As someone who has been following the Starship development closely for a number of years, I’d like to point out a number of flaws with this article, which leaves out critical information and gives it a clear anti-SpaceX bias. Please note that I am most certainly NOT an Elon fanboi. I disagree with a lot of what he says and does. I follow Starship as someone interested in the engineering and technical advancements the workers have been making.
…they found chunks of concrete across the area and foot-deep craters on the tidal flats.
There were only a few pieces big enough to make “foot-deep craters”. Most of the pieces that left the site were far too small to make craters that big (on the order of fist size or smaller). The largest chunks never left the launch site. I was personally there 3 weeks after the launch and saw it myself, and the area is watched constantly by many observers over remote streaming webcams, so it’s unlikely that SpaceX was able to sweep some damage under the rug by removing large pieces from the flats.
Wildlife officials were not allowed into the site area until a whole 48 hours after Starship’s launch.
Nobody was allowed in except for a small number of SpaceX employees due to safety issues, and even those weren’t for quite some time after the launch. There was some damage to the cryogenic liquid storage tanks and other parts of the site, so it and the surrounding area were off-limits until they could verify that it was safe to be there. Yes, wildlife officials were prevented from accessing the area, but for a very good reason and not just to cover up potential harm to wildlife. It should be noted that SpaceX learned from this experience and are now replacing the vulnerable vertical storage tanks with a number of smaller horizontal ones that will be less susceptible to damage from flying debris.
SpaceX did not use flame-suppression technology like a flame diverter or flame trench, a standard in the industry that redirects energy away from the rocket ship.
Applying industry standards to a non-standard rocket program is disingenuous. This rocket is more powerful than any before, so “this is how we’ve always done it” is constantly being challenged and being shown to simply not work in a number of areas. Also, physical space limitations effectively preclude the use of a flame trench at this location. SpaceX fully expected that the concrete under the launch pad as it was at the time of this launch wasn’t going to be sufficient (there had been some damage during static fire tests), so they had already started the process of installing a different system (a water-cooled steel plate, which is now in place and seems to be working well so far during testing). Why didn’t they just wait until the new system was ready? The project badly needed some real-world flight data in order to continue moving forward with development of the next iterations of vehicle, so they went ahead with the launch using the inadequate pad with the understanding that what happened was a possibility, although not a certainty. Waiting was going to be even more problematic for the program, which NASA needs for its Artemis program of landing on the moon (the SpaceX Human Landing System will be based on Starship) in just a few years.
Without it, Starship blew a hole in the ground underneath it, subsequently destroying its launchpad.
No, it didn’t destroy its launchpad. It destroyed the concrete under the launchpad. The “orbital launch mount”, which is roughly 60 feet above the ground and what the rocket sits on along with a lot of the fuelling and launching equipment, came through largely unscathed and doesn’t seem to have needed much in the way of repairs.
The FAA is currently reviewing an investigation into the launch and has temporarily grounded further attempts.
The FAA has not “grounded” Starship. The Starship launch license was always written such that it was only valid for the first launch - regardless of the outcome - and would need to be modified to remove this clause for a second launch. Also, the investigation is a “mishap investigation”, which occurs whenever a launch experiences issues in various categories, including simply not reaching its objective. Mishap investigations are a normal procedure for any launch that has issues. There isn’t any kind of special “SpaceX screwed up” investigation going on, as the article is seemingly implying.
But one Wildlife official noted in the documents that it’s likely SpaceX won’t be ready for another launch anytime soon.
As of the date of this article, the current expectation is that the next vehicle stack (Booster 9 and Ship 25), as well as the launch site, will be ready for launch within the next couple of weeks. A US Coast Guard “notice to mariners” has already been published for a potential launch attempt on September 8, pending FAA approval. The word is that the FAA approval isn’t far off, either.
“Pad site was totally destroyed and will likely force them to re-design the whole thing,” the official wrote. “Probably won’t see another launch for a while.”
This statement is nothing short of extreme, uninformed hyperbole.
Now, I’m not trying to minimize the damage that was caused from the launch. There was indeed a fire that likely harmed wildlife, and the debris thrown beyond the site was also damaging to a degree. However, the launch didn’t destroy the entire ecosystem of the area, as some seem to like to imply. The FAA - in conjunction with a number of other agencies - did a comprehensive study of the impact the program was going to have on the area, and they were satisfied that SpaceX was going to do things responsibly enough and within guidelines. SpaceX and the FAA are now working together to make changes based on the outcome of the first launch to help prevent such issues from occurring again.
Someone claiming to be a family friend said that’s what he said, after-the-fact. That part of the whole first whistleblower story is far from rock-solid.