Environmental groups file another complaint attempting to stop SpaceX launches at Boca Chica
In what is now becoming a routine process of harassment, several environmental groups have filed another complaint against the FAA and Fish & Wildlife for eventually issuing a second launch license to SpaceX, permitting it to do its mid-November second orbital test launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket from Boca Chica, Texas.
In the supplemental complaint, the groups — Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc., Save RGV and Surfrider Foundation — allege the FAA failed to properly analyze the environmental impacts of the first Starship launch before issuing a revised license for the second launch that took place Nov. 18.
That new licensing process included an environmental review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) regarding a pad deluge system that SpaceX installed on the pad to prevent damage like that the pad suffered during the first launch. The FWS concluded that the deluge system would produce no significant environmental changes.
The environmental groups argue that both FAA and FWS fell short of what was required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to review the environmental impacts of Starship launches. The FAA, it stated in the complaint, “once again failed to take the requisite ‘hard look’ at the impacts of the Starship/Superheavy launch program through a supplemental NEPA analysis.”
Let me translate what this complaint really says, and I can do it only a few words: “Your review didn’t come to the conclusions we want — which is to block all work by SpaceX — so that we can do what we want!” Both the American Bird Conservancy and the Surfrider Foundation simply want unlimited access to the region for their own recreation, while the Center of Biological Diversity is only interested in stopping all human development anywhere — until it can settle its frequent lawsuits against the government and pocket its payoff.
As for Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas and Save RGV, both are bogus organizations. The first is for a almost non-existent Indian tribe that never even lived in this area (they were based in Mexico), and the second claims it represents the people of the south Texas region who want SpaceX’s work stopped. Since almost everyone in Brownsville and throughout the region is celebrating the new prosperity brought to them by SpaceX, it is essentially a front group for the Marxist environmental movement that hates all prosperity. It doesn’t represent anyone really in south Texas.
As before, this complaint will have to be fought, wasting time and money.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
In what is now becoming a routine process of harassment, several environmental groups have filed another complaint against the FAA and Fish & Wildlife for eventually issuing a second launch license to SpaceX, permitting it to do its mid-November second orbital test launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket from Boca Chica, Texas.
In the supplemental complaint, the groups — Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc., Save RGV and Surfrider Foundation — allege the FAA failed to properly analyze the environmental impacts of the first Starship launch before issuing a revised license for the second launch that took place Nov. 18.
That new licensing process included an environmental review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) regarding a pad deluge system that SpaceX installed on the pad to prevent damage like that the pad suffered during the first launch. The FWS concluded that the deluge system would produce no significant environmental changes.
The environmental groups argue that both FAA and FWS fell short of what was required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to review the environmental impacts of Starship launches. The FAA, it stated in the complaint, “once again failed to take the requisite ‘hard look’ at the impacts of the Starship/Superheavy launch program through a supplemental NEPA analysis.”
Let me translate what this complaint really says, and I can do it only a few words: “Your review didn’t come to the conclusions we want — which is to block all work by SpaceX — so that we can do what we want!” Both the American Bird Conservancy and the Surfrider Foundation simply want unlimited access to the region for their own recreation, while the Center of Biological Diversity is only interested in stopping all human development anywhere — until it can settle its frequent lawsuits against the government and pocket its payoff.
As for Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas and Save RGV, both are bogus organizations. The first is for a almost non-existent Indian tribe that never even lived in this area (they were based in Mexico), and the second claims it represents the people of the south Texas region who want SpaceX’s work stopped. Since almost everyone in Brownsville and throughout the region is celebrating the new prosperity brought to them by SpaceX, it is essentially a front group for the Marxist environmental movement that hates all prosperity. It doesn’t represent anyone really in south Texas.
As before, this complaint will have to be fought, wasting time and money.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The left has won half the battle if they get to choose the terms. These are not “environmental” organizations. they could not care less about the environment..
Envirowacko
Luddite wackos
Leftist
I now realize with sadness at the age of 71 that the chances of my again seeing people walking on the moon are slipping lower and lower and that there is no chance to see the human race on Mars before I die.
I hate these people.
Doubting Thomas-
I share in your sadness, at 47 I have never seen a man walk on the moon and if the Left has their way, I never will.
One of my brothers was born the day Allen Shepherd went to space and is named after him. I cannot imagine the national pride of that era.
Interestingly, I used to write NEPAs when I did environmental work. The only thing I can add to that is all of these groups had a chance to make an argument against this type of work and didn’t. Part of the process is reaching out to each tribe for potential impact/ historical connections and if they signed off on it, there shouldn’t be any legal standing.
Ron – Thank you for the bit of knowledge there. The group that reads Robert’s site always teaches me something new and interesting.
I skipped elementary school for Alan Shepard and John Glenn’s space flights. I remember that I got caught by my assistant principal, who lived upstairs from us, when he caught me playing in the front yard of the apartment building at lunch time. I was worried and he smiled at me and said that he understood my “space sickness” that day.
All the best.
Doubting Thomas-
Great childhood story!
Ron–
You’re fairly young (I’m closer to Doubting Thomas in age) so, don’t abandon all hope!
But, this just sorta illustrates why, we can’t have Nice Things.
I count myself very fortunate in that I witnessed Apollo-8 launch in 1968, and thanks to our Host Mr. Z., who graciously took some 8mm film of the launch and digitized it for me, I watch it quite often, although my copy has pink floyd music attached.
It was amazing. That’s about all I can say!
(Later, we watched the Christmas Eve message, in a campground in Key West, on a portable TV, while we set up the Christmas tree we had dragged all the way from Michigan on top of the station-wagon.)
https://archive.org/details/apollo-8-december-1968-super-8mm-1440x-1080
Standard tactic – death by a thousand cuts.
Related, just another “progressive” agenda tool of manipulation.
BILL MAHRE: HEAT SEEKING MISSILE
“Now I do not always agree with Bill Mahre, but on the subject of the “Woke” “Progressives” who are driving their particular IMO clearly insane and harmful political perspective in our country and the world he is a heat seeking missile!”
Read the rest and share with a confused friend who cannot make the distinction………
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/bill-mahre-exposes-progressive-woke-self-delusion-and-bs
Where is the governor of Texas? Shouldn’t he at least be speaking to the public, informing them of the importance of SpaceX to Texas and the country? Elon is doing all he can to ensure the future freedom and survival of people throughout the world. Currently in Italy telling the people there that Tesla cannot build a factory in Italy because demographic trends show the country has a shrinking and aging workforce. Texas politicians need to step forward and make the case to voters that their state should be more active in shielding SpaceX from federal harassment.
BINGO!
“Elon is doing all he can to ensure the future freedom and survival of people throughout the world. ”
You have inadvertently hit the nail on the head.
Steve, you wrote: “Where is the governor of Texas? Shouldn’t he at least be speaking to the public, informing them of the importance of SpaceX to Texas and the country?” There is no problem with the general people of Texas or of the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) in understanding and supporting this. The Texas governor is as pro-business as they come.
As I see it, a point of Bob’s piece is that these tiny number of Leftist voices attack even when the vast majority is not just supportive of the SpaceX work but enthusiastic for such. Often these are people who are not even actually known by many as being part of the local community. But they get outsize notice with the Feds.
Take this “Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc.” It’s a Texas corporation organized in 1999 by a few people, not an American Indian tribe and yet they claim to be affected somehow. The tribe did not live in Texas but in Tamaulipas, Mexcio. Beware Wikipedia entries but on this group it reads correctly: “The Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc. is an unrecognized organization. Despite the word nation in its name, it is not a federally recognized tribe,[4] nor a state-recognized tribe,[5] nor recognized by any other Tribal Nation.”
It seems that we are rife with groups created for the purpose of sounding as victims in the press to stop any and all development.
In the RGV even the local liberal press is very supportive of what is happening with SpaceX. It’s the biggest economic positive to happen to the area since the Port of Brownsville.
Since space launch is vital for weather and asteroid research, they should be sued for making hazardous conditions for their neighbors.
Of course, I’d prefer the Chinese option of having them dissappeared. :)
Steve Richter – While I would defer to Robert Pratt’s knowledge, experience and connections in Texas, I too live in Texas and often ask the same question” “Where IS the Governor of Texas?”
In my view Big Greg talks a far, far better game than he plays and we slide further and further into the Blue-Green ooze.
One of my Senators (Cornyn) is definitely a DIRO (Democrat Imitating a Republican Officer holder). My second Senator (Cruz) seemed Ok til he said he was all in (just for a year or so understand) on the Federal 3 letter agencies spying on myself and 2 or 3 million of my closest friends.
My US Congressional Representative (R) who is a tough talking Navy Fighter pilot who never saw a budget deficit that he did not love and never saw an uncontrolled interaction with constituents that he did not flee.
My State Senator is a Democrat who wants me to die I am sure and my State Rep is another DIRO who voted for the impeachment of Ken Paxton and defeats every attempt to even slightly balance educational choice versus the public school rice bowl. This rice bowl is surrounded by teachers and administrators who just keep screaming “More Money!!! More Money!!!”
Big Greg keeps calling the legislature back (with pay) for the educational choice kabuki but the only thing that happens is more money goes into the Public School rice bowl. BUT, EVERY Republican assures us that they are WORKING FOR US!!!!.
So I wait to see what this bunch does to keep my aging and rapidly fading space dreams alive through Elon and Boca Chica. I am not holding my breath.
From a political perspective, environmental and nature conservation is, historically analyzed, more of a right-wing endeavor because it is conservative in the true sense. It was later adopted and abused by the green-painted communists because it is such a powerful tool for realizing their left-wing utopia.
Oh, look
https://weather.com/science/environment/video/is-breathing-bad-for-the-environment-heres-what-we-know
Is it time, finally, for Mr. Musk to exercise the Atlas Shrugged option and tell “our” government to go pound sand? No more work on Starship and Superheavy — and thus no Artemis moon landing — until this madness stops.
In practice there are a lot of reasons why such a drastic actin wouldn’t be feasible, but it sure would get people’s attention. (Even Governor Abbott’s, probably.) The thing of it is, if the 2024 election doesn’t occasion a radical change in Washington, then a “general strike” by the productive members of society may be the only remaining way to take back our country / culture / civilization.
The Atlas Shrugged option is not possible.
He does not have a monopoly on space flight. Granted he is the only game in town making frequent launches as close to on time as possible.
But the US government would just as happily go back to the way things used to be.
This article by Monica Showalter restates everything Robert has been saying:
“Joe Biden dispatches his flying monkeys to hunt down Elon Musk”
By Monica Showalter
“When Joe Biden told reporters that Elon Musk “is worth being looked at,” it’s too bad Kamala Harris wasn’t there to supply the cackle.
Shortly after that ominous statement, Biden dispatched his federal flying monkeys against Musk, suing him on big and little matters, all of which were on utterly spurious grounds. His real “crime,” of course, was displeasing Biden and his Democrat political machine.
Biden is throwing everything it can find at Musk, hoping that the endless barrage of regulatory, reputational and legal attacks will cause the world’s wealthiest man to kneel before its authority. The viciousness of the investigations being conducted by the Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service against a successful American business leader is unprecedented. It says much more about the vindictive nature of Joe Biden than it does about the founder of Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company.
And as we look at this broad and ugly picture of trying to pin something, anything, on Musk, through the legal and regulatory process, the outlines of a recognizable plan start to emerge as the operational template:
One, separate Musk from his wealth, attempting to take his business empire away from him.
Two, hit him with as many lawsuits, on the most spurious of grounds, that they can think of, to tie him up in a stew of misery and keep him from progressing onward with his entrepreneurial plans.
Sound familiar?
It sounds exactly like what they are doing to President Trump”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/12/joe_biden_dispatches_his_flying_monkeys_after_elon_musk.html
James Street: I have been pleased (and amused) today at the number of posts in the mainstream conservative press, like the Showalter column you quote, that have finally noticed what I have been documenting now for more than a year, that the Biden administration is out to destroy Musk.
It is great they are finally noting this. It is a shame that even the conservative press has been slow to do so.