Well, this has certainly been a wild week. Last Sunday, I posted a summary of some key environmental impacts to look out for during SpaceX’s first launch of Starship Superheavy from Boca Chica, Texas.
You may have addressed this issue in the past, but what is the story with Bill Nelson? It's one thing to be passionate about space exploration, but he seems to have drunk the Musk kool-aid. He has a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers who subsidize SpaceX, but he breezily waves away legitimate concerns.
Is this an unfair criticism? I recall watching an interview of Nelson where he was asked why the US was in testing so heavily in a rather inhospitable planet like Mars, and the response was a garbled paragraph that resembled the intro to a Star Trek episode.
I think he may be out of touch and a creature of a past era, and I say this with all due respect to Sen. Nelson. I don't think it's nefarious but perhaps the agency would be better served having some fresh blood take the reigns.
Nelson is in a tough spot. Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk, HEO Assoc. Admin. Kathy Lueders, and HLS head Lisa Watson-Morgan, Trump era NASA leadership hold-overs, in brazenly rushed the decision to award SpaceX the lunar lander contract just a week before Nelson was confirmed by the Senate and sworn-in, knowing full-well that NASA’s nominated administrator might want to be a part of that decision but couldn’t just cancel the $2.9B contract once it was made.
Notice that Associate Administrator Jurczyk lasted a whole 10 days after Nelson was sworn-in. Four months later, Lueders lost half her her HEO exploration portfolio to Jim Free. As for Watson-Morgan, time will tell.
Nelson has, over his career, been someone who works in the background. A classic example, one that never made it to the press, is how Nelson handled the expected nomination of Lori Garver for NASA Administrator by Pres. Obama, which he strongly opposed. In a quickly scheduled meeting with Pres. Obama, he informed the president that he’d not vote for cloture unless the nomination was nixed and someone like Charlie Bolden, Nelson’s old Shuttle mission commander, was instead named.
We’ll have to see how things shake-out on Starship. If their lunar lander “skeleton” test vehicle doesn’t make it to the Moon by 2024 and another potential competitor does land on the Moon, things could get interesting.
As someone who has followed Eric Berger since egis Chronicle days, and is a huge fan of what he's done with Space City Weather, it's disappointing to see how much he's crossed the line into cheerleading mode with regards to SpaceX. I know he's excited about the possibilities and impressed with what they have accomplished, but he has apparently decided he can't be critical at all
Well, he was initially the science columnist, so not really a journalist in that sense and he's taken that fanboy behavior to far with SpaceX. It's frustrating, since Space City Weather is very much about "no hype"...and Elon is the opposite of that
He seems to be seriously underplaying the damage. The worst comment was "Debris was really just basically sand and rock so it's not toxic at all ... it's just like a sandstorm, essentially ... but we don't want to do that again." He also seems to be planning on another bad shortcut saying, "Reason for going with a steel plate instead of a flame trench is that for payloads in the rocket, the worse acoustic environment doesn't matter to the payload since it's about 400 feet away." Without dissipating enormous thermal and mechanical shocks, the energy may bounce back and damage the rocket.
Thank you for the detailed write-up.
You may have addressed this issue in the past, but what is the story with Bill Nelson? It's one thing to be passionate about space exploration, but he seems to have drunk the Musk kool-aid. He has a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers who subsidize SpaceX, but he breezily waves away legitimate concerns.
Is this an unfair criticism? I recall watching an interview of Nelson where he was asked why the US was in testing so heavily in a rather inhospitable planet like Mars, and the response was a garbled paragraph that resembled the intro to a Star Trek episode.
I think he may be out of touch and a creature of a past era, and I say this with all due respect to Sen. Nelson. I don't think it's nefarious but perhaps the agency would be better served having some fresh blood take the reigns.
Nelson is in a tough spot. Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk, HEO Assoc. Admin. Kathy Lueders, and HLS head Lisa Watson-Morgan, Trump era NASA leadership hold-overs, in brazenly rushed the decision to award SpaceX the lunar lander contract just a week before Nelson was confirmed by the Senate and sworn-in, knowing full-well that NASA’s nominated administrator might want to be a part of that decision but couldn’t just cancel the $2.9B contract once it was made.
Notice that Associate Administrator Jurczyk lasted a whole 10 days after Nelson was sworn-in. Four months later, Lueders lost half her her HEO exploration portfolio to Jim Free. As for Watson-Morgan, time will tell.
Nelson has, over his career, been someone who works in the background. A classic example, one that never made it to the press, is how Nelson handled the expected nomination of Lori Garver for NASA Administrator by Pres. Obama, which he strongly opposed. In a quickly scheduled meeting with Pres. Obama, he informed the president that he’d not vote for cloture unless the nomination was nixed and someone like Charlie Bolden, Nelson’s old Shuttle mission commander, was instead named.
We’ll have to see how things shake-out on Starship. If their lunar lander “skeleton” test vehicle doesn’t make it to the Moon by 2024 and another potential competitor does land on the Moon, things could get interesting.
Many thanks...this is excellent background that I wasn't aware of.
As someone who has followed Eric Berger since egis Chronicle days, and is a huge fan of what he's done with Space City Weather, it's disappointing to see how much he's crossed the line into cheerleading mode with regards to SpaceX. I know he's excited about the possibilities and impressed with what they have accomplished, but he has apparently decided he can't be critical at all
I struggle with Berger, because as a Houstontian he provided an invaluable service during Harvey and his weather writeups are concise and objective.
His coverage of space is embarrassing; he should be running a blog, not pretending to be a journalist.
Well, he was initially the science columnist, so not really a journalist in that sense and he's taken that fanboy behavior to far with SpaceX. It's frustrating, since Space City Weather is very much about "no hype"...and Elon is the opposite of that
These comments from Musk are really worrying. https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1652451971410935808
He seems to be seriously underplaying the damage. The worst comment was "Debris was really just basically sand and rock so it's not toxic at all ... it's just like a sandstorm, essentially ... but we don't want to do that again." He also seems to be planning on another bad shortcut saying, "Reason for going with a steel plate instead of a flame trench is that for payloads in the rocket, the worse acoustic environment doesn't matter to the payload since it's about 400 feet away." Without dissipating enormous thermal and mechanical shocks, the energy may bounce back and damage the rocket.
Yup, it's bad. On the other hand, this level of gaslighting may be because he's getting lots of heat over it. We've seen him do it before
Interesting development: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/01/faa-faces-suit-over-spacex-starship-launch-following-april-explosion.html
Has anyone prevailed suing FAA over defective certification?
The damage to the launchpad and the amount of debris ejected into the Lower Rio Grande Refuge is something to behold. Fortunately, we have video.
https://youtu.be/jGLfs376wXE
Great write up with a clear overview of the issues. Thanks!