![]() ![]() ![]() Adding to the pressure in Texas are legal actions by environmental groups, one suit filed and at least one more threatened. The document only covers 10 launches per year-five suborbital and five orbital-a limit that the company could easily run into once Starship starts flying. These include limits on road closures and the creation of wildlife corridors, as well as other less conventional requirements such as preparing “a historical context report … of the Mexican War,” before SpaceX obtains the final FAA license to launch its mega-rocket. To conduct orbital Starship flights from Texas, which would involve launching a bigger rocket than the Saturn V that took astronauts to the moon, the company would need to comply with 75 new provisions. SpaceX may have won the battle to launch Starship test flights from Starbase, but during the fight, Texas may have lost its claim on future, historic flights to Mars. The South Texas site will likely be maintained as a hub for research and development, but as Starship becomes operational, there will be less need for a vibrant test program at Boca Chica Beach. While the debate goes on, Musk has said that SpaceX plans to ultimately move Starship operations to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the company is building a new launch tower and already has all the permits required for orbital launches. The growing facility, known as Starbase, has become the subject of heated debate among state and regional officials who see the site as an opportunity for economic development, environmentalists concerned about the impacts on fragile ecosystems, locals whose community has been transformed, and SpaceX devotees with grand visions of living on Mars. But the ruling still represents a win for Elon Musk’s space company, which could have been required to complete a much more comprehensive and lengthy Environmental Impact Statement before any orbital launches took place.ĭespite the conditional approval for SpaceX, which still needs a launch license for orbital flights, the future of the rocket complex in Boca Chica Beach is less certain than it may seem. The decision, announced on June 13 after months of delay and debate, requires several actions to ease the impact on public beaches and wildlife surrounding SpaceX’s private spaceport at Boca Chica Beach, 20 miles east of Brownsville, Texas. SpaceX cleared another hurdle in its quest to launch its Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted environmental approval for orbital launches from the company’s site in South Texas. ![]()
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