This is the public comment for SpaceX Super-Heavy plans for Boca Chica that I sent to spacexbocachica@icf.com:
Please Allow SpaceX what it needs and the save the Planet
The future of humanity rests on us as human-beings overcoming our differences and uniting as one species. And in order to unite as one, we also need to have a broader perspective - so that we can understand what sets us apart as people from different regions is far tinier than what makes all one people.
As a species trying so hard to give up our parochial past, and rise as a single global civilization, we can either look inward and backward, or we can look outward and forward. Just like for any living being, our modern civilization cannot grow stagnant if it wants to survive. It can either grow outward with new vigor and off-shoots, or grow old and withers and dies - suffocated by its own stale substance when there is no room to grow. Earth in some sense, with humanity, is transitioning from being oblivious to its own existence until recently, to becoming semi-conscious with the dawn of modern internet and space age. We have a physical perspective of the pale blue dot (see the famous photo taken by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot), but we also have the ability to rise as one voice on Tik-Tok, or other social media to make positive change - fast. But these new social tools also drown reality and can cause trouble. Unless we keep expanding our perspective, and inspire our children to expand into science and technology and knowledge.
From here, where we go is all up to us. We can either get stagnant, then get infected with self-doubt, polarization of differences, perceived lack of resources, and pandemics - both physical and mental - that destroy us, or at best set us back to the medieval ages. Or, we can use the power inspiration for knowledge, and leverage science and technology to discover new science and build new technology that will provide Earth self-awareness that will make the planet truly sentient - eventually not acting like a brawling toddler who gets fits of anger, but as a cohesive intelligent being reaching out to the Cosmos - as one voice.
The recent polarization of politics and people across the world, the pandemics, and the climate disasters, have shown that the window of opportunity to expand beyond Earth and provide a new perspective might be limited and starting to close already. If we don't get out and settle multiple planets in our solar system right now we may never get this chance again. Having all our eggs in one basket is not good.
What SpaceX is doing in Boca Chica with the Starship and Super-Heavy system is something we have now waited for 50+ years. People have not left Earth since I was born, and no woman or a non-white person or a civillian has ever landed on another planet. Though Apollo was great as a cold-war victory and inspiring for all of us, the promise of lowering the cost of space exploration enough to enable this new frontier for a mass settlement has not been realized.
SpaceX has already lowered the cost of orbital transportation by around 10x. We need to lower this by another factor of 10 to 100 before everything I described above will come to pass and we will be safe from an extinction level event, and perhaps even provide the inspiration needed to unite Earth as a single nation of all humans, regardless of their language, where they live, or skin color - in a united front dominated by liberty and justice for all.
Keep in mind, beyond helping humans become multi-planet species, this 100x lowered cost of transportation to space will move several dirty industries off-Earth (precious metals), allow us to focus on Earth remote-sensing, bring high-quality internet to remote places saving thousands of lives every month (think all those people who die every year in the mountains, oceans and other remote forests because they cannot even get a phone signal!), provide better education to kids in remote places (cheaper higher quality internet), allow us deorbit all of the massive debris in space (ironically what you need to clean up space debris is to make launching cleaning systems - massive nets and other processes to deorbit junk, cheap enough) that is inaccessible due to prohibitive cost of launching to space, invention of new space materials at scale, provide massive space telescopes to astronomers, especially the one on the far side of the moon that may help us find other planets with advanced civilizations (by shielding from Earth-based radio noise), help us find 100s of habitable planets (easier since much larger space based telescopes can be launched), and more. Because of the dramatic reduction in cost of access to space, the list is shockingly large and comprehensive.
Starship is close to achieving the next step to this now, but without Elon Musk and his leadership this may have never happened. However Elon is already 50 years old, and one can argue whether the window of opportunity will close because something happens to Elon personally as he gets older, or because there is a much larger pandemic, or because there is a much larger war or civil unrest in our closed littled world that does us in. We are literally running out of time. There is a lot of steps after this one (the one FAA is approving) before we get there, but if we slow things so much down that SpaceX builds their ships from scratch (what NASA could not do in 50 years due to bureaucracy) faster than the super-slow FAA approval process, then what would FAA be remembered as if we fail because of them? Go down in history as an enabler, or another organization that failed to upgrade itself with time?
And it is not enough for SpaceX to succeed over the next 3-5 years with FAA's help to get to Moon and then Mars with one or two missions; the other babies they are inspiring (Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, Firefly and others) also need to grow up fast and compete with them before we can be sure that there will be stable and sustainable ecosystem of self-supporting companies and economy that will allow humans to become multi-planet species - permanently.
Given the massive burden faced by SpaceX already with limited NASA budget, legal battles caused by changing administrations, limited commercial market, and sheer difficulty of moving large cargo into space, not to mention developing all of the technologies for fully reusable reusable rockets that did not exist, we should focus on what is important, what is critical, and what cannot be replaced.
It is true that the area SpaceX is working at is a wild-life refuge. I spent six years in Texas and often visited that area for vacation when I was in the PhD program at UT Austin. But it's a vast area, and SpaceX is using a tiny section of it. The minor effects to the environment around Boca Chica are dwarfed by what would happen to Earth if humanity itself gets messed up, or we don't inspire the world to unite as one. We may lose many of the species that nest around Boca Chica all over the world, and we may lose half or more of Earth's population.
There is one chance. The ships look beautiful, have a massive positive effect on the local economy and tourism, and most locals are proud of hosting the civilization-changing level of rocket ships being built there.
Perhaps Space-X should pay a few million dollars to buttress the local wild-life preservation and enhancement plans - and this should be a voluntary suggestion which I am sure Elon will agree to and should be given directly to the local state park funds. Plans for increasing support for the park to improve areas away from the location may benefit a lot more than spending it for just that location. Such fees or payments however should only be attached to as a fraction of the revenue generated from such launches and NOT for developmental launches. Any charges during this crucial R&D phase would just reduce the budget available for actual development and increase odds of failure.
To put it bluntly, FAA and EPA got to get their shit together and get out of the way. Sure - do your assessment but defer any contributions from Space-X to commercial launch cadence not right now. You are blocking the country and the world from getting back to the Moon and Mars, and from humans becoming multi-planet species.
Please go focus your energies on the massive stink that comes from Corpus Christie from unburnt oil-leakages. Not clean-burning launches of a few dozen ships in a relatively empty area around Boca Chica.
Approve SpaceX to have enough launches for fulfilling their urgent national and planet-scale security missions. Find a way to work with them on commercial higher volume percentage fees for environmental improvements if you will. Not right now!
- Gunjan Gupta, PhD Bellevue, WA
