Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Delay In Spaceport Brownsville

5 Comments

Joe Pappalardo has the story. I wonder how much of it is due to environmental impact assessment, and if so, if it would be as hard if they were doing an airport instead? Back in 2004, we tried to extend the categorical exception that the aviation industry gets from the National Environmental Protection Act to space transportation, but the result was weak tea, leaving waivers up the discretion of the head of the EPA. Something I’d like to see in an amended version of the Commercial Space Launch Act would be to make it a clean extension, with no discretion from Gina (or any future administrator). It would be interesting to see if that made it veto bait for Obama, though.

5 thoughts on “The Delay In Spaceport Brownsville”

  1. From some google searches, it looks like the FAA cleared SpaceX already. I am not sure if the EPA will require additional impact statements and at least one article implied the EPA was working with the FAA by asking for an extension of the commenting period prior to the decision being made.

    The commenters at the link point out that SpaceX is doing a lot of construction work at other sites so their crews are tied up.

  2. Ummm, that article has significant divergences from reality. Here’s just one;
    “But it doesn’t end there. SpaceX plans to build and fire Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, the most powerful rockets ever built, from Texas twice a year.”

    Also, I was under the impression that the groundbreaking wasn’t scheduled to be until summer or fall? If so, the fact that it hasn’t occurred yet is rather unsurprising, given that it’s March right now.

    However, I do strongly agree with Rand regarding the EPA issue.

  3. http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1409/28brownsville/

    Construction of Texas launch site to begin next year
    BY STEPHEN CLARK
    SPACEFLIGHT NOW
    Posted: September 28, 2014

    [snipote]

    Musk said preliminary work will begin soon, but major construction will not start until the second half of 2015, once SpaceX’s launch site development team finishes modifications to Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A, which the company leased from NASA in April.

    “We’re expecting the Cape site to be done in approximately nine months, and we’ll do some advanced preparation work here at Boca Chica, but we’ll probably start with more significant activity in the third quarter of next year,” Musk said.

  4. P.S.: The latest Google Earth image, from 2015-01-19, shows new land clearing and a building in the SpaceX area just to the southwest of Boca Chica Village (25.9877 N, 97.1866 W). So apparently stuff is already happening.

Comments are closed.