An environmental lawsuit, about to stop Elon Musk’s space launches

SpaceX’s Starship rocket launches may be suspended due to the impact of the failed launch. A group of environmental groups has just sued the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for failing to analyze the environmental damage that the “largest rocket ever built” could cause.

Elon Musk’s neglect of the Starship launch continues to grow as new details are revealed about his company’s implications. They accuse him of a reckless attitude that could have ended in a disaster similar to the launch of the Soviet N-1, considered the largest explosion not nuclear of aerospace history.

The most serious event was that, a few minutes after the launch and since the rocket phases did not separate, SpaceX was forced to destroy the vehicle on the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. As space debris poured down on Earth.

“We are not against space exploration or this enterprise,” said Jared Margolis, lead attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. “But as we gaze at the stars, we shouldn’t be sacrificing communities, habitats and species so easily.”

Furthermore, as Eric Roesch, an expert on risk and compliance with environmental regulations, warned on his ESG Hound blog that SpaceX could face a million dollar lawsuit In the next weeks.

“The fact that they had quite large and obvious environmental consequences in the first launch, which were not anticipated or described, is a great starting point for a lawsuit,” he says.

As the SpaceX CEO himself acknowledged days later, the company was working on a new one springboard, which they failed to complete in time. The problem was that they trusted that what they had would hold up to the SuperHeavy’s push. Something that didn’t happen.

Finally, Musk explained that “the engines could have destroyed the concrete, instead of just eroding it”. Since then, the concrete blocks have flown hundreds of meters away, destroying everything in their path. Furthermore, he admitted that, in the previous test, “the engines were only at half thrust for the static fire test.”

The direct consequence of this negligence was that the particles from the explosion of the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy rocket were scattered far farther than expectedraising concerns about the impact on human health and endangered species.

suspension of pitches

Although it has been several days since the explosion, residents of Port Isabel, Texas have reported that it continues to fall wet and sandy material from the air, despite being about 10 kilometers from the launch site in Boca Chica.

In light of the allegations, the FAA has temporarily suspended the program until determining the true impact on the health of the region’s residents, ecosystems and animal species. However, expert voices quickly began to emerge pointing out that the FAA was part of the problem.

In principle, SpaceX has federal authorization to conduct 20 spaceship launches a year for the next five years. However, this authorization is suspended by legal provisions. Especially if the FAA is involved in the facts.

A few days ago, Musk let it be known that the company would be ready to retry a launch in six to eight weeks. It is an interval that coincides with the times that SpaceX managed and with what was commented immediately after the first launch.