Slashdot Mirror
Brownsville SpaceX Space Port Faces More Regulatory Hurdles
MarkWhittington (1084047) writes "It turns out that the recent FAA environmental impact statement that seemed to give a stamp of approval for the proposed SpaceX space port in south Texas is not the end of the regulatory process, but the end of the beginning. A story in the Brownsville Herald reminds us that the report has kicked off a 30 day review period after which the FAA can allow SpaceX to apply for a launch license to start work on the Brownsville area launch facility. And that in turn kicks off a 180 day process during which the FAA makes the decision whether or not to grant the required licensing and permits.
But even that is not the end of the regulatory hurdles that SpaceX must face before the first Falcon rocket roars into the skies over the Gulf of Mexico. The Longview News-Journal reports that a number of state and federal agencies must give their approval for various aspects of the space port before it becomes operational. For instance, the Texas Department of Transportation must give approval for the movement of utility lines. Environment Texas still opposes the space port since it is close to a wild life reserve and a state park. SpaceX has already agreed to enact measures to minimize the impact the space port would have on the environment, 'such as containing waste materials from the construction and enforcing a speed limit in the control center area.' Environment Texas is not impressed, however. Whether it is disposed to make trouble in the courts is an open question."
But even that is not the end of the regulatory hurdles that SpaceX must face before the first Falcon rocket roars into the skies over the Gulf of Mexico. The Longview News-Journal reports that a number of state and federal agencies must give their approval for various aspects of the space port before it becomes operational. For instance, the Texas Department of Transportation must give approval for the movement of utility lines. Environment Texas still opposes the space port since it is close to a wild life reserve and a state park. SpaceX has already agreed to enact measures to minimize the impact the space port would have on the environment, 'such as containing waste materials from the construction and enforcing a speed limit in the control center area.' Environment Texas is not impressed, however. Whether it is disposed to make trouble in the courts is an open question."
These are all formalities.
The US Government knows that they need SpaceX, and Texas definitely wants SpaceX to stay in Texas, and folks, both for the completely obvious reasons.
Of course there are reviews to take place, and itâ(TM)s my guess that none of this is either a surprise nor going to be a roadblock to the SpaceX Thunderdome in Texasâ¦
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
and so conducive to progress! LOL
Paperwork not the pay.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Environment Texas still opposes the space port since it is close to a wild life reserve and a state park. SpaceX has already agreed to enact measures to minimize the impact the space port would have on the environment,
I always see environmentalists telling others how to live, but i never see environmentalists living off the land themselves
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
the Massachusetts' State Fire Marshall, an early form of busybody bureaucrat, forced Goddard to move and this is merely a continuance of that grand governmet tradition.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
A great example of the heavy hand of government.
Amazing anything ever gets done in America.
the Massachusetts' State Fire Marshall, an early form of busybody bureaucrat, forced Goddard to move and this is merely a continuance of that grand governmet tradition.
Correction: my bad. The fire marshall only forced Goddard to move onto a military base, before he moved a few years later to New Mexico.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
Did the Russians have this problems?
Fortunately, this is over Texas so if an under-regulated rocket crashes, it'll just kill the people onboard and some anti-regulation nutjobs on the ground.
I'm just glad I live far enough away that I'm not going to have to worry about being sprinkled with rocket fuel and or falling rockets.
Would probably approve this in 24 hours.
More seriously, I have always wondered why NASA didn't set up its Apollo-era launch facilities in Brownsville to begin with. It's as far south as you can get in the lower 48, it has open water to the west, and it doesn't have that terrible Florida weather that kept delaying every launch. Also unlike Florida, it would have been not nearly so far from the Houston command center.
without some regulator from somewhere trying to stick a "out of compliance" tag on my ass
Shouldn't the Spaceport be in the US?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
>Environment Texas still opposes the space port since it is close to a wild life reserve and a state park.
Someone should tell Environment Texas that the Kennedy Space Center is smack dab in the middle of Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, and adjacent to the Canaveral National Seashore.
Idiots.
When did Texas start believing in science?
Any speed limit below escape velocity is going to make the spaceport pretty useless.
What SpaceX is doing, and what it plans to do in the future, is too important to the whole world to be held up by any but the most obvious environmental concerns. In other words, obviously they should have to show they're not going to be making the local water or air supply toxic. But beyond that, the sea turtles will just have to make do with whatever happens, because SpaceX is literally the most important thing in human history since the Apollo Program. I'd wipe out a thousand reptile species to see it succeed expeditiously.
Your statement: " The vast majority of environmental groups simply want compliance with existing environmental laws and regs" is absolutely FALSE.
Every single significant "green" or "eco" group backs MORE regulations. Every administration since the rat-bastard Nixon has added more regulations than the administration that preceeded it; the ONLY thing that changes is the RATE at which new regs are added. Under Republicans, the rate of new regulations reduces and under Democrats the rate of new regulations increases. The Obama administration has increase redulations faster than anybody since Nixon.
Here's a suggestion: If the greenies want to claim simply want people to live under the existing rules (a claim I've been hearing from them since the 1970's), let's make a deal: Let's all operate under the EPA rules of 1976 (without all the "new" rules they've repeatedly lied about) or Let's all operate under the massive pile of job-killing rules that existed the day Obama was sworn-in with a permanent ban on ANY new rules. I'm sure neither proposal would be OK, because the idea that there would EVER be a limit to the new rules the left wants to apply to the US economy is anithetical to those activists; their goal is NOT environmental (they NEVER insist on demolishing their big liberal bastions like NYC and San Francisco and returning THOSE places to "nature") their goal is to make the US economy fail sufficiently that they can offer the American people a "lifeline" in the form of Socialism (acompanied by permanent left-wing political control).
EVERY important industy and large-scale construction project in the US got started BEFORE the EPA, the FAA, and many other parts of the government were created. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
The aerospace industry pre-dates the FAA and the EPA. All the major defense companies pre-date them. Elon Musk's SpaceX is extremely unique in being created after all those agencies existed - all it took for his success was: [a] a BILLIONARE with [2] far more drive and conviction than most people and [3] a focus on one product (a rocket) that part of the government NEEDED (for ISS resupply post-shuttle grounding) and even then SpaceX VERY NEARLY failed (there's video online of Musk talking about this). Had the government not NEEDED SpaceX to succeed, it would not have signed a contract with him and handed him piles of cash.... and then he WOULD have failed and there'd be NO examples of post-big-government aerospace success.
The computer industry similarly pre-dates all the big government regulations. When the Apple II rolled-off the assembly line, it (like the Radio Shack TRS-80's, the IMSAI kits, the KIM kits, etc) was NOT subject to all the limits on things like lead or electronic emissions certifications. The industry we have today could not have been started under the current regulations... so it could not have grown to become big-enough to withstand the regulations we currently have.
The interstate highway system, all the nation's big science facilities (like the Kennedy Space Center, the Stennis Space Center, Edwards AFB) many vital bits of infrastructure like the Hoover Dam and St Lawrence Seaway, the transcontinental rail routes, etc ALL pre-date the bloated government and its insane regulations.
The biggest problem with all these regulations is NOT even the regulations themselves (which often seem so reasonable when you read them in the abstract) but rather lies in the sort of people who end-up running the parts of government that enforce them: The government is full of LUNATICS playing with the "levers of power" who do not give a damn about the impact they are having on entire industries (and all the "little" people who depend on those industries). The Obama administration has recently offered us several glimpses of these flunkies: former SecState Hillary Clinton ranting "What DIFFERENCE does it make!" in her testimony over the dead in benghazi, the guy interviewed about his role in the benghazi memos ("Dude, it's been like, two YEARS!"), and the bimbo at the state dept who just this past week indicated her fervent belief that she and her buddies in thier air conditioned offices in DC know mare about whether the recently re-patriated POW was a deserter than the guy's own platoon members. NONE of the afore-mentioned idiots are runnng the EPA, but it's that SORT of person with that SORT of warped world-view that IS
The SCOTUS has approved the EPA's new insistence that they can regulate CO2 and Methane. There are already proposed rules for regulations on, and taxes of, cow farts. Given that there's no significant legal difference between cow farts and human farts, the Obama administration (the FIRST ever to push regulations this far) has set a legal precedent that makes the eventual regulation and taxation of human farts not only inevitable but eventually legally required (because otherwise the rules being planned for deployment against farmers would fail as "arbitrary" and "capricious"). Of course, middle-class American parents will be likely to have to pay for their kid's farts (and the farts of "the poor") up until the age of 26... (and illegal aliens will be allowed to fart for free)
Fart freely now, while you still can... eventually you might have to buy "carbon-offsets" and/or "methane-offsets" from Al Gore's carbon offset trading company.
With all the red tape foisted upon anyone who wants to accomplish anything in the US, why not just pick up and move the whole thing to Mexico? It's easily accessible to the US, and there is oh-so-much less red tape.
No, but the Russians are probably a tad too far into the "unregulated" mindset. I think part of Kazakhstan roughly the size of New Jersey is permanently contaminate with radioactive materials. The problem we have isn't so much the regulations, but the moronic bureaucrats that are sometimes chosen to enforce them. For example in my area a few years ago some idiot dumped a few hundred gallons of motor oil into a shallow creek, our states DEQ officials demanded the county immediately throw straw into the area to soak up the oil. After an actual environmental cleanup crew was able to get on site they said that using straw to soak up the oil was the stupidest thing that could have been done, it took a few hundred gallons of oil that could have been easily sucked up and disposed of into tons of straw/water/oil contaminated sludge that had to be dug out and trucked off. Regulations are necessary, but they should be streamlined, extremely limited and enforced by someone who knows what they are talking about and will be held accountable for their mistakes.
Why would SpaceX even bother? New Mexico already has a spaceport built, use that.