Starship launch plan at Kennedy Space Center spurs environmental comments

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SpaceX officials hope to soon launch and land massive 492-foot-tall Starship-Super Heavy rockets up to 44 times per year at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

But 40-year Titusville resident Susan Palma fears more development at the Cape will risk further disrupting the imperiled Indian River Lagoon’s natural water flow and salinity. She attended a Wednesday environmental meeting on potential Starship impacts, armed with a written statement warning of dangers of hazardous materials and fauna negatively impacted by air, light and noise pollution.

“I moved onto the river in 2011. And within three years, my waterfront went from a brackish, coastal waterfront to dead. It is still dead. There’s no grass. There’s no plants. There’s no more manatees,” Palma said.

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“It is dead. It is brown. It is stinky. It is murky and mucky. And it has been for 10 years now. I’m actually thinking of moving out. If they’re going to start expanding the space center, and they’re not going to pay attention to the environmental (effects), I’ll probably move out,” she said.

Wednesday, Radisson Resort at the Port in Cape Canaveral hosted a pair of open houses on potential Starship-Super Heavy environmental impacts. The Federal Aviation Administration is collecting comments on SpaceX’s plan to bring the mega-rocket system to pad 39A.

A collection of experts at the event fielded questions one-on-one at eight posterboard-anchored stations inside a conference room. The FAA is the lead agency on the environmental impact statement. Other participating federal agencies: NASA and the U.S. Air Force, Coast Guard, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service.

Thursday, the FAA will collect comments during a similar Starship-Super Heavy public meeting from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Debus Conference Facility at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

Then Monday, a virtual meeting will take place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. More details:

Zoom URL: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89402979916
Zoom meeting ID: 894 0297 9916
Optional call-in numbers: 833-928-4608, 833-928-4609 or 833-928-4610.

The virtual meeting will feature “a closed-captioned auto-run presentation describing the purpose of the scoping meetings, project schedule, opportunities for public involvement, Proposed Action and alternatives summary, and environmental resource area summary,” the FAA reported.

In addition to launching, SpaceX proposes to land Super Heavy boosters and Starships at pad 39A and on drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean; expend Super Heavy boosters in the Atlantic Ocean at least 5 nautical miles offshore; and expend Starships in open ocean between 55 degrees south latitude and 55 degrees north latitude.

SpaceX officials want to build a Super Heavy catch tower at pad 39A, along with onsite facilities for propellant generation and storage, a cooling tower, air separation unit and deluge system, an FAA fact sheet said.

A 2019 NASA environmental assessment of future Starship-Super Heavy operations found the launches would not have a significant impact on the biological or physical environment at pad 39A.

SpaceX officials also hope to start launching Starship-Super Heavy rockets by 2026 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Air Force is preparing a Starship environmental impact statement with NASA, the FAA and Coast Guard.

Last week, crews loaded sections of a Starship launch tower onto a barge at the Turn Basin at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for shipment to SpaceX Starbase in Brownsville, Texas.

Rockledge resident Brad Whitmore attended Wednesday’s afternoon open house. He lives in a 105-year-old historic house just south of Cocoa Village — and he said rumbling vibrations from SpaceX Falcon 9 launches on southeasterly trajectories may have cracked plaster in his ceiling and wall within the past year. He said others are voicing similar structural concerns in his immediate neighborhood near the lagoon.

“(Launch frequency) will continue to greatly increase going forward. And it will have the addition of going from what’s predominantly Falcon 9s to include more Falcon Heavies and large rockets such as SLS, Starship, Blue Origin,” he said.

“The Falcon 9s can go from ‘you barely hear them’ to ‘they shake my house’ — and the windows of my house vibrate and rattle, and things on my desk vibrate and move,” 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 a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale atRneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter/X: @RickNeale1

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