May 23 – Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX are co-defendants with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in an environmental lawsuit filed by U.S. environmental groups. Last month, the company made its first test flight of the world’s largest rocket, the Starship, which exploded in midair.
In a motion filed with the court on Friday, SpaceX asked federal Judge Carl Nichols to allow the company to become a co-defendant with the FAA in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental and cultural heritage nonprofit. Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the FAA earlier this month.
According to the filing, the plaintiffs “do not object” to SpaceX’s intervention. Jared Margolis, senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity and lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said, “It’s standard practice and expected for applicants to intervene in cases where there are licensing issues.”
The group suing the FAA claims the agency should have conducted a more in-depth environmental assessment of the potential impacts of SpaceX’s launch activities before allowing the company to launch the world’s largest rocket-based starship from its Spaceport Starbase on the Gulf Coast near Brownsville, Texas.
The Center for Biological Diversity also claims that the “mitigation measures” the agency is asking SpaceX to provide are insufficient to avoid “significant adverse impacts” on endangered species, their habitats and indigenous tribes in the region.
In its filing, SpaceX outlined the potential impact on the company if environmentalists win the lawsuit, including on its operations and finances. The space company also argued that it would harm the “significant national interest” and scientific interests that could be served by an interplanetary spacecraft.
SpaceX wrote: “If the court rules in favour of the plaintiffs, the FAA’s decision could be set aside and further licensing of the Starship and Super Heavy Rocket programs could be significantly delayed, resulting in serious harm to SpaceX’s business.”
In this lawsuit, the Center for Biological Diversity is asking the FAA to give an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). This is a lengthy process that could put SpaceX’s development of an interstellar spacecraft in Texas on hold for years.
The FAA said in a statement that it has “no comment on the ongoing litigation issues.” SpaceX also wrote in its motion that because the FAA is a government agency, it cannot adequately represent SpaceX’s interests in the lawsuit.
SpaceX in jeopardy
SpaceX Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen issued a statement along with the filing of the motion that further detailed the potential damage to the company if it lost the lawsuit. In the statement, Johnsen wrote that SpaceX has invested more than $3 billion since July 2014 to develop interstellar base facilities and interstellar spacecraft systems.
Elon Musk’s comments following the first full-stack launch attempt last month indicate that the company expects to spend about $2 billion on starship development this year alone.
Johansson also highlighted the future missions to be performed by the SpaceX Starship. SpaceX has signed a major contract worth up to $4.2 billion with NASA, the agency that will use its rockets to send astronauts to the moon. SpaceX has also signed commercial customer contracts, including three missions for billionaires Jared Isaacman, Yusaku Maezawa and Dennis Tito. Johansson wrote that the contracts are “currently worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Starships are also critical to the future of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet business, which has more than 1.5 million customers. To date, “SpaceX has invested billions of dollars in Starlink,” Johansson noted. Elon Musk has previously emphasized the interdependence of the two businesses, and Johansson further reiterated that SpaceX needs Starliner flights to launch its second-generation Starlink satellite, V2.
“Without Starliner, SpaceX would not only be financially harmed by not being able to launch the V2 satellite, but it would also affect hundreds of thousands of people. They are waiting for the Starlink network to be upgraded so they can serve them,” Johansson wrote.
Finally, Johansson noted that losing the lawsuit would result in SpaceX having to “significantly reduce” its investment in its Starbase facilities, which would hurt the company, local employees and the community at large.
First test flight fallout
In the first test flight of the Starship, SpaceX’s rocket, which is nearly 122 meters tall, achieved several milestones. It flew for more than three minutes, but also lost multiple engines during launch, caused significant damage to ground infrastructure, and ultimately failed to reach space after the rocket began to fall and was intentionally destroyed in mid-air.
SpaceX is cleaning up the damaged launch site, where a huge crater was left on the ground and debris smashed into the launch tower, nearby fuel tanks and other ground equipment. In addition, the launch generated dust and sand, with particulate matter reported from as far as 10 kilometres away from the launch pad. The test flight also sparked a forest fire.
Phil Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida Research Institute, is studying the composition of this particulate sample. He believes SpaceX dodged a bullet during the launch, and that the concrete being blown around could have destroyed the rocket on the launch pad.
It could have been a lot worse than it is,” Metzger said. I think they made a mistake in that they took a chance to launch from a concrete surface, but they seemed to have a 70% success rate. They cleaned up the launch tower, tested the first stage of the rocket, got a lot of good data, found an interstage problem, and hopefully will be able to fix that and get better results on the next test.”
Metzger did not assess what ecological impacts the launch pad debris and rocket explosions had on endangered species living and migrating in the area. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional office in Texas and other independent researchers are studying the environmental impacts of the Starship’s test flights and explosions.
SpaceX’s motion also illustrates why the Starship ultimately benefits the scientific enterprise. The company writes that the rocket’s unprecedented capabilities “will allow scientists to focus on previously impossible scientific missions and pursue the fastest and easiest way to move from concept to mission.
As an example, SpaceX said, “With its enormous capacity, the Starship can deliver large telescopes and heavy scientific experiment equipment into orbit at low cost, and transport cargo, people and even settlements to other planets or moons.”
