Photo: SpaceX
SpaceX is causing a stir amongst the residents of Florida’s Space Coast. The rocket company has applied for a permit to launch its Starship rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC). As part of that process, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) held a series of public meetings, including in-person sessions at KSC and nearby Cape Canaveral, to collect public input before finalizing its environmental review and determining whether or not to grant SpaceX a license. Local beachgoers are particularly concerned about the effects of the launches, including patrons of a nearby nude beach.
Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation, liquid-oxygen/liquid-methane-fueled heavy lift launch vehicle. The craft consists of a reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle (appropriately titled Super Heavy), and a spacecraft second stage (called Starship). The stack will stand 500 feet tall and produce over 16 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
As Space.com reports, SpaceX is seeking approval for up to 44 launches and landings of Starship and Super Heavy from Kennedy Space Center each year, with touchdowns dispersed between returns to the Cape or droneship landings in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. This causes a number of concerns for residents, the first of which is that each launch would require multiple beach closures and safety zones that disrupt maritime and air traffic routes.
“There is the potential that there’s going to be significant impact to commercial aviation and the traveling public,” said John Tiliacos, the chief operating officer at Tampa International Airport. “That’s something that certainly the FAA needs to give consideration to and, frankly, come up with a plan to mitigate.”
The launches are also going to be loud. Really loud. Noise modeling estimated Starship could wake 10 to 14 percent of residents during nighttime launches and up to 42 percent during Super Heavy booster landings. Some of that noise is projected to have a 1-10,000 chance of causing small windows to break from sonic boom pressures.
However, of particular concern to the surfing community is the fact that, according to FAA analysis, Starship could cause more than 60 closures annually of nearby Playalinda Beach. The area may not be home to Florida’s finest surf, but the sandbar-laden beachbreak is a godsend to wave-hungry Space Coast locals.
However, Florida surfers have an unlikely ally in the efforts to keep Playalinda open: nudists. Playalinda is perhaps better known as one of four public beaches in Florida where nudity is legal. During one of the public hearings, executive director of the American Association for Nude Recreation Erich Schuttauf expressed concerns that the displacement of Playalinda’s nudists to other beaches could lead to run-ins with clothed locals.
If the threat of angry Floridian surfers and a horde of nudists doesn’t keep Playalinda open, I don’t know what will.