An aerial view of a Starship prototype stacked on top of a Super Heavy booster at the company’s Starbase facility outside Brownsville, Texas.
SpaceX
Elon Musk’s SpaceX will join the Federal Aviation Administration as a co-defendant to fight a lawsuit brought by environmental groups after the company’s first test flight of Starship, the world’s largest rocket, ended mid-flight last month in an explosion.
In a motion filed In court Friday on Friday, SpaceX petitioned federal judge Carl Nichols to allow the company to join the FAA as a defendant against environmental and cultural heritage nonprofits that earlier this month launched the aerospace and aerospace regulator have sued.
The plaintiffs “do not oppose” the company’s intervention, according to the filings. Jared Margolis, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity and lead plaintiffs’ attorney, said it is “standard and expected for the applicant to intervene in a case where their license is at stake.”
The groups suing the FAA claimed the agency should have conducted a more in-depth environmental study of the likely impacts of SpaceX activity before the company authorized the launch of the world’s largest rocket, Starship, from its Starbase facility, a spaceport on the Gulf Coast. near Brownsville, Texas.
The groups also claimed that the “restrictions” the agency demanded from SpaceX were not enough to prevent “significant adverse effects” on endangered species, their habitat and tribes in the area who consider the land and wildlife sacred.
Friday’s SpaceX filing outlines the potential ramifications for the company if the environmentalists win the lawsuit, pointing out the implications for its business and finances — as well as stating that there would be harm to the “significant national interest” and potential scientific benefits from star ship.
“If the court were to rule in favor of the plaintiffs, the FAA’s decision could be overturned and further licensing of the Starship/Super Heavy program could be significantly delayed, seriously harming SpaceX’s business,” it wrote. Company.
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The lawsuit wants the FAA to conduct an environmental impact assessment (EIS) — a lengthy and thorough procedure that would likely sideline SpaceX’s Starship work in Texas for years to come.
SpaceX too wrote in the motion that “the FAA is not adequately representing SpaceX’s interests” in the lawsuit since it is a government agency. It noted that the FAA has “a direct and substantial economic interest in the outcome of this case that the government does not share.”
The FAA said in a statement to CNBC that it “does not comment on pending litigation.”
At stake for SpaceX
SpaceX Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen filed a statement alongside the motion to further detail the potential harm to the company if it lost the lawsuit. In his statement, Johnsen wrote that “Since July 2014, SpaceX has invested more than $3 billion in the development of” the Starbase facility and the Starship system.
This year alone the company expects to spend about $2 billion developing Starship, according to comments Musk made after its first fully stacked launch attempt last month.
Johnsen also highlighted the pipeline of contracts SpaceX is building for future Starship missions. SpaceX already has a major NASA contract worth up to $4.2 billion to use the rocket to land astronauts on the moon. In addition, SpaceX has signed commercial customer contracts — including three separate missions for wealthy individuals Jared Isaacman, Yusaku Maezawa and Dennis Tito — for Starship that Johnsen wrote are “worth hundreds of millions of dollars right now.”
Starship is also critical to the future of the company’s Starlink satellite Internet business, which has more than 1.5 million customers. Johnsen noted that “SpaceX has invested billions of dollars in Starlink to date”. Musk has previously emphasized the interdependence of those two companies, with Johnsen further reiterating that SpaceX needs Starship flights to launch its second-generation, or “V2,” Starlink satellites.
“Without Starship…SpaceX will not only be hurt financially by its inability to launch v.2 satellites, but hundreds of thousands of people…waiting for the Starlink constellation to be upgraded and able to serve them,” Johnsen wrote.
Finally, Johnsen noted that losing the lawsuit would cause the company to “significantly reduce” investments in its Starbase facility, which would harm its interests, as well as local workers and communities.
Fallout from the first launch
Debris litters the launch pad and damaged tanks (R behind) on April 22, 2023, after the SpaceX Starship lifted off for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on April 20.
Patrick T Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
The dramatic and explosive first Starship launch saw the company reaching several milestones for the nearly 400-foot-tall rocket, which flew for more than three minutes. But it also lost several engines during launch, caused serious damage to ground infrastructure, and ultimately failed to reach space after the rocket began tumbling and was deliberately destroyed in midair.
SpaceX is cleaning up damage to the launch site, which carved a crater into the ground and knocked debris into the tower, nearby tanks and other ground equipment. In addition, the launch generated a plume of dust and sand, with particulate matter reported as far as six miles from the launch pad.
The test flight also started a 3.5 acre forest fire.
Phil Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida’s research faculty, studies the substance of samples of the particles. He thinks “SpaceX dodged a bullet” with the launch, telling CNBC that the amount of “blowing concrete” could have destroyed the rocket on the launch pad.
“It could have been a lot worse than it was. I think they made a mistake taking a risk and launching [concrete] surface, while I tried to do it that way one time. But it was like a 70% success. They cleared the tower, tested their first stage, got a lot of good data, found a problem with the staging and hopefully they can fix that and have a better result in the next test,” Metzger said.
Metzger has not assessed the ecological impact of the launch pad debris and rocket explosion on endangered species living in and migrating through the area. The Texas Regional Office of the Fish & Wildlife Service and other independent researchers are studying the environmental effects of the Starship test flight and explosion, among other things.
SpaceX’s motion also made clear why Starship is ultimately beneficial to science endeavors. The company wrote that the rocket’s unprecedented capabilities “will allow scientists to focus on previously impossible science missions and pursue the fastest, easiest way to get their missions from concept to execution.
“For example, with its large capacity, Starship could economically carry large telescopes and heavy science experiments into orbit, and cargo, people and even colonies on moons and other planets,” SpaceX wrote.
Read the company’s application to file as a defendant alongside the FAA:
