SpaceX has released a new FAA environmental review in hopes of launching Starship-Super Heavy rockets to orbit from South Texas soon.

• SpaceX aims to launch a new 39-story rocket system called Starship-Super Heavy from Boca Chica at the southeast end of Texas.
• However, the aerospace company, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, must first complete a new environmental review with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) before you can receive release authorization.
• An FAA letter sent to Business Insider by the agency on Friday details SpaceX’s decision to carry out what should be a faster review called an Environmental Assessment.
• But as the letter explains, SpaceX may face a more onerous Environmental Impact Statement process in years if significant new problems are discovered as part of the initial assessment.
• Meanwhile, SpaceX aims to launch prototypes of Starship about 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) above Texas.

In the southeastern tip of Texas, approximately 1,000 SpaceX workers work hard in the sand, mud, and heat to develop an innovative spacecraft and rocket system called Starship-Super Heavy.

Performed as founder Elon Musk imagines, the approximately 39-story launch vehicle will be made primarily of steel, thunder to orbit with approximately 9 million pounds of fuel, and will be fully reusable, reducing the mass cost of shipping any sew to space about 1,000 times. Ultimately, he hopes to use the vehicle to send people to the moon and populate Mars.

However, this new system is not part of the FAA approved plan in July 2014 for its current launch site in Boca Chica, South Texas. Instead, SpaceX originally specified that it should launch its workhorse Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. rockets orbit from the area.Ad

Facing public scrutiny, and the standard US regulatory process, SpaceX has to re-evaluate its operations with the FAA to ensure that nearby wildlife or ecosystems are not unmanageably damaged by operations. Starship-Super Heavy, according to Border Report. .

The step is necessary before SpaceX can obtain permission to launch the system into orbit.

To that end on Friday, the FAA released a letter (embedded at the end of this story) explaining that SpaceX has chosen to conduct what is called an Environmental Assessment, or EA, rather than a more onerous Environmental Impact Statement or EIS.

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An FAA spokesperson provided the letter to Business Insider on Friday after a July 9 consultation we had sent about the status of the SpaceX launch site.

“[A]Applicants have the right to choose whether to conduct an Environmental Assessment (EA) under the supervision of the FAA or to work with the FAA to initiate the EIS process. If an applicant believes that the proposed action would not have significant environmental impacts, or that it can mitigate any potential impact, then the applicant generally chooses an EA, “wrote Howard Searight, manager of the security clearance division of the Office of Commercial Space for the FAA. Transport (AST) “However, all applicants are at potential risk that a further review will uncover significant impacts that cannot be mitigated. In those cases, the FAA must conduct an EIS,” Searight continued in his letter. “SpaceX has started an EA for the action of issuing experimental permits or launch licenses to SpaceX for Starship / Super Heavy launch operations at the Texas launch site.”Ad

The FAA said the assessment will involve the agency, as well as NASA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The letter was addressed to Jim Chapman, President of Friends of the Wildlife Corridor. According to the website of the Rio Grande Valley nonprofit, the organization is made up of members who “are concerned about the shrinking geographic area with native habitat and the increasing development pressure on native habitat.”

Chapman has consistently raised several concerns about SpaceX’s activities and behavior at the site, and the FAA provided its response letter to Business Insider to address our previous queries.Ad

“The FAA takes security very seriously, so if you send us a letter, you will receive a response,” an agency spokesman said.

The FAA said it is still developing a timeline and schedule for the SpaceX evaluation because each project is unique.

But before the letter was created, George Nield, a former FAA associate administrator who led AST for more than a decade, told Business Insider that an EA generally takes three to four months to complete, which is relatively quick. compared to an EIS.Ad

“I think it is likely, though not guaranteed, that the entire system is not significantly different from what [SpaceX has] it’s already been done in that 400-page evaluation done before, “Nield told Business Insider.” The reason it is important to SpaceX and to everyone else is that if you are doing a full Environmental Impact Statement, that takes a long time – usually a couple or three years, to go through all the steps. ”

The FAA said it hopes to provide more information on the EA in the coming weeks.

A rocket factory for Mars

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Meanwhile, as aerial site images and field reports reveal, SpaceX continues to develop, build, and test. Spaceship prototypes that come out of its factory in Boca Chica. The work has been carried out amid a small community of retiree-age residents, some of whom refuse to sell to SpaceX and leave.

A large-scale 16-story spacecraft prototype has yet to fly, though an earlier, shorter version of the rocket, known as the Starhopper, successfully launched at 500 feet above ground and landed in 2019. Since then, more advanced iterations But still early on, the spacecraft prototypes have failed and were wiped out during testing, usually when engineers filled the rockets with inert liquid nitrogen to test the limits of their integrity. During a test shot of a recent Starship prototype called SN4 in Boca Chica on May 29, the vehicle exploded spectacularly. However, this series of flaws is anything but unexpected, as SpaceX saw with the development of core technologies for its Falcon 9 system. Musk also said the company may need to build some 20 large Starship prototypes before SpaceX can attempt to launch one. to orbit.Ad

The company, which operates within the limits of its current EIS and a recently issued FAA launch license, then plans to fly Starships up to 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) above Texas in the next seven months, according to a Thursday filing by the FCC.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read the full FAA letter below.Ad

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This story has been updated.