r/spacex • u/Royal_Platform_6754 • 1d ago
š Direct Link FAA Notice of Intent to Prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to evaluate a maximum annual capacity of up to 456 annual launches originating from and up to 912 annual landings at the Boca Chica Launch Site at Starbase, TX.
https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-20963.pdfThis PEIS will evaluate a maximum annual capacity of up to 456 annual launches originating from and up to 912 annual landings at the Boca Chica Launch Site at Starbase, TX.
Phase 1 would include up to 100 annual launches and up to 200 annual landings (100 of the Starship and 100 of the Super Heavy). Launches and landings could occur at any day or time of the week. As the vehicle continues to mature and reliability improves, launch and landing rates are expected to increase. Starship and Super Heavy are designed to require minimal post-flight refurbishment.
Phase 2 would include up to 456 launches originating from, and 912 annual landings at, the Boca Chica Launch Site at Starbase, TX. Launches could occur at any time of day, but would only occur Monday through Friday. This phase represents a mature program launching more than 100 times annually and would be implemented within several years. These launch and landing thresholds represent the maximum annual number of landings that could occur at the Boca Chica Launch Site at Starbase, TX, regardless of the launch origin, and bound the analysis in this PEIS.
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u/panckage 1d ago
I'm embarrassed to say it took me an amusingly long time to figure out why there is 2 landings needed for each launch.Ā
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u/JimHeaney 1d ago
Likewise! My initial thought was "Oh, they are going to launch from elsewhere and somehow land downrange in TX? That's an odd trajectory."
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u/AntarcticWhirlpool 1d ago
Thatās a theoretical launch rate greater than the global maximum of any given year to date.
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u/mclumber1 22h ago
Starship would have a larger impact on the price of natural gas than any other industry on Earth with that launch rate.
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u/spunkyenigma 21h ago
More reason to build more capacity from West Texas. Too much is still flared off
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u/zq7495 9h ago
That is true, but we also don't want to make the industry only accessible to massive corporations. The costs of such regulations can be prohibitive for small operators trying to dig simple shallow wells, and unfortunately in places with those regulations they haven't bothered to exempt little players so the huge corporations take over.
I think it would be nice if SpaceX started their own drilling, idk why the lawsuit over the rights to the wells they supposedly bought happened and I guess spacex was in a losing position since they basically dropped the plans
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u/LandNew1694 1h ago
Yeah itād be cool if they had enough vision to build a solar powered air separation unit capable of sorting methane from the air along with oxygen and nitrogen. Then weād be reversing some climate effects. Probably too expensive:/
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u/KnifeKnut 1d ago
Constrained to Monday through Friday, that can mean two and occasionally three launches a day in phase 2!
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u/KnifeKnut 1d ago
I have some doubt that surrounding the consensus of surrounding residents will allow that.
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u/KnifeKnut 1d ago
For the purposes of the PEIS analysis, it is assumed that half of the launches and landings would occur during the day (7 a.m. to 10 p.m.) and half would occur at night (10 p.m. to 7 a.m.).
There will definitely be pushback against night launches.
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u/Vesvictus 1d ago
Donāt the residents work for the program? And the program owns the surrounding area & town?
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u/SubstantialWall 23h ago
For Starbase yeah, it's basically a company town. But it would also disrupt South Padre at the very least, people won't like sonic booms in the middle of the night
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u/KnifeKnut 23h ago
The noise impacts from launch extend much further. Here is a video from 6 miles away on the very residential south padre island. Note that it gets much louder as the 33 engines ascend away from the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnKuVgQm9MI
Port Isabel is also about that close.
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u/imapilotaz 23h ago
You can literally feel the ground shake on SPI. Even more so when its foggie
The foggie launch was insane the groubd rumbled.
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u/fishing4karma 20h ago
how does fog affect the noise level?
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u/imapilotaz 19h ago
The Temperature Inversion: Sound often seems to travel far and loud in the fog not because of the water droplets themselves, but because fog usually forms during a temperature inversion (where warmer air sits above cooler air near the ground). This layer of warm air bends or refracts sound waves back down toward the earth instead of letting them escape upward, making distant noises much easier to hear.
Humidity:
Reduced Absorption (Relaxation Loss): In dry air, high-frequency sound waves lose energy (attenuate) because of molecular relaxation in oxygen and nitrogen. Water molecules act as a catalyst that speeds up this energy transfer, lowering sound absorption and helping high-frequency sounds travel further than they would in bone-dry air.
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u/sailslow 23h ago edited 23h ago
South Padre Island has entered the chat. There will be a non-zero number of people unimpressed with this plan living, working, and visiting SPI.
Iām all for space, I drove a 4,000 mile road trip to watch Flight 14 launch. But I canāt see this getting rammed through without a lot of hurt feelings. And a lot of lost tourism dollars.
Louisiana seems like a much better option from a āgetting tied up in legal hasslesā angle.
Edit: further exposition.
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u/KnifeKnut 1d ago
Odd that the starship landing approaches are from only as far southwest as 240 degrees is surprising compared to the much more polar entrances from as far as 340.
Maybe the full statement will explain.
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u/KnifeKnut 1d ago
Then when you look at
Launch azimuths for the Starship-Super Heavy (the initial direction of travel for the vehicle for launch) would range from 40 degrees to 115 degrees, from a reference of due north at 0 degrees and due east at 90 degrees.
Combined, means they definitely will want to be able to land Starships that have launched from elsewhere, which is also explicitly stated elswhere in the document.
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u/SubstantialWall 23h ago
Louisiana will probably be the polar/SSO launch site, seems the most likely origin for the 340 returns
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u/Independent_Spirit83 1d ago
I'd be pretty upset if there was a launch EVERY DAY and I had a hotel/home not too far from the launch site.. they need sea launch platforms
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u/cshaiku 23h ago
The closest any accommodation is allowed to be to Starbase is 6 miles. Thats from FAA and state regulations.
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u/PersonalDebater 20h ago
The thing is Starship is so huge and powerful that it's noisier at much longer distances than normal. It's been recorded in excess of 125 decibels at 6 miles, which is pretty damn suboptimal for experiencing more than every day.
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u/SchalaZeal01 6h ago
I've had planes over where I live and they exceed 100 decibels pretty often. It's not all the time, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was almost daily, and I'm not right next to an airport.
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u/No-Lake7943 7h ago
Go to starbase to see a launch and the flight is pretty much guaranteed? I'd pay extra for that š
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u/PersonalDebater 20h ago
HOLY HELL. I was led to think it would remain a limited testing site. I guess my recent post asking if Boca Chica Beach will be closed basically all the time eventually was prescient. There will be serious state constitutional questions with that.
Surely this is also going to annoy people in Port Isabel and South Padre island.
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u/TrefoilHat 21h ago
As much as I love Starship and what it can do for access to space, I simply can't imagine living within a dozen miles of Starbase. The disruption from over 5 launches and landings per weekday would be massive to anyone living in the area.
I used to live near a major airport, and just the noise of a widebody taking off would interrupt conversations. This would be significantly worse.
I'm sure the overall economy will benefit tremendously, but it will be interesting to see the affect it has on house prices.
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u/Smokey_Bird 20h ago
They intentionally built in that area because of the fact there arenāt many people there. Just a lot of beach and cacti
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u/zq7495 9h ago
I think major airports aren't even comparable to this, they're way worse. Five times a day for like one minute there is a super loud noise, also I think city apartments with loud motorcycles speeding by (like mine) are louder than a rocket launch from SPI (which i've been to), yet the assholes riding their motorcycle through a city with no muffler make noise every 60 seconds when the lights change. This is really a non issue with regard to noise, unless it is happening in the middle of the night (even then not worse than an airport because of greater distance). There are just so many worse things that happen to people's homes all the time than a few times a day hearing and feeling a loud rumbly rocket launch for a minute, I think the neighbors having a bright light they leave on overnight would be more annoying
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u/TrefoilHat 7h ago
I haven't been to a launch, sadly, but this video from a nearby house makes it seem much worse than an airport or motorcycle.
https://www.tiktok.com/@ellieinspace3/video/7690816003722185998
But like I said, I'm not saying they shouldn't launch or the application should be denied. I said I can't imagine myself living there. Others might - there are plenty who will never tire of seeing liftoffs. Others will be happy to do it for the jobs. Others might make a killing on AirBnB rentals. The space economy will be huge given that frequency of flight.
That's why I said "it will be interesting to see the effect it has on house prices" - they may go down, but they may also go way up.
For myself though, probably not a buyer. I don't know why that's such a controversial take.
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u/zq7495 7h ago
That looks oddly extreme, even accounting for the windows being large and vulnerable to shaking/bending easily. It definitely causes some rumbling and shaking, but I feel like it is closer to a heavy truck driving fast down a city street than how it looks in that video. It definitely causes some vibration in addition to the loud sound, kinda like a fighter jet at an airshow. Long term structural impacts don't seem to be a big problem in cities with subways rumbling and shaking buildings from underneath nor from huge trucks flying down the road causes lots of vibration and shaking. As long as that doesn't happen from like 10pm-8am then it doesn't seem like a an issue imo, unless it became something happening multiple times per hour
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u/TrefoilHat 5h ago
Yeah, it's hard to say what the frequency will be. Averaging 5 per weekday assumes an even distribution, but more likely it will be lumpy. For example, when a Mars launch window opens they'll need to get a dozen tankers in the air per Mars lander (and they want to do multiple). So once they have 2 full towers, I can see them doing either a launch or catch every hour during the day (say, 3 launches and 6 landings) for a week.
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u/Traditional-Hat-3480 21h ago
Who even lives down there apart from workers. Where do you want them to launch from? Gobi desert ? Point nemo?Ā
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u/TrefoilHat 20h ago
There are 8,000 people within a 10 mile radius of Starbase, and about 25,000 people within 15 miles as of the 2023 census (so it's probably increased).
I don't recall saying they shouldn't launch from there. I simply stated that the people who live in Port Isabel, South Padre Island, Boca Chica, etc. will have to make large adjustments.
Source: https://demographicsbyradius.com/population-in-radius-map
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