SpaceX officials hope to soon launch and land the massive 492-foot-tall Starship-Super Heavy rockets up to 44 times a year at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
But Titusville resident Susan Palma, 40, worries that further development on the headland will risk further disrupting the natural water flow and salinity of the endangered Indian River Lagoon. She attended Wednesday’s environmental meeting on the potential impacts of the starship, armed with a written statement warning of the dangers of hazardous materials and fauna adversely affected by air, light and noise pollution.
“I moved to the river in 2011. And within three years, my waterfront went from brackish coastal waterfront to dead. It’s still dead. There’s no grass. There’s no plants. There’s no more manatees,” Palma said.
Cape Canaveral:Is it launching today? SpaceX, NASA and ULA rocket launch schedule in Florida
“It’s dead. It’s brown. It’s smelly. It’s murky and dirty. And it’s been 10 years. I’m actually thinking about moving out. If they start expanding the space center, and they don’t pay attention to the environment (effects) , I’ll probably move out,” she said.
Wednesday, the Radisson Resort at Cape Canaveral Harbor hosted a pair of open houses about the potential environmental impacts of the Starship-Super Heavy. The Federal Aviation Administration is collecting comments on SpaceX’s plan to deliver a mega-rocket system to Pad 39A.
The event’s collection of experts took questions one-on-one at eight poster-anchored booths in the conference room. The FAA is the lead agency for environmental impact statements. Other federal agencies involved: NASA and the US Air Force, the Coast Guard, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service.
On Thursday, the FAA will take comments during a similar Starship-Super Heavy public meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Debus Conference Facility at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
Then on Monday there will be a virtual meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. More details:
- Zoom URL: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89402979916
- Zoom Meeting ID: 894 0297 9916
- Optional phone numbers: 833-928-4608, 833-928-4609 or 833-928-4610.
The virtual meeting will include “an automatically-launched, closed-captioned presentation describing the purpose of the meetings, the project schedule, opportunities for public involvement, a summary of the proposed action and alternatives, and a summary of the environmental resource area,” the FAA said.
In addition to launch, SpaceX proposes to land Super Heavy boosters and Starships at pad 39A and on drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean; deploy Super Heavy boosters in the Atlantic Ocean at least 5 nautical miles offshore; and expend starships in the open ocean between 55°S and 55°N.
SpaceX officials want to build a super-heavy capture tower on pad 39A, along with local propellant production and storage facilities, a cooling tower, an air separation unit and a deluge system, an FAA fact sheet said.
A 2019 NASA environmental assessment of future Starship-Super Heavy operations found that launches would not have a significant impact on the biological or physical environment on pad 39A.
SpaceX officials also hope to launch Starship-Super Heavy rockets from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station by 2026. The Air Force is preparing a starship environmental impact statement with NASA, the FAA and the Coast Guard.
Last week, crews loaded parts of the starship’s launch tower onto a barge at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s Turn Basin for shipment to the SpaceX base in Brownsville, Texas.
Rockledge resident Brad Whitmore attended the Wednesday afternoon open house. He lives in a 105-year-old historic house south of Cocoa Village — and said the rumbling vibrations from SpaceX Falcon 9 launches on southeast trajectories may have cracked the plaster on his ceiling and walls over the past year. He said others are expressing similar structural concerns in his immediate neighborhood near the lagoon.
“(The launch frequency) will continue to increase significantly. And it will be complemented by a transition from mostly Falcon 9s to more Falcon Heavies and big rockets like SLS, Starship, Blue Origin,” he said.
“Falcons 9 can go from ‘you can barely hear them’ to ‘they’re shaking my house’ — and the windows of my house are vibrating and rattling and things on my desk are vibrating and moving,” he said.
For the latest news from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, visit floridatoday.com/space.
Rick Neale is the Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale atRneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1
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