[Enginerrrd]

>An old boss taught me that I should never oppose an action without having an alternative viable course to propose. I think those of us who care for the environment (I care, a lot) would advance the cause by following this advice.

I'm a civil/environmental engineer. Ironically I'm pro-progress here but the fact that they got away with construction and launch here without an EIS is absolutely laughably corrupt as far as I'm concerned. I've had to do the full EIS for projects that were far, far, far less impactful in scope, by many orders of magnitude. The FAA is simply not acting in the public interest here. This is regulatory capture in action.

The alternative here is simple and IMO sensible. This should have gone deeper into the NEPA flowchart and had a full EIS, and then as a condition of approval they should have required permitting and construction of all mitigation measures prior to launches. (Water deluge / flame trenches, etc.)

[bryanlarsen]

They did do an EIS. Then they modified it from a 27 engine Falcon Heavy to a 33 engine Starship. The FAA ruled, with input from many other government agencies, that this only partially invalidated the original EIS.

[mlindner]

There’s no regulatory capture here. SpaceX hasn’t been around long enough to do so in the first place.

Also regulatory capture is defined as putting in place regulations that you can handle but create undue burdens on competitors to prevent the entrance of new entrants.