SpaceX’s Starship launches at the company’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas, have allegedly been contaminating local bodies of water with mercury for years. The news arrives in an exclusive CNBCreport on August 12, which cites internal documents and communications between local Texas regulators and the Environmental Protection Agency.
SpaceX’s fourth Starship test launch in June was its most successful so far—but the world’s largest and most powerful rocket ever built continues to wreak havoc on nearby Texas communities, wildlife, and ecosystems. But after repeated admonishments, reviews, and ignored requests, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) have had enough.
Hmm, did you read that article before posting it?
Because Im struggling to see how Starship, a fully reusable spaceship made out of stainless steel, is going to deplete the ozone the way that aluminum satellites do when they are deorbited and burned up…
What exactly do you think SpaceX is regularly launching into space? Because it isn’t Starship.
You literally quoted me talking about Starship, and the article OP linked is about Starship.
SpaceX is going to launch the ~4000 satellites it has permits for, starship doesn’t change that in any way shape or form.
Your words? Because, again, it’s not Starship they’re launching every two weeks.
Yes, it is. That is using their projected budget and the launch cadence that’s possible with both SLS and Starship. SLS can at most launch twice a year, Starship will be able to launch every two weeks, and costs orders of magnitude less.
And meanwhile, SpaceX will destroy the ozone layer with endless Starlink launches, so maybe let’s not praise them, like I initially said?
My god. What do you do for a living? Does it have no effect on the environment in any way shape or form?
They literally just discovered that Starlink satellites are having that effect, and you have given them precisely zero time to even try and address and fix it. And in the meantime I literally just came back from a remote first Nations community that only has high quality internet because of it, amongst virtually every rural community in the world.
Honestly, disconnect yourself from the internet before you spend any time looking into the environmental impact of your phone, the servers you use, and the billions of miles of fibre optic cables that connect everything. Because if that’s the kind of blood that prevents you from praising a company that is literally revolutionizing space launch, then literally nothing any of us ever do is worth praising because it’s all built on a giant foundation of blood.
Hell, those solar thermal power plants that use mirrors to reflect light onto molten salts originally killed a whole bunch of birds. Are they bastards for trying to build out a new technology, realizing there’s environmental consequences, and then finding ways of addressing it?
I don’t. But even if I did, working for a company is not the same as being the company. I don’t blame an Exxon oil rig worker for global warming.
Not to the extent SpaceX will since it’s destroying the ozone layer. Not sure why you seem to think that’s trivial.
You have literally said that nothing anyone does at SpaceX is worthy of praise and complained that people praise SpaceX’s genuine accomplishments.
But they’re not, they’re slightly slowing it’s rate of recovery. This is not a problem on the scale of CFCs that actually destroyed the ozone layer, both in terms of damage being done and potential scale it can grow to (4000 satellites vs millions and millions of refrigerators and freezers), and it’s one that we literally just discovered now and have literally only started trying to address now.
Doing new things will have unexpected results and won’t be perfect the first try. News at 11. You wanna demonize the engineers who try and build new things for not having them 100% perfect the first time, then you’re free to be a Mennonite and separate yourself from all of t chbogy and modern society’s benefits too.
Do you know what the clouds coming out of the engines at shut down and start up are? Methane and oxygen. Do you think injecting methane into the upper atmosphere does the earth any favours?
Huh, if only NASA Earth’s science budget could stretch farther somehow so they could better monitor and tell us… now I wonder how they could reduce their mission costs by orders of magnitude…
They are literally monitoring it and telling us. You just don’t like what you’re being told.
No they’re not. You’re sitting here asking open ended questions like “do you think that will be good for the upper atmosphere”.
It was a rhetorical question.
No, you said that NASA is monitoring methane emissions in the upper atmosphere and that it’s harming us.
Please provide your source for that claim.
The article I showed you about SpaceX destroying the ozone layer was not talking about methane:
I guess you didn’t read it.
But yes, NASA does monitor methane emissions.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/methane-super-emitters-mapped-by-nasas-new-earth-space-mission/
Lol I know. Then you brought up their methane missions.
Your ‘bashing everything remotely associated with a villain’ is just as flawed as people’s hero worship. You see company’s as their CEO, I see them as a large collection of workers.