[stefan_]

The context here seems to be that SpaceX is in fact building an old boring fracked well gas plant in federally protected land, but because they cursorily mention rockets and call it a "methane processing thingamajig" instead of what it plain is, the FAA who has no experience doing environmental review but is involved because rockets is all too happy to just nod it through.

[coenhyde]

Some more context. If I understand correctly this gas plant is need to power a desalination plant which is need to produce massive amounts of water which will be used to implement a sound suppression deluge system that is required by the FAA. Salt water will corrode everything and there isn't existing water and gas infrastructure in place to lean on. ie they have to build the stack from scratch.

[phkahler]

Or they want a gas well because super heavy and starship engines burn METHANE for fuel.

[cma]

If it is for desalination why aren't they using solar, which wouldn't even need storage in that application.

[ericcumbee]

Because you also get Methane as a by-product of natural gas production and that is the fuel for starship.

[cma]

Methane is typically the vast majority of the gas, I figured they were burning it for desalination too, but it makes sense if they are burning just the other fraction.

[wolverine876]

Perhaps there's a more efficient place to build the facility, perhaps someplace with abundant water so that you don't have to spend all this energy to create it?

[gpm]

I don't think there is.

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.

[sbierwagen]

>You want to be as far south as possible, for efficiency reasons

It is absolutely true that a rocket launched at the equator gets the biggest boost from the Earth's rotation, but stuff isn't put into orbit just for fun, it's often because you want it pass over a specified part of the Earth's surface. To pass over CONUS you need some inclination, and the more inclined an orbit is the less assist you get from the planet's rotation. A polar orbit (inclination 90 degrees) has no assist, and a sun-synchronous orbit is slightly retrograde, where you then want to launch as far north as possible, so you don't have to cancel out as much rotation velocity!

The Soviets put their launch site at 45.9 degrees north not because they're bizarrely stupid, but because they'd like their orbits to pass over Russia. Similarly, no Starlink satellite has had an inclination lower than 42 degrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Constellation_design_...

Going forward, depending on how much interplanetary traffic there will be, you can imagine Guiana Space Centre (Which is currently hosting JWST, destined for a Lagrange point) will see more traffic, but right now almost everything has some amount of inclination.

[gpm]

For normal moderately inclined orbits the boost is still greatest at the equator, just always less than for non inclined orbits (until you start launching retrograde).

The soviet launch site was indeed chosen for other reasons than maximizing payload... in particular I think I recall that it was largely motivated by avoiding launching over China, and being in an empty enough part of the world that it's unlikely to kill to many people (despite launching over land).

[bell-cot]

> or launching from tiny islands/ocean platforms which will have the exact same fresh water issues.

If launching from an ocean platform, then fresh water seems pretty easy to bring in via tanker. That's less workable at Boca Chica, or on most tiny islands - where ports for decent-sized tankers are scarce.

[wolverine876]

Thank you! Now I'm thinking of course ... Puerto Rico? I don't know how much fresh water there is, or if there's available and suitable land on the east coast. Are Georgia or South Carolina too far north?

[gpm]

Hmm, no I don't think Georgia or South Carolina are too far north, I'd be more worried that their coasts look pretty populated - and generally I'd expect that to be doubly the case around river mouths.

To put some numbers on the "north"ness.

Boca chica is at 26 degrees north, which gives you 416 m/s free velocity (1500 km/h) [1]. The southernmost point of Georgia's coast is at 30 degrees or 401 m/s, the southernmost point of South Carolina's coast is at 32 degrees or 393 m/s.

Actually calculating payload to orbit is more work that I don't really want to do, but you can find someone else who put in the work on this stack overflow question [2], just for different latitudes and a different rocket. 28 to 30 degrees is roughly a .3% change in payload capacity in their model.

You're definitely not the first to suggest Peurto Rico, but I think you have the same problem of there not being enough empty land [3].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=%28%282+*+pi+*+6378.14+km+%2...

[2] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/998/how-much-of-an...

[3] https://www.quora.com/Why-don-t-we-build-a-rocket-launch-sit...

[ep_jhu]

The Puerto Rico Ports Authority is actually currently evaluating proposals received in response to an RFI for developing a spaceport in the site of the old Roosevelt Roads US Naval Air Base in Ceiba, on the eastern tip of the island.

https://newsismybusiness.com/11-firms-interested-in-developi...

[justahuman74]

Because the rocket is so huge, they need to build it either next to a waterway for barge transport, or right next to the launch pad which has to be on the coast

[wolverine876]

Thanks. Next question: Inland waterways are fresh water, and generally they carry the largest volume of water near the coast, so why not build next to a river?

[speedybird]

I guess you're alluding to KSC or Cape Canaveral? As far as I know they pipe their water in from a neighboring town. Do they actually have enough fresh water to support the launch cadence SpaceX is planning for?

[plorg]

They are also skirting a full environmental review by getting it initially approved as a fuel processing plant only and then getting incremental additions approved under a process with less oversight. So while the plan was always to have a pipeline and in addition to the NG plant, it was initially permitted only for the NG part (under the deceptive description as "rocket fuel") and to process relatively clean NG, and the additional expansions are each deemed to be of "small" relative impact compared to the initial project, until you have a much more environmentally destructive facility that would never be approved if proposed wholesale.

[plorg]

Replying to myself because I misremembered some of the particulars: The Environmental Impact Assesment was initially done for the rocket launch facility in 2014. All improvements and changes have been conducted as small or incremental changes, which require an amendment to the assessment, rather than a new assessment, a process with much less oversight. The fuel facility is being approved through the amendment process even though it represents a substantial change, and it has thus far excluded study of additional parts of the facility that will be required for it to function as presented.

[Qworg]

The EPA doesn't have a dog in this fight - the feds don't have much of a role at all, unless it is on federal lands of a particular class that would trigger special protections (ie National Park).

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.

[gpm]

> 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.

[bserge]

Not being able to fly over land seems ridiculous. Planes fly over land, right?

Sounds like the same shit as nuclear power plant regulations. As a civilization or even a species, we'll "safety" our way into extinction.

[geenew]

Rockets also drop parts as they fly - see what's happened in China with their inland launches.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/01/04/photos-long-march-rock...

[bserge]

Here's hoping they get ahead of everyone else technology wise.

[lvs]

This is not entirely true. The EPA has federal authorities under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Safe Water Drinking Act to regulate wastes derived from extraction activity into air and water supplies. The exemptions and authorities are complex, but it's incorrect to say there's no federal regulation over this activity in the state of Texas.

[ESGHound]

It's not true at all. Federal regulations dictate most environmental standards and in top of that TCEQ is a very competent and at times tough regulator.

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

[gpm]

I don't know anything about this sort of regulation, but it might be worth noting that the PEA does indicate that SpaceX will be seeking a permit from TCEQ (on page 42 of the PEA)

> SpaceX would apply for authorization under the Oil and Gas Standard Permit with the TCEQ and adhere to any permit conditions

https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_star...

[Qworg]

I was speaking directly to the well complex, not any future power plant. The EPA is definitely involved in that.

[wolverine876]

> Texas was an inspired choice - California would have been a knife fight regulatorily.

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.

[willvarfar]

It’s like the one company on earth actually concretely trying to change that …

[wolverine876]

Not in this case, apparently, and definitely not the only company, not even in the auto industry.

[danielheath]

I believe that was a reference to the mars colony goal, not to protecting this planet

[avianlyric]

Erm Space X is in the aerospace industry, not the auto industry. I mean, the name is a bit of a giveaway.

[elif]

did you read the article? they are building a methane refining facility. The author is speculating that it will be capable of refining gas which has been mined by fracking. that's the extent of the story...

Please cite your claim of "SpaceX is in fact building an old boring fracked well gas plant"

[speedybird]

How could it be that SpaceX is answerable only to the FAA and is immune to the EPA? Why is it on the FAA to regulate a well? I think the author of the article should work on including a bit more exposition and a bit less snark (if he actually intents to persuade people, anyway.)

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?

[dpierce9]

This is from 2016: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/blog/eagle-ford-shale...

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.

[speedybird]

This makes sense. If the EPA is slacking and rubber-stamping things, that warrants investigation and criticism. But I'm not buying the angle that the FAA should be expected to enforce the EPA's rules. That's what the EPA is for.

[criley2]

The EPA was utterly gutted over the past 4 years. The sad part is that it takes much longer to rebuild than it does to tear down. The EPA being unable or unwilling to enforce environmental protections is by design.

[reddog]

Utterly gutted? How do you figure?

The EPA headcount was 14,779 in 2016 and was 14,172 in 2020.

https://www.epa.gov/planandbudget/budget

[speedybird]

Supposing the EPA is gutted as you suggest (my sibling comment suggests otherwise), it surely still has more capability and expertise when it comes to environmental regulation than the FAA. I think expecting the FAA to act as a surrogate EPA is expecting too much.

[DennisP]

The ultimate plan is actually to make it from water and CO2 in the air, using the same tech they'll use to make methane on Mars for the return trip. They're just not there yet.

[lazide]

Sure, and I have a bridge to sell you.

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.

[inglor_cz]

They will rely on the Sabatier process to produce fuel on other celestial bodies. And the corresponding technology must be tested first - why not in Boca Chica?

I don't think that anyone is trying to make the claim that SpaceX will use the Sabatier process to fuel Starships here on Earth right now routinely. As you say, gas is cheaper to buy here on Earth. But they still must have the technology mastered before they fly away from the low Earth orbit.

[lazide]

The process IS already mastered, depending on the bar you set?

This isn’t something unknown or theoretical.

[inglor_cz]

Yes, but you still need to design, assemble and test the particular equipment you want to use, unless you can do with off-the-shelf components.

And contemporary off-the-shelf components that perform the Sabatier process aren't probably meant to operate outside the Earth.

[politician]

Under STP and 1G, yes. Mars isn't at STP or 1G, so they can't assume that the Earth-standard machinery will work without modifications. This is a reasonable thing to experiment with.

[DennisP]

Of course it's energy-negative, nobody is claiming otherwise. Powering that from renewables will cost more. But the cost of fuel is a very small percentage of launch cost, and if they're doing a lot of launches then being able to say they're carbon-neutral would be pretty helpful for public acceptance. Politics and regulation are much more dangerous to them than a little extra cost in fuel.

[Denvercoder9]

SpaceX wants to make a roundtrip to Mars, though. There's no fossil fuels on Mars.

[elif]

Yup and musk also argues in favor of a carbon tax. He is openly hopeful that the fundamental economics will be changed to make producing their own methane via Sabatier economical.

It is up to the controllers of incentive structures to change the fundamentals of commerce/ecology.

[lazide]

Pretty sure that would require something like a 5x cost increase in carbon, though I can’t find hard numbers anywhere easily. Do you have any pointers?

[lazide]

And if it doesn’t make any economic sense to do it here, where it is super convenient, shipping it to Mars (with nothing of known value there to return or any known economic model that could make it worthwhile) to do it there is going to be worth it?

Not saying all human endeavor needs to have a healthy profit margin. SpaceX is a business however and besides doing it for the lulz, or getting a government contract, it doesn’t make much sense to try to spin up colonies or the like there. Everyone will starve and/or their US backers will go bankrupt pretty quick.

[MPSimmons]

> SpaceX is a business however

SpaceX has been described as a company with a Mars cult inside of it.

I think it's more fair to say that it's a Mars cult that has organized a company.

If you think that SpaceX won't do hydrocarbon generation on Mars, then you don't understand why SpaceX exists.

[DennisP]

If you want to go to Mars, it's way cheaper to get your return fuel from Mars instead of carrying it all the way to Mars from Earth. If you want to get your return fuel from Mars, then you have to make it, there aren't any convenient natural gas deposits that we know of.

This isn't an original SpaceX idea. Robert Zubrin pointed it out back in 1990 with his Mars Direct plan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct

[politician]

So you're just a typical No-Mars skeptic, got it.

[mhh__]

Is it possible that they are in for the money and the grand plan is just marketing even if they would do it if they could?

[zionic]

I also don’t see what all the fuss is about here.

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.

[groby_b]

The big deal is that the well is seemingly exempt from the regulation all other wells go through.

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

[speedybird]

> "he's at best exploiting loopholes and at worst operating extrajudicially. [...] But, more importantly, it's irrelevant to the problem at hand, sidestepping the regulation process"

Again, the EPA exists, so where are they in this? What loophole is SpaceX using to skirt around the EPA?

[oceanplexian]

IMHO SpaceX should get an exemption for national security purposes (For the same reason the US Military doesn’t need to abide by the EPA). Access to space is in the national interest. I don’t think something that has an immeasurable impact on the climate is anywhere close to being more important.

[8note]

The EPA is also a national security concern. No need to defend space that you've already turned into a toxic wasteland

[groby_b]

SpaceX can get a national security exemption the moment we nationalize them.

[toomuchtodo]

File a complaint with the Texas Railroad Commission and the US EPA, in all seriousness. If you need methane to escape the gravity well, follow the rules like everyone else in O&G.

[politician]

Well, apparently not everyone else [1]:

"The FTSE 250 group, which is the largest well owner in the US with over 61,000 in its portfolio, found itself on the defensive after a Bloomberg report said several wells owned by the company were leaking methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas."

[1] https://newsflash.one/2021/10/12/market-report-leaking-wells...

[DisjointedHunt]

That’s a serious accusation without evidence.

The document clearly states that Spacex has an application with the FAA for the use of the land as a Launch Site.

The subsidiary “Lone star mineral extraction” is an entity that purchased another company along with all their licenses for extraction rights in addition to seemingly applying for their own licenses.

I’d recommend you edit your comment to correct it. There is no sidestepping of regulations here, the regulations themselves cover different things and the article makes it sound like one set of regulations should cover these activities while clearly saying that it currently does not.

[fallingknife]

Given his track record? Who has a better one?

[FireBeyond]

How's FSD looking?

[smoldesu]

Well, what SpaceX is doing doesn't really matter. I can't just show up to Arkansas and say I'm fracking for oil to cure cancer and get hand-waved through. They're private entities, no matter what they're doing, and they're subject to the same scrutiny that everyone else puts up with.

[lazide]

That is ideally how it is supposed to work, but there are many examples of regulations being bypassed and other folks being stepped on to get a desired employer or a potentially lucrative investment into a place.

It doesn’t sound like it is happening here necessarily, but it does happen pretty frequently.

[ESGHound]

This is not true at all. Doubly not true when your program is subsidized by Federal dollars and takes place adjacent to protected federal lands.

The FAA is subject to NEPA review, and hence any SpaceX activity in this area must go through the same process as every other industrial activity that impacts federal interests.

[randy408]

Surely you know by now that Elon/SpaceX will get its fuel no matter what, even if it means trucking the fuel there, seems to me your best case scenario will increase net emissions.

Protecting the environment is not the point of this stunt, is it?

[smoldesu]

Well my cancer cure is subsidized by federal dollars, and our headquarters is right next to the post office. Can't we just start drilling already?

[X6S1x6Okd1st]

Ah yes, the "The ends justify the means" move.

[consumer451]

I was just thinking about this phrase in regards to Musk about ten minutes ago.

“The ends” are the most laudable things I can imagine: electrifying the world and colonizing other celestial bodies.

While I love the goals, I am afraid of what a mission-driven person might rationalize and do to achieve them.

[toomuchtodo]

The ends justify giving people like Musk wide latitude but keeping them in check when the negative externalities tip the scale away from the benefits.

[consumer451]

I certainly give Musk wide latitude even when he makes it difficult.

I was thinking more along the lines of how one in his position could drift in their perspective and values as they get distorted by the blinders of hyper mission focus.

[lazide]

Another thought to add here - he also gets paid very well in a very concrete way to LOOK like he is doing those things, and if he never gets in a spaceship but still enjoys the billions? Hard life.

[xyzzyz]

Yes, heaven forbids he drills 10,000th gas well in the US on his way.

[consumer451]

I was not thinking about gas wells at all. I have no opinion there except I thought we were doing the Sabatier reaction process to prep for Mars and be carbon negative.

[boringg]

I mean SpaceX is trying to colonize mars, if it doesn't manage to pull off this risky gambit we might as well make our only livable planet unlivable in the process. Seems like a good way to operate. At least we will have some cool space tech too.

[lazide]

There is currently no known way a Mars colony could be economically self sustaining or self contained. Literally zero.

So unless there is something truly magical up someone’s sleeve, we need to keep Earth workable for us for the foreseeable future. And I think that is a good thing.

[bserge]

Fuck Mars, all those asteroids are going to be way more valuable for Earth. Getting to them needs the same exact industry.

[lazide]

Also more energy efficient as no need to climb back out of a deep gravity well!