And there will be significant impacts. For example, the number of large trucks that deliver water, liquid oxygen, methane, and other commodities will increase substantially. According to the FAA document, the vehicle presence will grow from an estimated 6,000 trucks a year to 23,771 trucks annually. This number could be reduced by running a water line along State Highway 4 to supply the launch site’s water deluge system.
SpaceX has made progress in some areas, the document notes. For example, in terms of road closures for testing and launch activities, SpaceX has reduced the duration of closures along State Highway 4 to Boca Chica Beach by 85 percent between the first and third flight of Starship. This has partly been accomplished by moving launch preparation activities to the “Massey’s Test Site,” located about four miles from the launch site. SpaceX is now expected to need less than 20 hours of access restrictions per launch campaign, including landings.
SpaceX clearly got what it wanted
If finalized, this environmental assessment will give SpaceX the regulatory greenlight to match its aspirations for launches in at least 2025, if not beyond. During recent public meetings, SpaceX’s general manager of Starbase, Kathy Lueders, has said the company aims to launch Starship 25 times next year from Texas. The new regulations would permit this.
Additionally, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said the company intends to move to a larger and more powerful version of the Starship and Super Heavy rocket about a year from now. This version, dubbed Starship 3, would double the thrust of the upper stage and increase the thrust of the booster stage from about 74 meganewtons to about 100 meganewtons. If that number seems a little abstract, another way to think about it is that Starship would have a thrust at liftoff three times as powerful as NASA’s Saturn V rocket that launched humans to the Moon decades ago. The draft environmental assessment permits this as well.