plant and animal populations in the area; keeping the local
community informed about activities that could produce loud noises such as
sonic booms; helping to ensure that launch debris is removed from sensitive
habitats; and altering its lighting setup to reduce impact on the adjacent
beach and nocturnal wildlife.
You can read the final PEA, as well as a number of other related documents,
at the FAA's website.
Starship consists of a huge first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a
165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship. Both of
these elements will be fully and rapidly reusable, SpaceX founder and CEO
Elon Musk has said.
SpaceX sees Starship as a potentially revolutionary transportation system,
one that will make Mars colonization and a variety of other exploration
feats economically feasible. NASA sees promise in the vehicle, picking it as
the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis moon program.
SpaceX has conducted a number of high-altitude test flights from Starbase
with Starship upper-stage prototypes, but the upcoming first orbital attempt
will be a giant leap for the program. It's unclear when exactly it will
happen, and not all the regulatory boxes have been checked; SpaceX still
must receive a launch license from the FAA.