The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) held a hearing a few days ago on Monday to allow the public to express their opinions on the flights planned under the program SpaceX Starship from Texas. While the vast majority of stakeholders supported the project, some people were still very critical of the company.
The Starship SN20 prototype performed an initial pre-burn test of its Raptor engines on Tuesday, October 18 from the Starbase, Texas site in preparation for future static firing followed by a first orbital test flight. During this test, we will see the ship take off for the first time above its Super Heavy booster.
It's unclear exactly when this theft will take place. Indeed, test schedules are inherently uncertain, but more importantly, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is currently conducting an Environmental Assessment of the Orbital Launch Site from Starship in South Texas.
The FAA released a first draft of its report last month and will be accepting public comments until November 1. These will be included in the final evaluation. In the meantime, the agency also held a hearing of more than three hours on Monday, October 17 to give the public an opportunity to comment on upcoming flights for up to three minutes as part of its environmental review of the facility.
As CNET reports, most of these comments were overwhelmingly in favor of SpaceX. Jessica Tetreau, municipal commissioner for the town of Brownsville, located not far from Starbase, notably underlined that the SpaceX facilities have been and will continue to be a boon to her community. "I'm not just asking you, please give them that permit “, she said.
The audience did contain some detractors, however. Among them is Sharon Wilcox, a Texas representative for the conservation nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife. His group is said to be "deeply concerned about the direct, indirect and cumulative impacts of upcoming launches. She also allegedly mentioned "unforeseen fire hazards and "falling debris “.
A local resident named Sharon Almaguer, whose home is a few miles from the Starbase site, also expressed concern about potential noise issues with these launches. of rockets. “This is a project that will profoundly change our territory “, she said in comments heard by Ars Technica. "Please do your job and stop it “.
Also according to Ars, some critics also allegedly urged the FAA to require SpaceX to file an "Environmental Impact Statement complete, a process that would likely take years and possibly push SpaceX to move elsewhere.
The FAA will obviously take this type of hearing into account for its environmental assessment project, without which SpaceX will not be able to begin its orbital launch operations from the Boca Chica site.
There are three possible outcomes either the FAA publishes a "no impact finding ", i.e. a "mitigated impact finding “, in which case SpaceX would probably have to make some adjustments, i.e. a “Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement ". As said above, such a study would then delay the Starship program by several years.
