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SpaceX accused of dumping mercury into Texas waters for years

SpaceX’s Starship launches at the company’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas, have allegedly been contaminating local bodies of water with mercury for years. The news arrives in an exclusive https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/12/spacex-repeatedly-polluted-waters-in-texas-tceq-epa-found.html on August 12, which cites internal documents and communications between local Texas regulators and the Environmental Protection Agency.

SpaceX’s fourth Starship test launch in June was its most successful so far—but the world’s largest and most powerful rocket ever built continues to wreak havoc on nearby Texas communities, wildlife, and ecosystems. But after repeated admonishments, reviews, and ignored requests, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) have had enough.

casmael ,

Extremely not based >:(

SeekPie ,

Cringe, some might say

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

What would they even be using mercury for?

acetanilide ,

Elon’s daily dose. It takes a lot to get on his level.

Just kidding, but it seems like something to do with the fuel/exhaust.

I’ve read multiple articles and the most I’ve gotten is that their first launch didn’t have the cleaner fuel that future launches did. I am not sure how that would cause repeated incidents… perhaps it’s from metal parts in the rockets? 🤔 I could have missed something as I was reading but hopefully someone else will know the answer.

Peppycito ,

If that kind of shit gets released on the ground, what gets released into the upper atmosphere?

Atrichum ,

CO2 and water. The rocket fuel is not the source of the mercury.

Peppycito ,

The pumps need to be running full bore before ignition and keep running after cut off. Watch a video of shut off and tell me where they’re keeping all that CO^2 and water on the rocket.

SkaveRat ,

What?

Peppycito ,

At shut off and start up the rocket pumps methane and oxygen into the atmosphere before ignition. The Falcon 9 pumps kerosene and oxygen. Watch the live streams and look at the engines at meco.

Atrichum ,

Cleaner fuel? It’s oxygen and methane. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, no mercury. Still I can’t think of a source.

acetanilide ,

The article I read said they didn’t use that until after the first launch. I did not look into it further.

threelonmusketeers ,

I couldn’t think of a source either. Upon closer inspection, it seems possible that this entire story is based on two typos in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report.

cannibalkitteh ,

Dumping into the water. It is an overall expense, and not related to the business interests. They just needed some evil villain stuff going on because Elon really wants to meet Captain Planet.

MegaUltraChicken ,

Elon probably picked up old timey hat making during one of his ketamine binges or something.

NegativeInf ,

That would mean that Elon has any amount of skill.

I very much doubt it.

Fester ,

Oh it just means he acquired a servant that has 30+ years experience in old timey hat making. But he’s rich, so we speak as if it’s him that’s doing it.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Where did Captain Planet go when he wasn’t summoned?

Iheartcheese ,
@Iheartcheese@lemmy.world avatar

Sawcon.

jonne ,

If you make earth unlivable you can sell 8 billion tickets to Mars.

TransplantedSconie ,

Is he sure about that? Cap doesn’t fuck around.

casmael ,

Slippery consistency helps the highest bidder to slide up Elon’s bumhole more easily and efficiently. What you really want in this situation is a low energy threshold for financial turnover - in this case the point at which dollar bills are more than 50% up musks arse. Mercury gets that done, and Elon likes the taste, but unfortunately on this occasion it got into the water supply which is sad to see.

treadful ,
@treadful@lemmy.zip avatar

Pretty annoying the article doesn’t even explain.

threelonmusketeers ,

It is possible that this entire story is based on two typos in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report.

Dramaking37 ,

Texas government probably requires you poison people to operate in the State.

casmael ,

Naturally. If people forget to turn off the poison sockets before bed, that’s their own problem!

threelonmusketeers ,

This confused me as well. Upon closer inspection, it seems possible that this entire story is based on two typos in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Maybe people will finally stop praising SpaceX?

masterspace ,

I mean, it depends how egregious / serious this violation is and how crucial it is to the rest of their overall successes.

Elon sucks, but for the same amount of money, NASA can either launch 150 tons of science missions 1 per year on SLS, or they can launch 170 tons of science missions every 2 weeks on Starship.

Quite frankly I don’t understand why they’ve gotten the level of hate they’ve gotten (and why some people seem so intent on finding ways to hate them), other than their association with their dumbass ceo.

pennomi ,

SpaceX is cool, Elon is the world’s most colossal asshole. Some people won’t separate the two because they rightfully don’t want to enable him.

Shotwell could run the whole thing herself, I wish the government would step in and cut Musk out of it entirely.

masterspace ,

People who blame the thousands of hard working engineers at SpaceX for Elon’s follies are committing the exact same logical fallacies as the people who hero worship him and praise him for what is the hard work of all those engineers.

It’s very easy to say in one sentence that Elon sucks and what SpaceX is doing is pretty wild and revolutionary, yet people like the OP I’m responding to seem bothered by even that.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Elon sucks, but for the same amount of money, NASA can either launch 150 tons of science missions 1 per year on SLS, or they can launch 170 tons of science missions every 2 weeks on Starship.

Maybe the latter is like, bad for the planet?

www.statesman.com/story/news/…/74171065007/

masterspace ,

Hmm, did you read that article before posting it?

Because Im struggling to see how Starship, a fully reusable spaceship made out of stainless steel, is going to deplete the ozone the way that aluminum satellites do when they are deorbited and burned up…

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

What exactly do you think SpaceX is regularly launching into space? Because it isn’t Starship.

masterspace ,

You literally quoted me talking about Starship, and the article OP linked is about Starship.

SpaceX is going to launch the ~4000 satellites it has permits for, starship doesn’t change that in any way shape or form.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

or they can launch 170 tons of science missions every 2 weeks on Starship.

Your words? Because, again, it’s not Starship they’re launching every two weeks.

masterspace ,

Yes, it is. That is using their projected budget and the launch cadence that’s possible with both SLS and Starship. SLS can at most launch twice a year, Starship will be able to launch every two weeks, and costs orders of magnitude less.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

And meanwhile, SpaceX will destroy the ozone layer with endless Starlink launches, so maybe let’s not praise them, like I initially said?

masterspace , (edited )

My god. What do you do for a living? Does it have no effect on the environment in any way shape or form?

They literally just discovered that Starlink satellites are having that effect, and you have given them precisely zero time to even try and address and fix it. And in the meantime I literally just came back from a remote first Nations community that only has high quality internet because of it, amongst virtually every rural community in the world.

Honestly, disconnect yourself from the internet before you spend any time looking into the environmental impact of your phone, the servers you use, and the billions of miles of fibre optic cables that connect everything. Because if that’s the kind of blood that prevents you from praising a company that is literally revolutionizing space launch, then literally nothing any of us ever do is worth praising because it’s all built on a giant foundation of blood.

Hell, those solar thermal power plants that use mirrors to reflect light onto molten salts originally killed a whole bunch of birds. Are they bastards for trying to build out a new technology, realizing there’s environmental consequences, and then finding ways of addressing it?

Peppycito ,

Do you know what the clouds coming out of the engines at shut down and start up are? Methane and oxygen. Do you think injecting methane into the upper atmosphere does the earth any favours?

masterspace ,

Huh, if only NASA Earth’s science budget could stretch farther somehow so they could better monitor and tell us… now I wonder how they could reduce their mission costs by orders of magnitude…

johker216 ,

I’d rather NASA be funded well enough to not need private, profit-driven, corporations dictating how we explore space. That and Musk’s stench sticks to all his companies, for good or bad.

masterspace ,

They literally are.

That’s what SLS is, a rocket built by NASA using their traditional contractors and it costs orders of magnitude more to do the literal exact same thing.

Again, I get that Musk sucks, but hating on the hardwork of thousands of engineers and personnel because of what one of the employees does in their free time is just as biased as everyone who irrationally praises Musk for what is the hardwork of thousands.

The folly of hero worship cuts both ways.

halcyoncmdr ,
@halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world avatar

SLS does it the old way, with NASA contracting work out to the old school companies.

The Commercial Crew and Supply contracts are there to try it a different way. And they’re accomplishing their goals much more quickly and at a fraction of the cost.

EldritchFeminity , (edited )

There’s a great synopsis of the situation further up the thread, but the short is:

SpaceX originally wasn’t going to launch rockets from this facility… until they announced that they were, then asked for permission from the regulatory bodies after their first launch.

When concerns were raised about the rockets being launched half a kilometer from nature preservation land, and specifically in regard to the possibility of failed launches damaging the launchpad, Elon assured them that no such thing could happen… and then a quarter of the launchpad was destroyed by a failed launch.

So they installed the water deluge system, again asking for permission after they had already installed and used it.

Within their permit application for the system - which, again, was installed and used before the application was even submitted - are mercury measurements 50x higher than the Texas maximum threshold for acute mercury toxicity, and far higher than the thresholds for human safety.

The Elon hate is one thing, and I believe much of the hate for SpaceX is because of how he handles himself and his companies. But the general assurance has largely been that SpaceX has a team of handlers to keep him from screwing things up, and it sounds more like Boeing over there every day.

They may have Elon on a leash, but they seem to be running his playbook anyway.

NotMyOldRedditName , (edited )

They got approval from the fish and wildlife agency before launching with the deluge system

tpr.org/…/faa-gives-ok-to-spacex-for-second-stars…

Published November 16, 2023 at 9:00 AM CST

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved SpaceX’s next Starship launch, just hours after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) concluded its assessment of the rocket’s launch infrastructure.

The FAA gave the company a launch license Wednesday afternoon, saying Starship and its new launch infrastructure would have “no significant environmental changes” for its second launch.

FWS stated that SpaceX’s water deluge system, meant to suppress the flames and sound from the rocket’s 33 engines, would produce the same amount of water from an average rainfall. The agency does not expect the water to change the mud flats’ salinity or affect shorebird habitat.

*emphasis mine.

Flight 2 was on November 18th, 2 days after they get approval for the deluge system.

Edit: further, spacex has replied to this and said the following (among other things as well)

x.com/SpaceX/status/1823080774012481862

SpaceX worked with the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) throughout the build and test of the water deluge system at Starbase to identify a permit approach. TCEQ personnel were onsite at Starbase to observe the initial tests of the system in July 2023, and TCEQ’s website shows that SpaceX is covered by the Texas Multi-Sector General Permit.

We only use potable (drinking) water in the system’s operation. At no time during the operation of the deluge system is the potable water used in an industrial process, nor is the water exposed to industrial processes before or during operation of the system.

We send samples of the soil, air, and water around the pad to an independent, accredited laboratory after every use of the deluge system, which have consistently shown negligible traces of any contaminants. Importantly, while CNBC’s story claims there are “very large exceedances of the mercury” as part of the wastewater discharged at the site, all samples to-date have in fact shown either no detectable levels of mercury whatsoever or found in very few cases levels significantly below the limit the EPA maintains for drinking water.

masterspace ,

Heavy metals are some of the worst things to dump into the environment, and I’m curious to see where the mercury is coming from, why they’re using it, and how they’re going to address it, but it really feels like you’re blowing up a relatively small issue into a massive one.

They had one launch where they blew up the launch pad accidentally, so they added a deluge system to cope. Now there’s mercury toxicity downstream of the site, but it’s not clear it has anything to do with the deluge system.

The Elon hate is one thing, and I believe much of the hate for SpaceX is because of how he handles himself and his companies.

That absolutely is where most of it comes from. Articles that hate on Elon get clicks, so for every actual thoughtful nuanced critique of SpaceX, there’s two dozen click bait articles written by glorified bloggers that will look for any flaw because critiques of Musk’s space company drives traffic.

But the general assurance has largely been that SpaceX has a team of handlers to keep him from screwing things up, and it sounds more like Boeing over there every day.

Boeing is failing to do what they used to do 50 years ago. SpaceX is successfully doing things that no one has ever done. Yes the wreckless rule breaking is trademark Elon, but let’s not be hyperbolic.

threelonmusketeers ,

I’m curious to see where the mercury is coming from, why they’re using it, and how they’re going to address it

So was I. Upon closer inspection, it seems possible that this entire story is based on two typos in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report.

threelonmusketeers ,

mercury measurements 50x higher than the Texas maximum threshold for acute mercury toxicity

It is possible that this entire story is based on two typos in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report.

Atrichum ,

SpaceX fans have known about this for a long time now, and they just don’t care. They’ve shouted down anyone who has pointed it out for well over a year now

iAmTheTot ,

I would be exactly 0% shocked to learn this was true.

ShepherdPie ,

I’d be shocked if Abbott didn’t try to give them a Texas Medal of Freedom award for doing this.

HoustonHenry ,

And for removing water breaks for workers when it’s really hot out

meco03211 ,

Or… I could see him mandating more water breaks… provided it comes from the test area. People in the biz refer to that as remediation.

Plastic_Ramses ,

And with Chevron ruling they wont face any repercussions!

Isnt crony capitalism great!?!?!?!

threelonmusketeers ,

Would you be more shocked to learn that it isn’t true? It is possible that this entire story is based on two typos in the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality report.

MediaBiasFactChecker Bot ,

CNBC - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for CNBC:
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Popular Science - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)Information for Popular Science:
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Search topics on Ground.Newshttps://www.popsci.com/category/spacex/
https://www.popsci.com/science/starship-fourth-launch/
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https://www.popsci.com/technology/spacex-starship-super-heavy-booster-explosion/
https://www.popsci.com/technology/spacex-starship-damage/
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/12/spacex-repeatedly-polluted-waters-in-texas-tceq-epa-found.html

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