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Another Starship explosion would be bad news for nearby park managers.


Starship’s upcoming test doesn’t have a very high chance of success, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Last month, he put the chances of success at around 50%; In a Twitter Spaces earlier this week, he seemed to further downplay that probability. “If we do launch, I would consider anything that doesn’t result in the destruction of the launch pad itself, the launch pad. […] I would consider it a victory,” he said.

The possibility of another test anomaly at Starbase is probably not good news for environmental managers, who must monitor SpaceX’s cleanup efforts for any debris falling on land under their jurisdiction, such as state parks.

Past explosions at Starbase, the company’s test and launch facility in southeast Texas, have generated debris fields that have impacted adjacent Brazos Island State Park and Boca Chica State Park. A test of the upper stage of Starship in March 2021 it spawned a debris field that impacted 700 acres of surrounding parkland, Shyamal Patel, SpaceX’s senior director of Starship operations, told regulators in a January 2022 email.

The anomaly generated the largest debris field of any Starship explosion to date, Patel added.

The last piece of debris from SN11 was a roughly 1,500-pound actuator component, Leonardo Alaniz, SpaceX’s manager of environment, health and safety, told regulators in June 2021. The company had to submit a recovery plan, which involved the use of a heavy-duty Case 210 excavator, US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) prior to removal from the site.

Emails between SpaceX and government officials, including those from FWS, TPWD and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), were reviewed as part of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by TechCrunch.

Coordinating the recovery of debris due to the SN11 anomaly was “a substantial burden” on FWS staff time, FWS wildlife refuge manager Sonny Perez said in a June 2021 email to FWS officials. the FAA.

It appears that part of the source of that charge was SpaceX’s short delivery times regarding road closures due to Starship vehicle testing. Pérez told Alaniz in April 2021 that these closures delayed or prevented response teams from accessing the debris site to monitor cleanup efforts.

In one instance, Perez said a short notice closure resulted in the shelter’s assistant manager, who was on site to oversee SN11 debris recovery efforts, being asked to leave early. The refuge manager and a wildlife biologist were denied access to the site outright.

Perez did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment, but an FWS spokesperson told TechCrunch that a “multi-agency response team” is working with SpaceX to respond to and assess the debris.

Reagan Faught, a TPWD parks superintendent, told TechCrunch that the agency had to change its approach in establishing protocols with SpaceX after the company switched to Starship testing in 2020. “Anomalous debris recovery has to be done accordingly. delicate manner to avoid further disturbance of the sensitive kelp tidal flats, ridge habitats, and nesting habitat in the area,” he said. “We have been actively working with SpaceX on how best to conduct those recovery efforts and will continue to improve the recovery process.”

At best, tomorrow’s Starship orbital flight test will generate no debris at all, with the Super Heavy booster and upper stage making separate ocean splashdowns after launch. But in the Twitter Spaces interview, Musk invited the public to set expectations of him accordingly, adding that expecting success “would be crazy.”



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