Very inspiring, glad I woke up to watch it. Congratulations to the SpaceX team. This is what competition looks like. It’s funny how last decade SpaceX had to sue the government to get more launches.
They don't actually have any jurisdiction in this case. Launches from Vandendberg are from a military base and while they do try to work with the California commission they ultimately are the ones that decide what does and does not get launched.
The California Coastal Commission has no authority over a Federal (Military) launch range so there's no need for real concern. Yes using people's personal opinions for denial is illegal, but it's moot regardless. So I'm not sure SpaceX could sue for any damages.
Well that may still continue to happen. The wonderful and competent state of California is literally trying to block SpaceX launches over Musk’s constitutionally protected political speech:
I cannot remember a more explicit case of authoritarian government abuse in a developed nation in recent memory, and it’s especially infuriating given SpaceX and Musk are one of the most important and innovative companies and leaders of all time. No other country would think to look at such accomplishments and try to undermine themselves through petty politics and lawfare.
It is a state commission composed of political appointees. It's unlikely it has the jurisdiction over Vandenberg to ban any activities, except when such activities violate state environmental laws. Even then, the federal government might be able to override them. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.
Ideally, the commission will withdraw its objections and allow the launches; SpaceX obviously chose this site both for its proximity to the Pacific Ocean and for redundancy in case of poor weather in Florida (like this past week for example).
It has jurisdiction over Vandenberg for private launches, and there is debate over what counts as private versus federal. However, regardless of possible environmental concerns, they’ve already explicitly said they’re targeting SpaceX because of Musk’s political speech, which is morally reprehensible and also illegal per the constitution.
Vandenberg does not provide redundancy. It accesses completely different orbital inclinations. You cannot launch east from there but you can launch south. The opposite is true in Florida.
Seems like it nonetheless provides redundancy. Also, one site can only handle so many launches per day. If SpaceX gets really busy, it will need multiple launch pads to handle the traffic, both launches and landings.
But then, there may be military missions that require launching from an air force base.
An orbit from there is useless for a mission profile that was slated for Florida. It costs more fuel and has completely different ground tracks.
The sats that spacex launches for Starlink, which are about as interchangeable as you can get, are less valuable in polar orbits because they spend significantly less time over population.
Can the federal government override them if the launches are purely commercial. Presumably that would be the case eventually, so I think it’s something that needs to addressed sooner.
I don’t understand how this is a constitutional violation like you claim. Let’s pretend he posted something absurd on Twitter for arguments sake, like “I’m going to use my rockets to kill every endangered bird on every California beach”, do you think that should not be considered when evaluating the request for more launches?
Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the government for a redress
of grievances.
The first amendment has been interpreted by the courts as applying to all of the government, not just Congress, and via the 14th amendment is has been incorporated against the States, meaning that it applies to them too.
Therefore, for a California state government agency to punish SpaceX for its founder's speech is unconstitutional.
Title 18 USC section 232 lays out criminal penalties for violating a citizens civil rights, thus unconstitutional acts can be and often are criminal acts.
It’s straight up unconstitutional. It doesn’t matter what the speech is, the government cannot make rules that discriminate on the content of the speech.
More money would make the situation worse. They need competent leadership. Everyone like to just say “add more money” because it means no actual operational change to the status quo.
The FAA already has competent leadership and staff. They don't have the budget to handle the increasing number of tasks they have been given to manage.
The FAA manages more flights and space launch operations than it did in the 1980s, when it had a budget more than quadruple the size.
We're going to need a dedicated FSA (federal space agency) at this rate, which should do most of the heavy lifting (ha) for the FAA and just use them for NOTAMs and TFRs.
No, launching big heavy explosive things into space shouldn’t have fewer regulations. That’s insane to think they should be able to just do it without much oversight.
Sure the safety part of it is something that should be verified before launch. But when they are launching multiple of these things and the variables are all mostly the same you don't need to do the same analysis over and over again.
A prime example is the environmental impact stuff. They have already done that multiple times. Nothing really changed. If it succeed and doesn't blow up the impact is X, if it blows up the impact is Y. Yet these approvals take weeks and months.
There are also multiple agencies that put their foot down. Famously fish and wildlife was worried starship would crash in the water and hit a shark/whale. No seriously. https://youtu.be/kS8G5D9fg3g?t=21
Then there is the story that at Vandenburg air base, they had to strap a seal to a board and play rocket noises through headphones to see if it was distressed. Keep in mind Vandenburg has been a military rocket launch site for decades. But only now when its SpaceX do these agencies put up road blocks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SvJP5wfN4k
Regulations probably are not going to fix the rot that's inside Boeing. It's like putting water in groundhog tunnels, clamp down on one area and it will pop up somewhere else.
They need to die off and get replaced by better competition when they mess up. And their market centralization ground to a halt instead of encouraged by the gov because of jobs and total risk aversion.
If by the size of government you mean the budget, there have been multiple instances of the government shrinking. As a percent of GDP the 90s saw cuts to federal spending, the 2011 sequestration saw a drop in spending even in nominal terms, and obviously the end of WW2 saw a massive collapse in government spending and the end of multiple different programs
It seemed to not be FAA here, but the several other agencies that all had 60 days to respond. FAA fast-tracked it but couldn't fast track it past the other guys' 60 day allowed time.
Our risk-to-regulatory oversight cost benefit analysis seems extremely off - we overregulate small things that do not have large-scale meaningful impact while basically grandfather in stuff like depleting the Great Salt Lake, coal emissions, etc. which have vastly less regulatory $ spend per environmental impact.
Ideally, if we could quantify all environmental impacts into a single number (ie. CO2 emissions but also wildlife impact, etc.), the $/impact spent across different fields would be equal.
Currently, however, we are likely spending 100x+ on a per-impact basis on SpaceX regulation.
>while basically grandfather in stuff like depleting the Great Salt Lake, coal emissions, etc.
Gee, almost as if decades of austerity politics, lobbying by financial interests, and regulatory capture has malformed a well intentioned regulatory apparatus? Seems like we need more regulation that's less interested in what "united citizens" have to say. (read lobbyists)
How are you arriving at that assessment of regulation of spaceX? i'd be interested in reading more.
Austerity politics? I don’t agree, we have record spending as a percentage of gdp and are rapidly approaching sovereign debt crisis levels of mismanagement. We aren’t Europe, we never really had an austerity moment.
> How are you arriving at that assessment of regulation of spaceX?
I mean, SpaceX launches simply do not have a large impact on the environment compared to say, all cumulative coal emissions in the US. The FAA AST budget (which is for SpaceX launches) is about 60 million. Total EPA budget is about 9 billion. That’s about 160x the size of the FAA launch regulatory budget, but the environmental impact of things the EPA covers (and mostly fails to cover) is much much much more than 160x the impact of spacex launches.
Reagen's and thatcher's whole agenda can be summed up by: "the biggest lie is 'i'm from the government and I'm here to help'"
Have you not paid much attention to politics since Reagan and Thatcher? Their whole objective was to hollow out the government piece by piece, then point to its declining performance as justification for getting rid completely, or to gut further. Repeat. This has been the modus operandi for conservative parties since at LEAST thatcher and Reagan.
>we have record spending as a percentage of gdp and are approaching a sovereign debt crisis
Yeah, it's those pesky regulatory agencies riding up that tally I'm sure, not the almost 1 trillion we spend a year perpetuating apartheid states or our military bases all over the world while 3 americans hoard more wealth than 50% of all americans combined. Silly, patently false defense for an already silly position.
Couldn't be the trillions we spent on the war on "terror". Or the trillions we spend on futile measures like the war on drugs. It's def the ftc and the epa. Those lot. That's who's causing our problems. Yep. That makes sense.
Are you serious? Either you're not a student of history or we have drastically different readings of the past 40 years of american government.
>We never really had an austerity movement
Patently false, dishonest rewriting of history. Did you not pay attention to Reagan actually did?
Reagan's whole thing was the whole govt helping is a lie.
Reagan cut food stamps and almost all other spending while drastically increasing the military budget, cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulated in the name of austerity, got the war on drugs going to villainize his political opponents.
You simply can not be serious. Maybe read Reagan's wiki page before writing such demonstrably revisionist history.
