FAA's document is subject to NEPA and table 2.1 in the PEA considers the gas plant and power plant to be in scope. FAA is the overseeing agency for this action so it doesn't matter that it's not in "FAA's domain"
FERC and DOE do these types of NEPA approvals all the time and include full EPA participation.
SpaceX and FAA didn't consult with EPA and that was likely intentional. This is essentially an unprecedented action under NEPA. Feel free to shoot emails or ask questions. Finally getting lots of attention here.
You need water to your east (because you can't fly over people for safety reasons), for a really long way. As in launches from texas have to dodge Florida, Cuba and all the other islands over there.
You need very low population density (because rocket launches and landings require large exclusion zones).
You need to be in the US, because of export restrictions.
You want to be as far south as possible, for efficiency reasons (to get as much kinetic energy from the earths rotation as possible).
You are looking at this launch site, attempting to acquire a lot of land on Florida's coast (not really feasible anymore, it's all occupied), or launching from tiny islands/ocean platforms which will have the exact same fresh water issues.
Piping gas across state lines can involve the feds, or if they impign on a wetland or waterway. There's no interstate commerce to trigger any substantial federal involvement that I can see.
Texas was an inspired choice - California would have been a knife fight regulatorily.
California is also just on the wrong coast. You almost always want to launch eastward so you get the free rotational velocity from the earth to help you reach orbit, for the same reason you want to be as close to the equator as possible, and you can't (regulatory/safety wise) have a flight path over land. From within mainland US the only reasonable options are Texas and Florida.
The exceptions to this are polar orbits (for which the rotation of earth just doesn't help) and the rare military spy satellite that wants a retrograde orbit for ... reasons. The US/SpaceX does launch out of california for those orbits, but it's a small fraction of launches.
Sounds like the same shit as nuclear power plant regulations. As a civilization or even a species, we'll "safety" our way into extinction.
EPA definitely has a dog in the fight, especially considering that a 250 megawatt power plant would be a literal "major stationary source" under the clean air act
Inspired in the immediate profit sense, not in the long term affects on your planet sense. SpaceX lives here too; it's their planet too.
Please cite your claim of "SpaceX is in fact building an old boring fracked well gas plant"
Also I'm a bit confused why people are surprised the methane for these rockets will come from a well. Did people really think Elon Musk was going to stick a hose up a cow's ass to collect the methane?
It suggests the FAA’s role is consideration of launch failure and safety on the proposed plant. FERC also evaluated the proposal. FERC doesn’t really do environmental reviews.
Here is a document from April which at the time said EPA had no comment on the draft environmental impact statement as part of an interagency process: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/SAR%20-%2...
In short, it looks as if all the usual players are engaged here. While I suspect the FAA has considered the impact of Oil and gas infrastructure on flight paths and airports, I would guess their involvement in this kind of process is an extra layer, not a circumvention.
The technology already exists. Fundamentally (damn laws of thermodynamics) it is also a energy negative process, and hence expensive. It is far cheaper to just frack and burn fossil fuels (where that energy expense was paid however many millions of years ago by someone else), than it is to expend the energy to reverse the process - even if they were getting nearly free energy.
SpaceX making a well to power the human colonization of mars is a drop in the bucket vs all the other wells in the state.
It doesn't matter what Musk does with the methane, what matters is that he's at best exploiting loopholes and at worst operating extrajudicially.
Also, SpaceX "powering the human colonization of Mars" is a pretty huge sip of the Kool Aid there. Given the founder's track record, it's about as believable as "fully self-driving cars in a year".
But, more importantly, it's irrelevant to the problem at hand, sidestepping the regulation process
> ... I’m a “forensic environmental data specialist” (I invented the term just now). I use the troves of free to the public data located in regulatory submittals and permits to extract useful information. ...
Great. If free to the public, where are the links? Clicking on those table images just links to the images themselves.
The article itself is stream-of-consciousness writing with little effort to organize or edit down the useless brain droppings from this author. I bring this up because if the author wants to be taken seriously, style matters, as do bend-over-backwards efforts to document claims. Especially claims against large organizations with deep pockets.
Even for regular HN readers, it helps to be able to verify for oneself claims made of a quantitative nature.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/08/the-mystery-of-elon-musks-...
For example: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xO-OsDaQBnaCDGqHAtbz...
From a legal and technical standpoint, My work has been run through legal, environmental, and oil and gas engineers I've worked with over the years.
The core of this particular argument is the following:
> Think about it like this. We have 3 variables:
> 1. Inlet Gas Flow rate (measured by mmscf/d but easily convertible to pounds methane equiv.)
> 2. The VOC content mass % of the inlet stream
> 3. The Loss Rate through leaks in valves, fittings, etc. This is the fraction of the total inlet stream is lost to the air
> We simply multiply these three items together to get:
> 4. The VOC emission rate in tons per year (US short tons are EPA standard)
> Since we know #4 (The PEA told us), we know #2 (Pipeline Quality Gas is always <0.1% VOCs, and usually lower), and #3 is a range (with modern cryo plants at the lower end), we can simply go backwards to calculate implied flow rate
#1 is what this post is trying to calculate, to see what is or isn't reasonable.
#4 is the PEA: https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_star...
And is basically the starting point of all calculations. Just Ctrl-F "45.8", the number that ESG_Hound uses in his excel-spreadsheet. That gets you to page 44, the number seems to check out. This post is trying to answer the question: when they wrote this PEA, what assumptions did the engineers make?
#3 is a reasonable assumption that doesn't change much.
The last variable is #2: which has two paths:
1. 99.9% pure pipeline methane -- When we plug in 99.9% pure methane into the calculations, the numbers are absurd. This is a "disproof by absurdity". So we know it can't be 99.9% methane from standard pipelines.
2. Maybe its "raw" methane from a well (varies from 3% to 10%). -- When plugging in these numbers, we calculate a 4.77% VOC rate, which suggests that all the calculations in the PEA were done __ASSUMING__ raw methane.
Now sure, our model isn't going to be the same model as whoever prepared this PEA. but we're probably going to be "within the same magnitude". Calculations, when done independently, will rhyme.
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It seems like a simple argument to me. What part of the discussion are people getting tripped up on?
When using 99.9% pure methane, the amount of Mega-scf of natural gas goes completely out of whack with any reasonable excel-sheet formula. As such, 99.9% pipeline methane cannot be the source of SpaceX's methane (at least, not with the assumptions listed in the PEA).
Does anyone have a problem with any of the assumed numbers? #1, #2, #3 or #4?
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So the QED is: SpaceX, when they wrote this PEA, assumed they'd be using raw, untreated natural gas straight from a well. Why would they make this assumption? Is SpaceX planning to set up a pre-treatment natural gas plant inside of Starbase?
> Musk’s SpaceX aims to use a site in South Texas to launch rockets to carry people and cargo to the moon and Mars. To do that, the company intends to drill gas wells to make its own fuel and electricity, according a Federal Aviation Administration document seen by Bloomberg.
> The SpaceX site in Texas will be supplied by at least five nearby gas wells, along with two gas-fired power plants, according to the FAA document. Purified gas from the wells will be pumped into refrigeration equipment that turns it into liquid methane, the document shows. The methane can be combined with liquid oxygen and other compounds to make rocket fuel.
https://www.rigzone.com/news/wire/spacex_texas_plans_face_pu...
This sort of "tribal purity" logic is silly: "if you've ever done anything negative, it means you never intended to do anything positive."
This is nothing but the environmentalism equivalent of the old "you're either with us or against us, we're at war!" fallacy.
Rockets have always used fossil fuels. This is not news. The fact that SpaceX is vertically integrating changes nothing about that. On the contrary it likely reduces leaks (which is a good thing) by shortening the processing chain.
If Greta Thunberg flew on a commercial airplane somewhere far away, she'd be accused of being a hyprocate, so she uses a sailboat to cross a freaking ocean when she wants to.
This may be tribalism purity from the part of conservatives, but that's always going to be the reaction from the "opposite" side in this kind of situations because that's the obvious human response. This is not silly logic, this is how humans behave and if you refuse to believe your eyes when you see this again and again, you're the one being silly.
The point here is, what is good for the climate isn’t the purview of these simplistic views of climate science.
Drilling a well doesn’t automatically kill everything Mother Nature created or anything. . . The economic shift that Tesla single handful brought about to get all of traditional auto to move to electric cannot be overstated.
So stop using “The Environment” as a battering ram that only your point of view protects. It is wrong.
It baffles me that this is so often repeated when it is quite clearly inaccurate if you just think about it for a second.
First of all, you don't "trim" a forest the size of many small countries. This isn't a city park. It would take every man, woman, and child's sum efforts to 'landscape' even a fraction of the forests in the PNW. That's like saying that the reason the sea is rising is that nobody is running an ice cube maker to refreeze the ice caps.
But to speak to the real origination of this point - resource extraction for the benefit of those who control the cable news narrative: You don't prevent forest fires by logging. That is an old meme from the resource extraction industry - not only does it not prevent wildfires, it also destroys biodiversity of the ecosystems where old, diverse growth is replaced with pine stands.
Forest fires are required for the natural lifecycle of a forest - there are species that cannot reproduce without a forest fire. Not only small brush type plants that thrive in the absence of overgrowth but also the largest organisms in the forest- the trees themselves! Vast areas of the PNW are dominated by so-called 'serotinous cone' deciduous trees whose cones will lay dormant for years, coated in a thick plastic-like resin layer that only allows the cone to release seeds after the resin is melted away by forest fire (when the chances of successfully growing are highest)
Forests require fires to be healthy. A big part of why wildfires are so bad now is that we haven't let them happen for so long because there are more and more people moving into the areas that previously experienced healthy burns. This lead practices to try to prevent fires from happening. Meanwhile, brush built up year after year after year and eventually the fires that do happen are orders of magnitude worse. Climate change and the resulting temperatures and changes in the 'moisture battery' throughout the year are also massive contributors, but that is a whole other post.
Its common to try and redefine these as the EPA cracks down on them and they are environmentally bad. The last major push in industry was to try calling them a steam flare.
Disclosure: I worked a few years in refineries as a mechanical maintenance contractor.
Might be the EPA but I’m guessing it’ll be TCEQ; most states, especially the large ones, have their own state agencies and so long as the standard exceeds what the federal minimums are, then they issue the permits. This is the scheme set up by the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. (I practice in California and we have two separate state agencies, one for air and one for water. It seems like Texas Comm’n on Enviro Quality does both per their website.) The EPA doesn’t get involved in permit issuing and the state agencies even have authority over other federal agencies’ operations and issue permits to them.
So if the FAA is asleep at the switch, who really cares? There’s a whole second governmental regulator out there and a host of environmental non-profits and local governments with standing to sue if they think that regulator has made a decision they don’t like.
It’s like complaining that the plumbing inspector hasn’t given proper consideration to the minimum set-backs and architectural character of the neighborhood and signs off on the new toilets and showers for a house renovation. Like, who cares? You can’t move in without getting the final permit from the City and even if you did get that permit, the neighbors can sue and stop construction if they think the City made the wrong decision.
What am I missing? Why is this author so obviously emotionally distraught?
You're surprised by emotional content of politicized issues, such as the environment and anything Elon Musk?
I do understand being emotional about the environment and a desire to preserve it in the presence of people and the activities that we have to do to survive. So I understand being emotional about an administration rolling back EPA restrictions on coal power waste water release[2] (for example).
Analogy: I don't understand a co-worker being "mad" at you for driving 10 miles to the office because they ride their bike that same distance and are therefore doing more for the environment than you are. Proud of their own efforts? Sure. Mad because not everyone can do what they do? No, I don't understand that.
[1] https://www.texasobserver.org/methane-abandoned-oil-wells/
[2] https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/trump-epa-rol...
I can't figure out what the issue actually is meant to be here: the strongest argument is that the emissions SpaceX will have from the Starbase site itself will be higher then are being reported because the assumptions about the facility they're building are not accurate.
This might be significant, although it's certainly an argument I have a hard time worrying about in Texas, for this one facility, unless it would actually have a deleterious local impact (or be unmitigateable) - but it is a reasonable point of concern and a good use of public comment - though as noted in the series, the NEPA process is more about documentation then prevention. SpaceX can it seems, just update the numbers now and say "yeah so anyway it'll be that".
Where I'm much less clear is the argument about the gas wells or the gas pipeline - which are presented separately but seem to be necessarily together in order to link them as an issue associated with the Starbase site's operations itself, and I'm really not able to connect the dots here: it's implicitly obvious that Starbase is going to use some quantity of hydrocarbons to operate, but I'm not clear - once the site itself is accounted for - why its a problem that the pipeline and wells they'll necessarily build not being initially included matter?
Is the NEPA process somehow going to grant approval to construct fracking wells that will not be on the Starbase site, or approval for the pipeline construction? The pipeline argument in particular seems to be the weakest because if the existing decommissioned pipeline (who's run length I imagine SpaceX intend to use) was denied, based on the map coloring as presented in the post there's very obviously another path which doesn't cross any shaded regions...through which another pipeline already runs. If it does that seems like a problem, but I'm having a tough time figuring out how the FAA approving rocket launches would in any jurisidiction translate automatically into "and so we also are totally approved for this subsidiary company's fracked natural gas well many miles away and a pipeline".
There seems to be a weird implicit assumption that the FAA approving what it has would somehow approve it with every other agency - which, can it? Does it? As things stand "we're going to build a 250MW gas power plant" maybe shouldn't happen on the site seems to be my takeaway, but since they haven't built it yet and since it's existence doesn't seem to of major impact beyond land-clearing and emissions, surely whether it could be built is one question compared to whether SpaceX can get approval to do everything else they'd need to run it? At the moment they've launched zero rockets, but it seems like they'll be able to launch some without any of this and everything else is a question for the future - and surely the point of other regulatory processes particularly if it's not happening on the site itself?
SpaceX and FAA snuck a bunch of oil and gas infrastructure including a gas plant, a LNG a 250 MW power plant into an "insignificant/minor change" NEPA environmental review document that was supposed to just be for bigger rockets.
It has tons of basic errors, missing data, and even though NEPA is a public disclosure law, no one is talking about the oil stuff at all Also implied, but explicitly not noted in the document are a 1. Pipeline that needs to be constructed and 2. the huge amount of newly drilled oil and gas wells in a region of Texas that currently has no production to speak of.
Oh and all of this is on a federally protected wildlife reserve. And it's super illegal and unprecedented and brings about all sorts of uncomfortable questions about regulatory capture
Something I've always wondered: How is it that public comments have power? What stops officials from mostly ignoring them or misconstruing them? And if the comments do have power, what stops vested interests from hijacking them?
What can individuals do? Is there a place to leave public comments?
A landfill, or reclaimed from cow shit? Sure.
An underground well, where it could've been left alone? Not necessarily.
As climate change disrupts life on earth there will be greater demand for SpaceX's and Tesla's products and services. It is only rational Elon Musk would seek to accelerate climate change - it would be foolish of him to try and stop it. Every ton of carbon in the atmosphere will eventually become money in his pocket.
If Elon wants to measurably accelerate climate change, he's doing it all wrong. So, in all likelihood, he doesn't.
They should go build some fission reactors instead.
SpaceX is building a 1MW solar plant and a 250MW natural gas plant. See the document in question: https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_star...
Just Ctrl-F on "250 MW", to find page 130/131, which discusses the 1MW solar + 250MW natural gas plan.
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As such, we know how they're planning on powering the rocket. With traditional natural gas methodologies: a 250MW natural gas power plant, as well as this liquid-natural-gas processing plant.
This does make sense, but it is odd that the existing gas market is not sufficient.
Or space-based solar. If anyone has the capability, it's spacex.
Like airplanes? Like cruise ships?
Would it somehow be better if SpaceX just bought natural gas on the open market, reducing available supply and thereby potentially increasing price through market forces?
Are you suggesting we tax carbon so SpaceX has to pay tax on the fuel they extract that could go towards clean energy investments?
I'm not sure of the point you're making.
1 space x launch for wealthy tourists emits the same CO2 as around 500 transatlantic flights that can haul 10’s of thousands of people between continents.
Yet this forum is fast to propose solutions to make long haul flights unaffordable, in order to curb the emissions, but somehow when Elon Musk is involved, the calculation changes completely and it is fine to needlessly emit co2 the moment that climate catastrophe has reached our doorsteps.
Second, there are approximately 100,000 airline flights per day worldwide; American Airlines alone flies 5,000 per day. Even 1,000 rocket launches per year would be equivalent to 5 days of traditional flights.
People disagree with the climate concern not because "Elon Musk is involved" - it is because critics are focused on the wrong thing. There are far more climate destructive practices with far less benefit to the good of mankind. All those 100,000 flights per day? That only accounts for about 2% of carbon emissions. A SpaceX launch, to use your figures, accounts for 0.00005%.
So why focus on this extraordinarily tiny fraction of climate impact? Is it because it's Elon? Because rockets look big and thus wasteful?
What about the incredibly important climate monitoring satellites they'll lift, or benefits like GPS, global internet, potential breakthroughs in space manufacturing, astronomy, or physics? Or even just the hope and excitement about the future that many feel in the face of otherwise depressing news everywhere. The massive size and lift capacity of the Starship (100 tons to orbit, 8m wide by 20m high or so) will transform activities in low earth orbit and beyond.
And I'll close by saying, yes I think Elon has earned a little slack - he has done more than most people on the planet to reduce global emissions. Tesla, Solar City (now Tesla solar), battery technology (which has been a massive impediment to clean energy storage), future electric long-haul trucks, and the supercharger network (to make extended travel on electric vehicles possible) all have reduced emissions tremendously - probably far more than the additional carbon from rocket launches (though I haven't done the math).
So that's my $0.02, anyway.
Last time that I checked in the US up to 30% of the fuel price was paid for RINS, aka renewable energy certificates.
So yes we do pay for sustainability. Unlike the billionaire explorers.
Reusable rockets are a huge progress in space research. People long thought them outright impossible or impractical. And aside from SpaceX, no one has them yet.
ESA's model of throwing away the entire Ariane at each launch is the very opposite of sustainable. It is an expensive waste of money propped up by French military interests.
(Not that the ULA, the Russians or the Chinese do something different.)
But Zuck is the devil for giving you the option (but not the obligation) to watch pics of other people's vacations.
You know you study the game, you think you understand, you look at the logic which should be the strong point of HN and reddit type crowd...but in the end it always ends exactly where all the other "lesser" social phenomenons end up:
it's all about that "OMG he's so emotional and like deeply cares about it, I can see it in his eyes and his voice"
teenage girls, always looked down upon, understand their feelings better than most adult men.
