The FAA prepares to approve the new plans for Starship!
FAA
The Federal Aviation Administration is a USA government agency, founded in 1926 to regulate civil aviation in the nation. But since 1984, they’re also responsible for licensing and regulating launch and reentry operations of space vehicles from US soil or carried out by US citizens. Therefore, they’re responsible for providing launch and landing licenses for Starship, among other rockets, and it’s the reason we’ve always seen SpaceX include “pending regulatory approval” in their launch announcements. SpaceX has to apply for a new license every time they change trajectory or launch operations, but this article is not about the single licenses… rather, it’s about the Environmental Assessment for Starbase, Texas. Let’s dive right into the details!
What does the current 2022 EA cover?
The current EA (Environmental Assessment) was approved in 2022, with minor changes as the Starship program progressed, including the catch license for Flight 5. The current EA covers up to 5 annual suborbital Starship launches of the second stage only, 5 annual launches of the Starship / Super Heavy launch vehicle, 10 annual landings of Starship, and 5 annual landings of Booster. It also covers these operations for Block 1 vehicles, while the new EA covers the Block 3 variant.
Proposed actions
This new EA covers a whole lot of more actions:
Launches and landings: first of all, SpaceX is proposing to increase its launch cadence to 25 launches of the Starship / Super Heavy vehicle per year. These 25 launches would come along with 50 landings, assuming that for every flight both the Super Heavy Booster and Starship second stage land. Of these 25 launches, up to 3 would occur at nighttime between 7pm and 7am while the landings would be slightly different: of the 25 landings per vehicle, all of the catches on the tower (both Ship and Booster) will occur during the daytime; up to 22 catches per vehicle will be licensed, along with up to 3 offshore landings, which will occur only during the nighttime. Of course, in the case of a catch abort, a vehicle destined for catch will be able to redirect towards a splashdown zone. These landings can also include soft splashdowns, landings on a floating platform, or an expendable version.
Testing and closures: SpaceX will be licensed to conduct up to 90 seconds of Starship static fire tests and 70 seconds of Booster static fire tests per year. SpaceX also proposed a maximum of 500 annual hours of access restrictions and up to 300 hours annually of restriction in case of an anomaly. SpaceX announces about 20 hours of closure per launch campaign, including landing operations. They’ve also taken into consideration marine and airspace closures, although numbers haven’t been disclosed due to the flexibility of each launch, reentry, and landing requirement.
Pad B: with this EA, SpaceX will be licensed to conduct launches and landings from Pad B if all the related hardware is approved.
Launch Vehicle and procedures: this EA covers the launch and landing operations of the Block 3 Starship launch vehicle, which includes: Ship, 70-m high, 9-m wide, 9 engines with 28.7 MN of thrust and 2650 metric tons of propellant; Super Heavy Booster, 80-m high, 9-m wide, 35 engines with 103 MN of thrust and 4100 metric tons of propellant. Given this, the FAA has estimated that the heat plume from launches would heat the air around Starship up to 450 meters of distance and that the heat would dissipate within 30-60 seconds.
Changes to Pad A and Pad B. Existing areas (green), future developed areas (blue) and future launch structures (purple). Credit: FAA
Another change goes to the Water Deluge System requirements for both pads: 361.000 to 422.000 gallons of water, which would require an increase from the current 6.000 to 23.771 trucks annually; given this high number, the idea of building a public water line from Brownsville to Boca Chica is being considered. The WDS would be run during static fires, tests, launches, and Booster catches, but not Starship catches.
Landings: as i’ve said, 25 annual landings per vehicle are being considered in this EA, either at the launch and catch tower or on a droneship in the ocean. But in the case of an expended vehicle, there are 3 ways this might get carried out: 1) Hard water landing. 2) Soft water landing followed by an explosion after tipping over on the ocean. 3) In-flight breakup.
SpaceX also anticipates not more than 20 explosive events per vehicle at the surface of the ocean in the next 5 years. Additionally, new landing sites are being considered: while Super Heavy would land in the Gulf of Mexico (up to the coasts of Florida), Starship could land in the following locations: Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean near Hawaii, Northeast and Southeast Pacific Ocean. The Hot Staging Ring would impact the water between 1 and 400 km offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, landing 3 to 4 km from the Booster’s landing sites; this procedure would not take place more than 20 times in the program’s life. If one of the 2 vehicles landed on a floating platform, it would be taken to the Port of Brownsville and transported to the Boca Chica Launch Site by road.
Alternatives and launch sites: the FAA and SpaceX also took into consideration several launch locations as alternatives, based on the following criteria: 1) Ability to meet the DOD (Department Of Defense) and NASA launch cadence requirements by 2025. 2) Ability to support both LEO and GTO trajectories, avoiding populated areas. 3) Low altitude to maximize payload mass into orbit. 4) Geographical diversity to have location redundancy. After an analysis they came to the end that the pad at LC-39A does not meet the necessary requirements to support the continuing of the Starship program; the FAA also said that SLC-37 and SLC-50 at Cape Canaveral would need to undergo modifications, which would not occur until the arrival of a specialized EA in late 2025. There’s also the “No Action alternative,” which will not change the license and keep the EA 2022 requirements.
Environment: several environmental factors have been taken into account, the most important of which is maybe the CO2 emission rates: currently, the 2022 EA licenses SpaceX for 15.96 tons/year of CO2 and 34.75 tons/year of NOx emitted between launches, landings, and static fires. Now, this proposes about 45 tons/year of CO2 and 98.03 tons of NOx emitted per year, without posing any health risks; these emissions would make up for 0.1% and 0.21% of local emissions, respectively. Air pollutants from the landings or the horizontal vehicle transport will be negligible as well. The sounds have also been taken into consideration: during static fires, there’d be about 90 dB of sound intensity at 7 miles west of the launch site for the Booster and 2.5 miles west for Ship. The launch noise would reach 100-140 dB at 8 miles from the launch sites. The sonic booms from landing would be 15-21 psf of pressure and lasting about 300 ms, with a predicted sound of 115 dB at 1 mile from the Pad (although a recent study shows higher values). Starship landings would cause pressures between 1.2 and 2.2 psf; due to all these sound and pressure values, damages are not expected, although there’s a 1/10.000 chance of large windows breaking at 2 psf and 1/10.000 chance of small windows breaking at 4 psf.
References
https://www.faa.gov/media/87646
