SpaceX has been preparing a site in Boca Chica, Texas, located near the state’s southern tip, to conduct test flights for the Starship rocket system—the 230-foot-tall Super Heavy booster that would blast the Starship spacecraft into orbit for what the company has said would be its most ambitious missions.
SpaceX, whose formal name is Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has been able to conduct some low-altitude tests of its Starship vehicle from the Texas property. But a demonstration program that would include an orbital test mission still needs signoff from the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA has been conducting an environmental assessment of the company’s proposal to operate Starship in Texas.
SpaceX already has permission to use a launch site at the Kennedy Space Center for Starship and its booster rocket.
Photo: THOM BAUR/REUTERS
Mr. Musk, who founded the company, said Thursday during a presentation at the Texas property that if the FAA required what is called an environmental-impact statement, in addition to its current review, SpaceX “would have to shift our priorities” to Kennedy Space Center, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration complex east of Orlando.
“It would obviously set us back for quite some time,” he said of the potential for another review by the FAA, which regulates commercial space launches and the facilities such flights take off from.
A spokesman for the FAA referred to a previous statement that said the agency could pursue the additional analysis in Texas if it determines that potential environmental effects tied to the Starship proposal would be significant and couldn’t be properly addressed. Its current review covers what Starship could mean for wildlife, noise, wetlands and other factors.
SpaceX’s facility in Texas, called Starbase, is located about 25 miles east of Brownsville, near the Gulf of Mexico. On Thursday, Mr. Musk discussed aspects of Starship from the property, in the first company update on the rocket in nearly two years.
SpaceX already has permission to use a launch site at the Kennedy Space Center for Starship and its booster rocket, according to a 2019 NASA document that confirmed the vehicles could be used there. In December, Mr. Musk said in a tweet that SpaceX had started building an orbital launchpad for Starship at the Florida location.
Over time, the company could end up using the properties in Florida and Texas for different purposes, Mr. Musk said Thursday.
The Texas facility is “well-suited to be kind of like our advanced R&D location,” he said, referring to research and development. “So it’s like where we would try out new designs and new versions of the rocket.” He added that “probably [Kennedy] would be sort of our main operational launch site.”
Last year, the FAA held hearings about the Starship proposal for the Texas location and received around 18,000 comments on the initiative. In December, the agency said it planned to release its environmental review of the project on Feb. 28.
Some residents near the site have raised concerns about the environmental impact of the Starship activities, while others said they supported the project.
Mr. Musk has complained about the FAA in the past, once describing on Twitter the agency’s space unit as having a “fundamentally broken regulatory structure.” Last November, he tweeted that the work the FAA and others had done regarding Starship’s current environmental assessment was much appreciated.
Don Dankert, technical lead for environmental planning at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, said recently that SpaceX had submitted a proposal for additional operations for the Starship rocket system within the Florida property.
That proposal isn’t public yet but “potentially involves the construction of a new launch complex and then expanding their operational facilities” at Kennedy, Mr. Dankert said.
Write to Micah Maidenberg at [email protected]
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