FAA moves forward on its environmental assessment of SpaceX’s proposal to launch Starship/Superheavy from Kennedy Space Center
Proposed Starship/Superheavy launchsites at
Kennedy (LC-39A) and Cape Canaveral (SLC-37)
While NASA has already determined that Starship/Superheavy launches from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will have no significant impact on the environment, the FAA has not yet completed its own environmental impact statement.
Last week it released a preliminary summary [pdf] of its impact statement, revealing that it has reduced its final options to either approving SpaceX’s request to do as many as 44 launches per year, or to reject any changes — the “no action alternative” — which would block all Starship/Superheavy launches at Kennedy.
The overall tone of this summary suggests strongly that the FAA is almost certainly going to approve SpaceX’s request, allowing as many as 44 launches per year from launchpad LC-39A, as shown on the map to the right. As it notes in describing the “no action alternative”:
SpaceX would not launch Starship-Super Heavy from LC-39A. NASA would not develop, implement, or approve agreements with SpaceX associated with Starship-Super Heavy operations at LC-39A. The No Action Alternative would not meet the purpose and need. [emphasis mine]
In other words, rejecting SpaceX’s request would not fulfill the FAA’s obligation to serve the public. It would also not fulfill the FAA’s obligation to serve a fellow government agency, NASA, which has already approved this SpaceX request in a 2019 environmental assessment.
It appears a final decision by the FAA is imminent. A nice summary of this FAA document can be found here, which notes that if approved, it will give SpaceX license approval to launch Starship/Superheavy as much as 146 times per year, from its launchpads at Boca Chica, Kennedy, and Cape Canaveral. Note too that this FAA assessment is independent of the Air Force’s environment assessment, which has already approved 76 launches per year at the SLC-37 launchpad.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Proposed Starship/Superheavy launchsites at
Kennedy (LC-39A) and Cape Canaveral (SLC-37)
While NASA has already determined that Starship/Superheavy launches from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will have no significant impact on the environment, the FAA has not yet completed its own environmental impact statement.
Last week it released a preliminary summary [pdf] of its impact statement, revealing that it has reduced its final options to either approving SpaceX’s request to do as many as 44 launches per year, or to reject any changes — the “no action alternative” — which would block all Starship/Superheavy launches at Kennedy.
The overall tone of this summary suggests strongly that the FAA is almost certainly going to approve SpaceX’s request, allowing as many as 44 launches per year from launchpad LC-39A, as shown on the map to the right. As it notes in describing the “no action alternative”:
SpaceX would not launch Starship-Super Heavy from LC-39A. NASA would not develop, implement, or approve agreements with SpaceX associated with Starship-Super Heavy operations at LC-39A. The No Action Alternative would not meet the purpose and need. [emphasis mine]
In other words, rejecting SpaceX’s request would not fulfill the FAA’s obligation to serve the public. It would also not fulfill the FAA’s obligation to serve a fellow government agency, NASA, which has already approved this SpaceX request in a 2019 environmental assessment.
It appears a final decision by the FAA is imminent. A nice summary of this FAA document can be found here, which notes that if approved, it will give SpaceX license approval to launch Starship/Superheavy as much as 146 times per year, from its launchpads at Boca Chica, Kennedy, and Cape Canaveral. Note too that this FAA assessment is independent of the Air Force’s environment assessment, which has already approved 76 launches per year at the SLC-37 launchpad.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Wasn’t there supposed to be a horizontal launch plot to the far north of that area?
Are new pads eating into that?
Jeff Wright,
“Horizontal launch plots,” Jeff, are generally referred to as “airports.” I’m aware of no plan to ever build an airport at KSC.
Launch Complex 49
Notional Future Horizontal Launch Area.
The SLF (shuttle strip) and a local airport are to the West of the NFHLA
Jeff Wright,
I have located a few references to a Notional Future Horizontal Launch Area but none of them have dates attached so I can’t speak to their vintage. The “notional” location shown is to the north of the, thus far, only slightly less notional Launch Complex 49 which SpaceX – briefly – considered as a site for Starship launch infrastructure.
I don’t know the history of this NFHLA but I speculate that it might have had something to do with allowing for Stratolaunch – or a notional competitor – a place to do their thing some years back when that was at least a possibility. It isn’t anymore. And the notional location of the NFHLA – as well as of LC-49 – being, at present, entirely swampland tends to suggest that its notionality has already faded away.
HTOHL advocates have been wanting some kind of sled contraption long before Stratolaunch. I think some flavor of RASV or HOTOL was going to need one.
Magnet technology has improved over time.
If the space plane guys can’t find their own tech-bro, they can perhaps find friends at the Pentagon.
Provided someone has the right gift of gab…funding winged projects may not be that difficult.
Being a caddy is likely worth more than any number of Harvard MBAs.
Lots of military guys and politicians duffering about the Greens….
That’s a better path than the bad old prELON days where all you had rooms full of this-or-that space advocate but no moneymen in attendance.
I bet you all have been at space society meetings that were nothing but a big sausage fest.
I still say that is the default position. Tech-bros will not always be here.
Other angles will have to be looked at… schmoozing with the powers-that-be has to be one of them.
In some respects–it might be easier to get billions one way instead of millions in all the other ways. Where is my Nine-Iron….
Jeff Wright,
If the HTOHL “advocates” can scrape up some shekels then maybe NASA would give them a hearing. But waiting for some political sugar daddy to materialize is going to be far more of a non-starter than snagging some “tech-bro” with a weakness for spectacle. The world is full of “advocates” for this, that and the other thing. In the vast majority of cases, one can directly substitute “grifter” for “advocate” and improve the accuracy of the description.