Seems like the explosion was pretty “exceptional”…
That’s not the only measure of “bad for critters”…
As @Elmer noted above, they really do not the same due diligence that NASA has done over the years. You can try and pretend otherwise, but there is just no evidence to support the claim that this had zero impact on the environment, and was, in fact, “good because it kept humans away”… that’s not how environmentalism works, except in the minds of the most extreme and misanthropic environmental activists…
Of course it didn’t have 0 impact. I don’t claim that. I only claim that it has less impact than the standard use of south gulf beachland, aka vacation homes for rich people.
You claimed it was “good” for the environment, which is pretty objectively bullshit.
That’s a pretty bold claim. Lack of people is not the definition of “good for the environment”… People have been living in the environment for all of our existence. We can certainly have a negative impact, but that does go for projects like this too. We can also find ways to be far more harmonious with nature, too, that does not involve poisoning the land in order to “keep people out”…
There was sand in the air for 4 minutes. There is sand in the air there any time there are winds over 30mph or so. Which is frequent, the area has a lot of wind turbines for a reason.
SpaceX is operating more like the DoD from the 50/60’s. The main difference is that the DoD didn’t publicly demonstrate their ambitions and failures. The main similarity, when the big man says push the button everyone else just hangs their head and goes, “damnit”.
If you’re going to call me out for hyperbole, what about the title of this article? “environmental catastrophe” when linking to an article that includes the quote "no immediate concern for people’s health.”
Yes, it wasn’t benign. But it wasn’t exceptional either. We live in a world that contains 2 billion cars, 100,000 airline flights per day, et cetera. It was only an “environmental catastrophe” the same way that every other Thursday on a world with 8 billion humans is an “environmental catastrophe”. True, but unexceptional.
Whataboutism doesn’t go very far on this board. Neither does shilling for Musk, regardless of the topic or the merits of the argument, which you seem to do with some frequency here.
This is the first time this thread that anybody has brought up Musk. Musk is an execrable human being, but most of the other 9,999 people that work for SpaceX aren’t. I’m a fan of spaceflight and of EV’s and renewable energy. I also have a mastodon account, don’t have an active Twitter account, and vote NDP. So I defend Musk’s actions on some forums, and join the pile-on on others. But I just defend some of the actions, I don’t defend the human.
Without doing a bunch of research on the subject, I’d hazard a guess that a rocket that size contains tons of lubricants, coolants, plastic, metal, and so on that isn’t great for wildlife when it has been shredded, partially combusted and distributed over a large area. Small parts like O rings and electronic components can be dangerous to wildlife even when they aren’t intrinsically toxic or acting as high-velocity projectiles.
The explosion was over the Gulf of Mexico, not over land. Every rocket except for the SpaceX Falcon 9 is disposed of by dumping it in the ocean. Only the SpaceX Falcon 9 lower stage is landed and reused. However, even the Falcon 9 disposes of its upper stage by having it burn up in the atmosphere.
The SpaceX Starship is the first rocket that is designed to be fully reusable. Both the lower and upper stages are designed to be landed and reused rather than dumped in the ocean. So it will be a vast improvement on status quo.
