SpaceX has been poisoning the environment for years, and have shown a reckless disregard for the effects their launches have on local residents and wildlife, and have been guilty of dumping toxic materials in waters nearby.
SpaceX’s Starship launches at the company’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas, have allegedly been polluting the local environment for years, possibly in violation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act. for years. The news arrives in an exclusive CNBC report on August 12, which cites internal documents and communications between local Texas regulators and the EPA
SpaceX’s fourth Starship test launch in June was its most successful so far—but the world’s largest and most powerful rocket ever built continues to wreak havoc on nearby Texas communities, wildlife, and ecosystems. And after repeated admonishments, reviews, and ignored requests, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) have had enough.
Don’t worry, though, Elon Musk is on the case. Here he is responding to a news report on his awful company.
CNBC sucks,Elon Musk tweeted in a reply to his company’s statement.
What this reminds me of is the bro who buys a bunch of illegal fireworks, heads down to the lake and blows stuff up and makes an obnoxious racket, and then leaves a mess of cardboard and paper and scorched debris to go back home and be an asshole to his neighbors.
It’s fine. I suggest that every state dump its garbage on Texas, they don’t care.
Elon Musk, the king of useful discord /s
Have Musk and DT been seen in the same place at the same time? Maybe the delays last night were wardrobe malfunctions.
It’s a big place. Lots of room for rubbish and idiots.
haven’t we been doing that already for years.
I’m torn on this.
I love SpaceX and what they do. The absolute douchecanoe trashfire that is Elon Musk aside; they are an incredibly wonderful group bringing SF dreams to life and, frankly, the USA needs them because otherwise we’d be relying on Putin’s Russia still wouldn’t we?* I love what they have achieved and done and keep douibg -Mostly. But I hate that they are doing this and being environmentally so destructive becoz I’m also very much an environmentalist and whiklst texas is wy out of my jurisidictionand knowledge, I’m sure it has its own endemic and special flora and fauna too. Well, pretty sure, anyhow. I love endangered species and want habitat and local native creatures and plants.
So, yeah, this makes me feel very conflicted and sad becoz I do think we can and need to have both SpaceX able to their thing, (or thang here, he-yah!**), and also have what is left of the Texan environment and their native lifeforms preserved and cherished and looked after too. Ow.
.* What’s the alternative? Boeing whose Starliner is inall sorts of trouble and its atsronauts are currently strandeded & needing, uh, S[paceX tofly them home? NASA’s Artemis is awe-inspiring and superlative in scope but rarely flies. has only one successful but uncrewed flight so far. If NOT SpaceX then who and would they be able to do a smuch or any better?
.** Yup. Sure my Southern accent attempt could use work too..
Wait, Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott are going to allow the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to hold Musk accountable? I find that difficult to believe.
“I suggest that every state dump its garbage on Texas, they don’t care.” I have friends in Texas who care, they just have limited power to do anything about it giving that majority rule has it’s flaws particularly when the majority is a bunch of numbskulls manipulated by greedy fuckwads.
Which is bigger, Texas or Elon Musk’s sense of entitlement?
You’re right, though, Texas won’t mind. Last I checked, they still don’t have a bottle return law in that state. One of my more vivid lingering memories of a summer in the 1980s spent in Austin was the insane amounts of garbage, much of it bottles and cans, littering the side of a road that bordered a patch of woods. As a civilized person from Oregon, it hadn’t occurred to me that such places still existed.
Don’t Mess With Texas was originally an anti-litter campaign. So somebody there cares. My nieces and nephews who live there told me most of the contamination from Deepwater Horizon was gone but when I asked them if they go to the beach they looked at me like I was insane. So they do care.
There is a reason gasoline is more expensive in California by a dollar per gallon. We do have refineries here, and we have oil wells here, but we (kinda sorta) actually regulate them. Most of the carbon we use is generated and refined in Texas. Most of the companies here were taken over by Texas companies. A chunk of interstate traffic along the 10 is fuel transport. Chevron is moving their administration to Texas.
(They have attempted to make some pipelines to California. Those won’t spill or leak all across Arizona, Mexico, and New Mexico like the Trans-Alaska Pipeline making Deepwater Horizon look like a teeny puddle nope nope)
It’s cheaper there. Even transporting it halfway across the USofA. Because they are permanently poisoning their land, and sickening their people.
@StevoR #5
SpaceX is a toxic company with a batshit abusive culture and at this point, like with anything Musk and/or techbro-related, I assume that it is just vastly over-hyped.
https://www.spinlaunch.com/ might be just as well be hype, but at least they’re trying something genuinely different.
Can anyone seriously argue any longer that Musk has made the world a better place? Overwhelming evidence strongly suggests the opposite.
Walter Solomon @ #10 — “Can anyone seriously argue any longer that Musk has made the world a better place?” Well, the Cybertruck has brought some laughter into the world…oh wait…you said “seriously”…no.
I’m a Texan who cares. One more reason to hate Musk. I keep hearing about how Texas might turn blue, sooner or later. Here’s to hoping it’s sooner.
F.O. @9
Spin Launch seems to be just an higher tech version of the space gun concept that engineers proposed decades ago.
robro @11
I actually saw a Cybertruck in the wild in Baltimore a few months ago. It’s uglier in person than in pictures somehow. The dude driving it looked like a “bro” type too. I just shook my head and laughed. So, yeah, you’re correct. He definitely brought laughter into the world with that hunk of junk.
And this motherfucker is still allowed to launch our national reconnaissance payloads. He’s probably feeding ITAR-restricted shit to Putin.
Why hasn’t THAT been stopped? Nationalize it and bring it under NASA.
@F.O., Walter Solomon:
As a Canadian, the name ‘Gerald Bull’ always comes to mind when the idea of using artillary-like launches for satellites comes up. Yeah, ‘decades’ is right.
StevoR @ # 5: … (or thang here, he-yah!)…
. Yup. Sure my Southern accent attempt could use work too..
Sho ’nuff.
Precise phoneticization requires a better ear and transcription resources than I have, but you might do better to render that
A more accurate description of E. Musk would require vocabulary not permitted on this site.
Robert Westbrook @ 15
Not to worry. Trumpy has already given it to him.
I am not torn.
They’re not accused of doing damage to the environment. We know they were doing that. Every time we pour a concrete foundation for someone’s future home we’re doing damage to the environment. Growing food hurts the environment. Chopping firewood did damage to Europe’s environment when the population became sufficiently dense.
We try our best to set reasonable limits based on any number of things, including whether there are less damaging alternatives and how optional (or relocatable) a given activity might be. What SpaceX stands reasonably accused of here is violating the reasonable limits that they knew existed and that they agreed to when they accepted their permits.
Toxic dumping? Fuck you, SpaceX. Fuck you.
Strip their launch licences for 6 months, longer if they haven’t proven to regulators by the end of that time that they can keep their fucking act together.
Their big selling point is that they launch frequently, dependably, on schedule. Make their ability to launch dependent on obeying the fucking law. If we do anything else — like fines after the fact — they’ll just bump up their launch prices a bit to cover the fines as a slight increase in the cost of doing business.
Hit them where they fucking live.
StevoR–
Whatever benefits have come out of SpaceX, let’s remember that these types of successes used to be routine at NASA until the Republicans crippled it in order to divert funding to parasitic business moguls.
Crip Dyke @19
I live close enough to Canaveral that I don’t want the Space X monster rocket anywhere near me. The sonic booms after their routine launches are ok but I worry the monster rocket will put my windows out or much worse. Does Musk care?
jenorafeuer @16
I only just learned about Gerald Bull a few days ago while reading about Saddam Hussein’s Project Babylon supergun program. Apparently Bull was the head of the project. Funny to be having a discussion about it only days later.
I recognize that guy in the photo. His name is Neil Harbisson and he claims he had a anonymous doctor implant this device/antenna in his head so he could hear color because he’s completely color blind. He says he identifies as a cyborg. I saw a brief documentary on him a few years ago and I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it.
https://youtu.be/NivuCuwZ944?si=P68c8_1qZCZmdddE
@20. chrislawson :
Yes, that’s good point although both sides of politics are guilty here. Think I mentioned in a past thread Obama shutting down the Constellation program just after its first successfull test flight and after decades of plans to go to our Moon and Mars being proposed only to be then cut and switched and generally stuffed around with by each administration. See :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program
@21. Hemidactylus : That last question is rhetorical right?
@19. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden :
Well, that’s one of their big selling points certainly. Others include their records of accomplishing some absolutely magnificent things :
Source : https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2023/12/falcon-roundup/
Combined with their ambitions and more than that, serious plans that go beyond what most others do and actually could put the SF dreams of solar system human exploration into something like the visions we had for it back in the 1980’s and before :
Source : https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/07/1041420/spacex-starship-rocket-solar-system-exploration/
Paradoxically SpaceX is the closest group we have to be seriously doing the whole “..going boldly where none have gone before” Star Trek type stuff and, yeah, go back to their record of achievements, combine it with their goals and ambitions and progress so far and I love about the scientific and technological progress and vision SpaceX offer. As I’ve said before I know that everyone ultimately benefits and gains from it. It sure would be nice to see more groups and better led, more ethical ones doing what Space X is doing. Tosee national space agencies doing more SpaceX stuff.
Then they refuse to launch and strand astronauts from the USA and other places on the ISS or make that basically inoperable and force us back to using the Russians as the ferry until NASA gets it act together and a replacement capsule for the SpaceX and it seems Boeing ones? Basically shut down human spaceflight? I really hope not. Problem is as noted in #5 there aren’t better alternatives.
I do love the idea of NASA and the govt just taking over SpaceX management – kicking Musk out and putting someoen better in charge. Nationalise it and make it a NASA division and put it under NASA management. Put Musk in jail for sedition /treason alongside Trump. That’d be my ideal solution. Wish I could see it realistically happening.
@StevoR:
You don’t have to defend the SpaceX record of accomplishment to me. Indeed I’ve defended that very record right here on Pharyngula several times when people were speaking as if an exploded rocket that was still in the testing phase was rare and some kind of terrible failure.
SpaceX has an amazing record once things leave testing and are certified for operational flight. I celebrate the accomplishments.
That still shouldn’t earn them permission to engage in toxin dumping.
Companies that refuse to abide by the law, especially when it comes to activities as dangerous to health as dumping toxins, should have their operations shut down until they can (and will) comply.