The article references language in section 1508 of NEPA to as a possibility of why the FCC might have needed to perform an environmental review; however, if you read the quoted language in context of the full section it seems to require a tortured reading of the section to apply it in this case.
"“Astronomers are having these issues [and think] there’s nothing they can do legally,” says the paper’s author Ramon Ryan, a second-year law student at Vanderbilt University."
Emphasis mine. And that's their lead-off quote. The sense I get from the other quotes in the article is that the people in question probably really did say that, but that they probably don't believe this is a viable legal avenue either, the journalist is just selectively quoting the "But I suppose with the right combination of unlikely events it could be a possible legal avenue" hedging they made. But I admit that's a personal impression of mine, not something I can prove. I'm just inferring it based on the tepidness of the other quotes.
However, I don't blame a student for putting out a paper. I blame the Scientific American for constructing such a thinly-based article, because the real reason is that they want the controversy stirred up, or it's what they personally wanted to say even though the factual basis isn't really there to support it. This sort of crap is why journalists aren't trusted. Story-first, evidence later; it's like they're the equal and opposite reaction to scientists existing in the world.
I just really don’t care at all. People abuse the hell out of the NEPA just to shut down or slow down things they don’t like. Rarely is it ever actually about the environment.
Musk also seems to spawn hordes of naysayers and pessimists who would rather revel in his personal failure than see a better world brought partially by his successes.
I am not sure exactly why people react this way. Are people also following around Bill Gates vocally hoping his ventures into vaccination and energy go belly up?
I think part of the reason why Musk and his ventures attract vocal opponents is that he's challenging entrenched interests and making good progress at it.
To speculate, there might be financial movitations for negative PR campaigns, for example from the oil and traditional automobile industries.
Oil companies, energy companies, automobile companies and their endless suppliers, banks hate him because of PayPal, defense contractors might hate him if SpaceX takes over some contracts they'd otherwise have. Other battery manufacturers. The several other self driving companies (or divisions I guess since they seem to all get acquired). I don't know, the list is probably endless.
Edit: light rail companies and their supporting infrastructure companies
Finding a way to avoid red tape seems like a massive cost and time saving.
I remember seeing something similar with The Boring Company. Avoiding red tape by getting the city to agree the depth was great enough to not need look into environmental impact.
What's costly in California isn't the EIR, but the subsequent lawsuits. Boring Company got an exemption in Hawthorne because they were tunneling under a relatively poor neighborhood and nobody showed up at the public hearings to challenge the exemption. Poor people have neither the expertise, resources, nor inclination to game the system, at least not unless there's a local community activist.
But rich people do, and that's what happened with the Dodger Stadium project: NIMBYs arrived and the city immediately caved. So now Boring Company is doing the EIR. But, again, EIRs are easy. It's exceptional that something major is found, like an endangered species; usually it's simple, basic stuff; the kind of stuff originally intended to be remediated with the reports. There's a whole industry of professionals that come out, run tests, and write it up with little friction. But under California's CEQA, NIMBYs can challenge it endlessly in the courts without repercussions. It's a complete absurdity and has nothing to do with environmental impacts. But the law can't be changed because the rich and powerful know full well that its function is to permit neighborhoods and special interests to block projects, and they won't give that up.
Boring Company will never get an exemption where an exemption would truly matter.
> Boring Company will never get an exemption where an exemption would truly matter.
If California wants to prevent growth and keep repeatedly shooting itself in the foot for decades to come, it's a choice. It makes that market less competitive. People seem to imagine that silicon valley will remain the dominant tech hub of the world forever, but that could change. Maybe, eventually, it's California that won't matter anymore.
Not to ask the dumb question, but what's the tangible environmental impact of having satellites visible at certain during the night in an unpolluted sky that in-theory burn up when they're decommissioned much like any meteor might?
I don't mean the impact to human projects e.g. astronomy or even to human culture. I mean to the actual environment itself and the life surrounding us, since the argument seems to make the claim that there's a detrimental environmental impact.
> In its reasoning for its categorical exclusion, the FCC states that its actions “have no significant effect on the quality of the human environment and are categorically excluded from environmental processing.” Ryan says that the FCC may have been wrong in this assessment, however. “The FCC has never performed a study showing why commercial satellites deserved to be classified as categorically excluded from review,” he says. “And the evidence shows that these satellites are having an environmental impact. If the FCC were sued over its noncompliance with NEPA, it would likely lose.”
For instance, the obvious environmental impact of this case cited in the article:
> National Institutes of Health [was] defeated by environmental groups on the question of the lawfulness of the agency’s approval of genetically modified bacteria for crops without proper review
because of the unknown risks of engineered genes leaking into the gene pools of their respective organisms and potentially drastically impacting life.
> U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lost a case in which it had approved licenses for gambling barges in Mississippi without proper NEPA review.
Seems easy, substantially increased traffic to the boats has a tangible environmental impact e.g. pollution, littering, etc.
But I fail to see the same argument here... and I do desire to be enlightened. There's probably something extremely simple that's just whooshing over my head.
Starlink could potentially disrupt that. Most likely it will not, but who knows.
One could also argue that satellites that do not fully burn in atmosphere produce waste.
From legal perspective, I guess it's hard to argue that there is no impact, if you do not asses the impact.
Overall, I don't think there is not much cause for concern for non-human activities.
And even for humans it's about astronomy and moving dots on night sky outside urban areas.
Impact assessments are generally contracted out via RFP.
As a government contractor myself, I have no confidence that a random environmental impact assessment has any semblance of reality to it. It's a crapshoot as far as which contractor is selected and if they focus on the right factors and come to the right conclusion.
Ha! You didn't even read the paper you linked. Found the redditor.
Starlight, not stars. Starlight on a moonless night, as in general illumination. So, the satellites would help the critters you refer to.
The only hazards these satellites will provide are.
1. more space junk (hazard to critters IN space)
2. more earth junk an pollution when the fall back down.
As for astronomy, we need to move that outside the atmosphere anyhow.
So let's spend 1000 or more money from the public so Elon and other big companies get even more rich.
If you think that a space telescope is just an earth telescope that you can move it in space you are wrong.
Also even if you have the money you don't have the space ships to lift giant mirrors into space and the technology to keep stuff there to monitor and fix things.
If this satellites would have a major upside then maybe we could consider them, there are alternatives to get internet to people but there are o alternatives now to put big telescopes in space.
The people "you" elected and the people they appointed are all doing their jobs and everything is going to be Oh Kay™
...ever since I was too young to vote. Now I'm a little unhappy about the Hanford Site and about tetraethyl lead, for example. I know that has nothing to do with satellites.
Do the satellites disrupt telescopes world wide? If that's the case it's pretty tough on observatories that were recently built, at (apparently) a tens of millions of dollar price tag, that are now impacted by the decision to launch without proper oversight.
Obviously having more accessible internet for the rest of the world is a positive.
Not only internet, but Starlink funds Starship and gives it enough payload to start amortizing the rockets. With Starship launch prices at scale, astronomers can have all sorts of space telescopes at their disposal, and it won't cost much.
This isn't only because launch will be cheaper. Space hardware is expensive mostly because it has to be both durable and lightweight. If launch is cheap, it's fine for the hardware to be heavy, and if it breaks then it doesn't cost much to replace it.
Beyond astronomy, Starlink revenue and Starship are the keys to becoming a real space-faring society.
It's in the name of expanding civilization beyond this planet, but sure, space-based astronomy is one part of that.
However, I'm not claiming SpaceX will be selling space telescopes. They'll just provide really cheap launch services to anyone who wants to launch one.
I remember seeing the actual satellite being deployed live last year, I also remember talking about it with my colleagues at the time (all in IT), none of them had heard about Starlink.
It seems to me they tried to make as less noise as possible, once already deployed it is harder to go back. I might be completely wrong but from my perspective it really looked like "first we deploy the satellite then we take care of advertising / telling people what this is about"
I feel that aviation regulators should have addressed this a hundred years ago. No aircraft that's above its maximum safe landing weight should ever have been allowed to take off.
(I realize it's inconvenient to impose this regulation today. Maximum safe landing weights can be a hundred thousand pounds less than maximum safe takeoff weights.)
All planes can land safely at their MTOW. However, doing so may cause damage that needs repair before a subsequent flight. It also means you need more runway, which can limit your options or reduce safety margins.
The reason it isn't that way is because by requiring MLW==MTW, you singlehandedly neutered any attempt at fuel efficiency or range, because now you've got a plane that's carrying around an undercarriage heavy enough to land on a max fuel load all the time. So now, you're burning more gas all the time.
Generally, you design systems around everything working, while leaving yourself enough room to keep your options open should anything go wrong.
So every single flight should cut their capacity by hundred thousand pounds, because there's a <0.001% chance it need to dump fuel?
Suppose we impose this rule. Now we will need to make up for the lost capacity by increasing the number of flights. How can that be good for the environment?
Planes can and do land overweight. It's avoided because it risks damage and necessitates an inspection in any case. So I don't think it's an issue that needs to be addressed in general. DL89 is certainly odd. It will be investigated and addressed if necessary.
