I don't think you can launch rockets without impact on the environment. But you probably can put a bit more effort into mitigating the impact than SpaceX did here. And I think it is fair to ask for the kind of measures that are used on essentially every other launch facility like flame trenches/diverters and deluge systems.
I think, in this specific case, SpaceX should be held to a higher standard than one normally would be. Normally you don't claim that you intend for your rocket to blow up when you launch it. If they're going to go around saying this wasn't an accident, then they should have had a much, much better plan for cleaning up the mess they made.
I think litter laws should apply in this case. I'm afraid it would never get enforced because the US justice system tends to let the rich get away with anything, but dumping 200 pounds or more of commercial waste in Texas carries a minimum 180 day sentence under Texas state law (https://www.ennistx.gov/Illegal-Dumping-Violations/).
Not something I think should apply in the case of a true accident, or if you had a good plan to really go above and beyond in terms of mitigating the damage (not necessarily perfect, but very good).
I think it blowing up or otherwise failing was probably the most likely case and they didn't really hide that fact, but I get the sense that they expected that it would make it a little further along, and not destroy the pad, such that the mess would end up in the ocean instead of on land. This is also littering of a sort, but it's also how every rocket stage pre-SpaceX has met its demise anyway, by design (except for the Chinese ones that seem to have a tendency to come down on land, often in populated areas). Dropping rocket parts in the ocean is just an accepted part of doing business, for better or worse.
To be fair it's now clear that Elon and friends now also agree that they need something like a flame diverter, though for different reasons.
Well, to be even more fair Elon doesn't seem interested in a diverter or trench but in a [thick] steel plate cooled by water. That would still allow the exhaust to run along the ground far beyond the OLM. He could erect some berms covered in concrete at a some distance from the OLM to avoid damage from that.
To me it sounds like that was always the plan after initial test. They just didn't have time to finish building it. And seems like they didn't expect to be as bad as it was. That happens when you run do a test. Sometimes you get things you don't expect.
Sure they had time. To be generous we can say they failed to extrapolate correctly from the 50% thrust test firing, but that may be a tad too generous.
That said, I don't think it's that big a deal, and anyways SpaceX is already paying a steep price for this mistake.
I think everyone agrees that SpaceX launched too early and messed up in terms of unsafe destruction to their pad, rocket, and surroundings (above pics included).
However I think we should keep some context & perspective on exactly where we're more and less OK with certain kinds of environmental destruction.
I think when you look closely at any part of this planet, every action you take causes disruption. This is part of the miracle of life on earth, it's everywhere. Paving a square yard of road causes destruction to the soil habitat, surface and deeper insects and bacteria, the birds and other animals eating those insects, plant and fungal life in the are, etc. Does that mean we shouldn't make roads at all? Probably not. Does that mean we should make fewer roads? Probably! Does that mean we should rely on trains instead of highways where possible? Absolutely!
But we can do this same exercise for a rail! The same soil is under the bits of rail and railroad ties too. Railways also divide up landscapes, causing the deaths of various grazing animals. Should we not make railways...?
I think the extreme is the Jainist perspective of sweeping the ground ahead of your feet before taking a single step. I don't think that view is a reasonable idea for all of us.
> I think the extreme is the Jainist perspective of sweeping the ground ahead of your feet before taking a single step. I don't think that view is a reasonable idea for all of us.
We're a hell of a long ways towards the opposite extreme right now.
There are a few local activists who have been staunchly opposed to spacex expanding into the Boca Chica area. I find it perfectly reasonable that someone would not want a rocket company in their backyard, however if you are going to be launching things into space you are somewhat geographically limited. You want to be as close to the equator as possible to take advantage of the faster rotational speed of the Earth and you want to have an ocean to the east in case there is an accident so that debris doesn't hit anything on land. The area should ideally be relatively remote so that testing doesn't cause too much of a disturbance, but populated enough so that you can get supplies and workers. This leaves you with two options if you want to launch spacecraft in the united states, south Florida and south Texas. There really aren't any other options if you want to be as efficient as possible.
If you think is is bad, you ought to see what cars, airplanes, and wind power does to wildlife. Or construction of that high speed California Railway. Or just _mowing the fricken lawn beside the highway_.
/s off. This is pretty nit picky. Come on folks.
Also, that's not a Bobcat. Probably best if you're going to write a sensationalized article, at least spend 5 mins to try to get your facts straight.
> If you think is is bad, you ought to see what cars, airplanes, and wind power does to wildlife. Or construction of that high speed California Railway. Or just _mowing the fricken lawn beside the highway_.
>Also, that's not a Bobcat. Probably best if you're going to write a sensationalized article, at least spend 5 mins to try to get your facts straight.
How can you tell? Some quick google searches of Texas bobcats show similar looking cats. They do look a bit different from what I am used to in the upper midwest.
Looking into a bit more, the only cats that would be likely candidates that I can find would be a margay (likely too small) or an ocelot. If either were the case, I would think it would be a bigger story considering how few live in Texas.
I'm a midwesterner and I've seen my a share of cats while outdoors... but I actually don't know what those photo is, but I'm fairly certain it's not "an endangered Bobcat". Something is off about the color and dot print, I've never seen it that prominent. Nearly every bobcat I've seen or had appear on a trailcam has much more subdued features and they're not as "orangey". They're unbelievably hard to spot with your eyes.
FYI also in the midwest, anything that is wild and meows is generally referred to as "a bobcat", save the mountain lion.
There was no existential reason for SpaceX to launch before they had the infrastructure to support it. They knew they would blow stuff up, had already started engineering a solution to the problem, and still went ahead with the launch anyway. The environmental consequences are enormous. I am a fan of space, but I also want it to be done responsibly.
Perhaps I'm missing something, what are the enormous environmental consequences? Are you referring to just those from the photo? I feel like a fishing trawler does more damage every day than I see in these photos.
While I'm not an expert - the article does mention that the cement dust has an impact on soil, and I can imagine that the rocket itself was filled with multiple dangerous and toxic chemicals which were scattered to the wind.
It's probably not Exxon Valdez, but I doubt it's a small deal.
Actually this is the second cleanest type of fuel possible. (The best being hydrogen.) When they blew it up they released a ton of methane, which is bad for global warming, but otherwise isn't toxic.
Believe it or not, the boosters are just built out of stainless steel so that they can survive the heat. Not toxic.
Starship itself uses a silicon-based ceramic for insulation. You wouldn't want to be hit in the head by one of those tiles, but it's unlikely to poison you.
Just stumbled upon this - it does seem that the particulate matter scattered for miles is being investigated as being a major health risk to nearby residents and endangered species.
Breathing in non-toxic particles can be bad for you due to the effects of mechanical injury. The classic example is asbestos, completely non-toxic, but the result of how your body attempts to repair damaged cells in your lungs can cause an increased chance of cancer.
This is one of the top concerns of nanotechnology. It could potentially create a lot of grit that we really don't want to breathe...
You remind me that I heard brake pad particulate was horrible for our health, and highly present in the air in LA as well - another thing to lose sleep to!
The exhaust was pretty clean. It might have been a bit engine-rich though, so a bit of copper was probably emitted, but otherwise it was just H2O and CO2.
It's not remotely clear yet that the "environmental consequences are enormous". I agree with everything else you said.
SpaceX already is paying a steep price for not waiting, since they have to spend a ton of effort and money on fixing up stage zero (and probably ground zero too). Perhaps they felt pressured by investors to show progress?
Oh jesus christ I hadn't caught that it was on 4/20
The booster spelled 4/20
Jesus christ it was just a bit
And now people are beathing in particulate matter for a bit
For comparison, look at the overhead photos of the N1 launch mount and its three MASSIVE angled concrete blast trench/blast deflectors. The N1 is the closest thing that's ever been built in engine count and size to the booster, not counting the saturn V of course.
The N1 itself was obviously a disaster for other engineering reasons not related to its launch mount.
The launch mount, on the other hand, looks great, and did its job admirably. THe soviet union was not bad at building massive ugly reinforced concrete structures.
I find it very hard to understand why they didn't build the most heavy duty launchpad of all time when it was the largest / most powerful launch of all time.
Debate about "value" aside, does this not indicate some bad engineering choices? The entire failure sequence seems to have been caused by this choice, if I understand correctly.
The typical approach (a deep flame trench) is likely impossible due to the high water table so close to the beach. Some other novel approaches are likely possible, and I'm sure they'll now pursue one, but coming up with and building a design would probably have taken awhile, and they apparently did some testing that suggested they could get away with not doing it, at least for a bit. It's now obvious that they were wrong, but if they had been right, they would have acquired a bunch of data that would have unblocked a bunch of additional development on the vehicle itself that could have proceeded in parallel with improvements to the launch facilities (the one they're already building in Florida has a conventional flame trench) that they otherwise would have had to wait months for while more-extensive launch facilities were built, so it wasn't necessarily irrational, knowing what they knew at the time.
I loved watching the iterative development of the Starship upper stage, and it felt like they were doing it the right way.
The full-stack superheavy feels like a different situation. Seeing how little control they have over the enormous blast from that rocket is shocking. It feels irresponsible.
One youtube channel [1] showed that a piece of concrete the size of a bus was thrown 50 meters in the air straight upwards during ignition. It almost hit the side of the rocket. This stuff is insane.
To be fair, you're asking them to have solved a problem in advance that nobody knew that they would have.
Nobody had ever fired a rocket that strong. Their test firings were on par with the strongest previous rockets ever launched, and neither the test firings or those previous launches suggested that something like this was possible.
And it wasn't just them. They went through over a year of environmental review and mitigation efforts. To the best of my knowledge, the issue of how to handle the launch pad being blown over the local environment didn't come up even once.
Engineering is full of things like this. You learn that a problem is possible because it happens. Then you figure out how to mitigate it. That first time really sucks. But when it happens, you have to ask, "Was this something that should have been predicted?" And in this case I'm pretty sure that the answer is no.
We generally do blast mitigation to minimize damage to the equipment around the pad. The calculation was that the equipment was built in such a way that it would survive. And indeed the equipment only suffered minor damage, and that was from the unexpected flying debris, not the blast.
I'm not aware of a previous case where the concreate launchpad shattered similarly to this. The closest thing to this possibility that I am aware of being discussed in advance was the possibility that the whole rocket could explode on the pad in a large fireball. Which existing blast mitigation techniques would not have helped with much.
Or even having publicly documented probable risk of forgoing blast-mitigation measures in their launch permit. Debris flew well outside the approved range.
In a back of the envelope approximation, an object 10x as big in every dimension has 1000 times the mass and experiences 100 times the air resistance. And therefore flies about 10 times as far. (Only an approximation, there are other factors. For example gravity acts the same on both.)
Nobody anticipated the debris would include large chunks of concrete. And therefore it was able to travel much farther than expected.
It doesn't seem like a particularly hard problem, the max thrust was going to be twice a Saturn V and it's bigger than any conventionally launched rocket so far, and the next biggest rockets all have a water suppression system or massive flame trench.
They extrapolated from a half-power test, and they extrapolated wrong. Turns out that the exhaust damage is not linear with power. Physical systems are not linear, imagine that.
I don't know.... I would imagine they have a lot of control. After all, the engines nozzels rotate. The entire areas was empty of people and they were aware of the high probability of an explosion - potentially before lift off. There was a ton of assumed/acknowledged risk, all of which was eventually signed off on by Nasa(?) and the FAA.
They did not have control of the blast in the way that all other commercial launches do: with flame trenches, water deluge systems, etc.
If the FAA knew that SpaceX could be throwing bus-sized pieces of concrete in the air that could potentially hit the rocket's fuel tanks, I guarantee they would not have approved the launch.
The slow flight termination system was especially terrifying: What should have been an unzip-boom was more like a slowly deflating balloon that took 50 seconds to go boom. If the rocket went out of control at low altitude, someone or something would have been bombed with the largest human created non-nuclear explosion (a fast FTS reduces damage by at least an order of magnitude). At least this will get resolved by the next flight.
There's something deeply ironic about a person commenting from a highly-engineered device, operating on a highly-engineered network, sitting inside of a highly-engineered building, in a highly-engineered city debating the merits of progress.
I read their comment as underlining the uncertainty about what the cost or the reward is. Maybe we can't flippantly declare that it's "a small price" if we don't know what we're paying or what we're going to get in return. (I have no position on that.)
No everyone is aware, but SpaceX mass to orbit is close to the rest of the world put together. Hey are massively reducing costs to access space. The point of the starship is to continue to reduce costs.
honestly, this is all to plunder the solar system further. Mining asteroids, etc. Of course the R&D is tax payer publicly funded and the future profits privatized. This is the way it has always been.
I guess I just don't see the point. We're not leaving earth, no one wants to life in orbital stations or habitats - nonobstant all the issues with making that happen, so why plunder the solar system? There is more matter to plunder on earth than we would need to cover the whole globe with people, what's the point of trying get our great-great-great-great-grandkids to mine asteroids? Even more questionable if it makes our own and the life of the people coming next to be measurably worse
Yeah, I'll believe Mars colonization makes sense once the much closer and more hospitable environments of interior Antarctica and the ocean floor are settled.
Ocean floor is a different kind of problem, and Antarctica (and Greenland) have settlements.
But for similar reasons, I think we should aim for the Moon before Mars: closer, so when (and it is "when" not "if") something goes fatally wrong, it will be easier to get help.
That said, if Starship delivers on Musk's vision, we'll probably get both.
Even a "polluted beyond help" Earth would be easier to live on than Mars. We have liquid water, a nice thick atmosphere that isn't 95% carbon dioxide, a better ionosphere, easy access to nitrogen as a synthetic fertilizer feedstock, and various other advantages. Musk knows this; he's not an idiot, nor is he a cartoon villain motivated by a desire to be Evil.
It bothers me when people just make up outlandish accusations.
Even assuming an absolute worst-case scenario climate-wise (no mitigations whatsoever, massive sea-level rise, etc.), Earth will still be dramatically more hospitable to human life than Mars for the entirety of Musk's lifetime, and very likely his children's and grandchildren's lifetimes as well, barring some mass-extinction event like a nuclear war. Even if a colonization effort begins soon, living on Mars is likely to be extremely difficult for centuries -- we can't breathe the air or grow anything in the soil, our biology is likely ill-adapted to the gravity, there is no liquid surface water, etc. -- and the idea that there will come a point in the foreseeable future where it makes sense to escape there because it's easier than being here (because of pollution or whatever other reason) is difficult to fathom.
I guess it's always worth having a Plan B, but Nate Hagens and Kim Stanley Robinson (sci-fi writer of the Mars Trilogy) discuss this and don't necessarily agree, obviously depending on what definition of "polluted beyond help" you're using etc. [1]
Nate Hagens (00:43:15):
"And to me it's very smart and famous people, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk among
them say, "We're screwing up Earth. Climate is going to be bad. We need to colonize outer space and head to Mars." And that makes just zero sense to me, because on the worst thermonuclear runaway-climate scenario, Earth is still going to be a paradise next to Mars. I mean-"
Kim Stanley Robinson (00:43:43):
"I agree with you completely. That is a case that has to be made. And the thing about people like Hawkings, the thing about people like Elon Musk is they're smart, they aren't that smart. They aren't wise, they aren't philosophers, and they're not ecologists. Very often physicists will assume that ecology is just physics in action, and that they've got it all sussed out because they know the rules of physics and they can do rocketry. But you can't do plant biology just knowing rocketry. It's more complex, it's more interconnected, it's a more-complex science. And many physicists will arrogantly say that, "Because I know the laws of physics, I know everything." But they don't know how a marsh works. They haven't studied biology enough to understand their own ignorance. So how smart are you if you don't know how ignorant you are?"
We're one killer global war / pandemic / etc away from extinction
Being on multiple planets (and eventually multiple solar systems) prevents a species from going extinct if something catastrophic happens to their home world
> We're one killer global war / pandemic / etc away from extinction
No, we're not. And whatever we end up doing to the Earth, it's still going to be vastly more suitable for human life than anywhere else in the solar system.
If you care about preventing extinction, stop looking at the stars, and start digging bunkers. Or building undersea cities, or whatever.
Access to orbit is a requirement for our current level of technological civilization.
SpaceX's launch capability is not only much greater than that of competitors (including states), they're using methane fuel and do not use solid fuel boosters.
For context, ESA's Ariane 5 uses solid fuel boosters (ammonium perchlorate, aluminum, hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene) and a liquid fuel second stage (monomethylhydrazine, nitrogen tetroxide). NASA's SLS uses solid fuel boosters of the same composition and Ariane 5's. So does JAXA's H3.
If, as a species, we're going to be launching things into orbit, doing so using the SpaceX's tech is significantly cleaner than what we're using today. That's true even before considering reuse.
> When was it determined that access to orbit was a requirement?
I’d say for the general public, some time in the 90s. For states, as far back as the 60s or 70s I’d say.
> And a requirement to what?
Off the top of my head? Current uses would include communications, navigation/positioning, remote sensing, research, and exploration.
Future uses will almost certainly include access to the resources of the rest of the solar system. In the grand scheme of things, we’re not that far away from being able to capture, relocate, and mine asteroids. Many of those contain resources that are extremely rare or difficult to obtain on Earth.
For example - I think we can agree that moving automobiles from ICE to EV will be a good thing for our biosphere. Cobalt is one of the raw materials that is in short supply. There are two near-Earth asteroids that combined are believed to exceed the Earth’s reserves for cobalt:
Thanks for the reply. I didn't know we weren't near Kessler syndrome, I'll look into it!
EDIT: Looking at your name, are you ancap??
When do you think (ballpark) it would be realistic? I'm seeing so many problems with it - how do you get the stuff from asteroids to earth? (Mass drivers are a nice idea, but in practice I doubt the public would accept hurling tons of material towards earth). There are so many problems that we have a hard time expecting, like lunar dust[0], issues with the code used to run the equipement, as it is often to far away to be reliably controled remotely (The cassini mission is a good example if I remember correctly)
While I agree that for communications and the likes, sattelite coverage is a net benefit, you have to agree that the material benefits of exploration and research in space are undefined at best - it's entirely possible we'll find nothing useful for a bit.
I think it's important to keep things in perspective - how many order of magnitude is SpaceX better compared to the old tech? How many launches do we actually need to do yearly? Is there a point where the environemental cost starts to be equivalent?
I'd like to see how much the current space race is damaging to the environnement compared to using the old designs - imagine it's equivalent to 50 years of launches (not a real number), it then becomes much less excusable. Imagine if we stalled the current space race for 15-20 years and had everybody forced to only run simulations, I'm certain there wouldn't be as many botched tests and designs as we are seeing, other compagnies included.(For reference, since the nuclear bomb test ban all nuke design is made in simulators [1]
What was won is a small but vital step toward humans becoming a multiplanetary species. From this angle, the impact of this launch is obviously a small price.
A multiplanetary species is simply not going to happen, since there are no plans to figure out a way to not make your blood boil (literally) on the surface of Mars or the Moon.
Except for the multiple studies exploring how to build habitats on mars/moon and how to build spacesuits that would function on mars/moon.
Listen, I get it. We're not going to have a million person utopian colony on Mars in 2026. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to shoot for a small 4 person colony in 2032 to start doing research. This is currently our most promising way to get there.
Did you know that there are many activities that you can do on the Earth that, without appropriate technical equipment, are fatal? From diving to mountaineering or living in deserts, mankind has overcome many challenging environments.
I know, I am a decent scuba diver. Any of those activities is not something you do 24/7/365. Even underwater it takes more time to die than on Mars (where it's instant as soon as the airlock fails).
Consider the Tibetans who evolved unique genetic adaptations that allow them to better survive in the low oxygen environment of the Himalayas. Or the Inca, who developed specific architecture and agricultural technologies to deal with the high winds, limited arable lands, and harsh weather in the Andes. These are dangerous environments that supported a significant population 24/7/365.
Progress happens iteratively. We figure out how to get there first, we'll - or future generations will - figure out how to live there comfortably. Dead cats and birds, well, small price to pay for getting us off this rock.
They aerosolized their own launch pad and delayed all their future missions. This was a waste all around.
Edit: I mean that the launchpad's design and subsequent destruction was a waste, and it possibly had negative effects on the flight (engines out at launch and further failures later on). They knew that this was going to happen and responded to this risk apathetically. The rest of test (launch, attempted stage separation, etc) was amazing and had my jaw on the floor. I'm very excited for future Starship missions and I believe in the concept. But this is obvious corner-cutting and has no place in an effort this monumental.
Progress is fine, they could be more careful and thoughtful. We made it illegal to dump industrial waste in water. Blowing up exotic concrete to the point it becomes a fine dust and spreads over a large area is unacceptable. They should be allowed to continue operations as long as they make the proper adjustments.
Everything affects the environment. And saying "all prices are large" isn't helpful.
I think the Starship failure was a comical own-goal. But, in the end, we have to figure out what the cost of externalities like this actually are instead of hand-wringing.
It's one thing if this is unavoidable. But it's not - they were warned, even Musk himself said a blast shield might be needed, but they didn't install one.
Maybe what is documented here is small (maybe), but what does this look like 10x, 1000x? Do we have any reason to expect this negative impact to decrease with scale?
But maybe a large price to pay for cutting corners and saving pennies by not installing a flame trench, or whatever it is they should have done to prevent the launch pad from being aerosolized.
Starship was selected by NASA as the Human Landing System that will bring people to the surface of the moon.
It will also be necessary to launch the full size Starlink 2 satellites, which have been increasing competition in Internet access around the world, including in places that have had wars and natural disasters.
And? The greatest achievements humanity has ever completed are almost universally vanity projects. Nobody needs a Pyramid of Giza, or a Statue of Liberty, or to irrigate the desert using a massive dam.
No one needs to go to space, or probe the workings of the cosmos. Hell, 99.99% of all software ever developed is utterly pointless, yet it employs every last person on this site. Humanity does stuff because we think we can do cooler stuff than the people who came before us. And that's a perfectly noble goal, unto itself.
I think space exploration with probes and space telescopes is more interesting. We've been to the moon and have taken back samples, and it was frickin' awesome, but there are cooler things to do now.
In this case, though, a lot of this is because SpaceX didn't take some pretty basic precautions, and because they were evidently lazy as shit at estimating the effects of the launch (they tore up their own pad, because they got the forces and effects involved way wrong—that's why they blasted chunks of concrete everywhere), and because they decided they just had to launch before getting a metal plate put in on the pad to mitigate some of this. I wanna say they also violated some of the rules around their flight plan, resulting in more damage and debris on the shore.
This isn't "the cost of progress", this is misconduct.
>because they were evidently lazy as shit at estimating the effects of the launch (they tore up their own pad, because they got the forces and effects involved way wrong—that's why they blasted chunks of concrete everywhere
Is there an interview or a blog post or something that says this? My understanding (don't have a link or anything) was that outfitting the launch pad to be to the standard of 39A would've taken years, and getting flight data from the vehicle was more important than likely blowing up the hastily designed/built launch pad.
Basically any article you find searching "SpaceX Launch" right now that covers the damage to the pad (not just the very-early reports about the rocket blowing up) contains some or all of the info in that post.
The reporter I heard talking about it (I think yesterday?) said that SpaceX had to file a variety of assessments of expected effects under various launch scenarios, and that the damage done by this successful launch was on par with what they'd estimated for the "fully-fueled rocket explodes on pad" outcome, and that they seem to have based their projections for a "gets off the pad successfully" scenario on results from a half-throttle test-fire and, I dunno, wishful thinking, it seems. I have not personally looked up those records to verify that, though.
Your consumption of steak had one good angle - this example you've made of yourself. Step one is self-awareness. Beyond that it's up to each of us to know what we feel comfortable with in response to that. But admitting it's the beginning.
No, its not. This blog post reads like a smear piece. Complete with a leading picture of a dead bobcat that was obviously killed by a car and not a rocket
The launch pad was vaporised, a lot of particulate matter was thrown in the air and affected residents of two nearby town, as well as nearby endangered wildlife.
Also, think about what goes into making a rocket, bring all that up in the sky, and blow it up. While hard to find all health and environnemenntal risks related, I'm sure you can understand that this isn't like a 3.5 acre fire at all.
It's not the end of the world either - but accountability has to start somewhere.
Updated: This used to be a long thread about two people arguing about nothing over the internet and wasting an hour and nothing gained. Very productive.
Honestly, just saving people time in reading this thread. The article seems like a hit piece and I attempted to call that out. I tried to zoom out and look at the bigger picture by saying SpaceX is actually a big improvement over other companies in terms of environmental impact in that they are reusable (vs literally everyone else putting the first stage in the ocean). You said that was whataboutism. Then, I attempted to zoom out again by saying there are bigger environmental impacts outside the aerospace sector (like all the war and all the lives wasted there). Then you said that was whataboutism again and that I shot too low with my comments. Just seemed like a waste of time, probably for both of us, and provides zero value to anyone else. I wish I hadn't even read this post of attempted to comment on it. You probably see this totally different than me. That's the funny thing about all this.
For what it's worth, I guess you're right in that this is a whataboutism. You could take this line of thinking to the extreme, do I not cut my grass, in that I might kill some ants? Like, it needs to be cut. We need to get to space and there is going to be some costs. So, yeah, they killed some birds, a bobcat, and burnt some grass. It's worth it. Until now, I didn't realize my algorithm for caring about stuff was to prioritize my outrage via whataboutisms.
Hopefully, we can agree to disagree. Wish you well.
Same difference, I saw your deleted comment where you said "yes" as well, and your sentiment is the same. Accountability has to start somewhere. For clarity they edited that line after I quoted it.
> How about the war happening and all the people getting killed and all the environmental and social impact happening there.
Wow, you are literally doing it again. It's a fallacy because the topic of the article *is* space x, you're just interested in dismissing it for whatever reason. If you want to talk about the impact of the war, find an article about the war to do it on.
For clarity here:
what·a·bout·ism
noun
the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation or raising a different issue.
We should hold commenters here to a higher standard than this.
SpaceX isn't cool anymore around here because HN leans left and Elon backed the right-wing horse.
If Elon had gone "woke" then all the right-leaning sites would be overflowing with SpaceX and Tesla haters.
It's just political tribalism. If you take a side then the other side must vilify you and anything you touch becomes contaminated to them. If a left-winger says the Earth is round right-wingers must insist it's flat, and vice versa.
I personally believe SpaceX to be the most important venture on Earth of any kind, and it's vastly more important than Elon Musk himself or his politics. Thousands and thousands of people work for SpaceX. It's not like it's a one man show.
In a hundred thousand years whatever sentient life descended from Earth life that has populated our region of the galaxy will have no memory of Elon, Twitter, Donald Trump, or the culture war fight of the week in 2023.
HN leans left? If anything in my view it leans hardcore free market libertarian/"move fast and break things". Individual people may hold common "liberal" political views like supporting gay rights, the right to abortion but on economics issues and things like government regulation of huge tech, HN is basically indistinguishable from Peter Thiel.
Note that actual leftism is not the same thing as modern liberalism. By the economics textbook definition of the term Ronald Reagan was a modern Liberal.
I think you're flat-out wrong in general - and on a personal level, I'm rooting for SpaceX despite their founder's shenanigans.
If someone can back up a claim with reasonable evidence I'll hear it.
For example, I'm not sure I even care about the level of damage documented here, but I applaud the author for doing the research and presenting facts (other than the extraneous dead cat in the first photo).
Nope. The problem is that Elan, recently, has very much been leaning to Delusional Management PHBism. HN very much leans to the sorts of competent workers who have to suffer under that kind of management, while busting our asses to make it look like their screw-loose "pedal-powered supersonic time machine cars will start shipping soon!" promises have some basis in reality.
Is it not you that is the most entrenched in the culture wars here? I see language about celebrities; politics; toxic modern discourse; corporate value.
In other comments, I see discussions about the event; its impacts; how to weigh those relative impacts - positive or negative; questions about why the engineering choices that were made, as they appear quite sloppy in hindsight.
Indeed, I might say someone who wishes to detach from the political side of things could easily comment that SpaceX might not be treated as a "cool" entity in this situation because they have made a failure, which might not be bad in itself, but a failure from quite a disappointing mistake. This will naturally color the discussion, don't you think? The emotional state of the audience isn't "interested in what went wrong", because that's obvious! Instead the tone is more related to the nature of mistakes - incredibly though, I don't even see a suggestion that mistakes are the new culture of Elon companies. So why are you whining?
All disposable rockets are dumped in the ocean, sometimes with toxic propellants still on board. Yet I've seen no end of articles about how bad this test is for the environment. I saw it all over the place even before this launched.
SpaceX wants its rockets to be fully reusable, which means when they work they will not be dumped in the ocean. They're also using less toxic and less CO2-intensive propellants on Starship than most other rockets that burn RP-1 (kerosene) or worse solid or hypergolic fuels. What are the SLS boosters emitting and what happens when those fall in the ocean?
I'm not a fan of Elon's recent political turn, but I also know a double standard and a politically motivated pile-on when I see one. SpaceX is much more important than Elon or his politics, and their launch vehicles aim to be considerably "greener" than anyone else due to reusability.
No matter how incredible and forward your endeavors are, it's fascinating how many haters there will be. Unfortunately most of this hate is precipitated by for profit news.
Being honored to die for a corp is weird. Pretty sure if you were a bobcat, you'd have no concept of honour and have survival as the number one concern.
At least it's a novel way to go and they weren't killed just to be shat out 24hrs later. Here are the 2021 numbers for those same animals: Pigs: 11.8 million, Sheep: 4.2 million, Monkeys: 100,000
