SpaceX’s “private Cape Canaveral” called Starbase, located on the border between Texas and Mexico, has become the scene of a rocket launch in real conditions for the first time. But unlike the takeoff of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, Starship’s 33 engines caused an unprecedented jolt that spread from the launch pad for tens of kilometers. The inhabitants of the village of Port Isabel, the first nearest town, shared their extraordinary experience, fearing for their health and their homes.
Unlike Cape Canaveral Space Base in Florida, where SpaceX and NASA share land, Starbase is exclusive to Elon Musk’s company and Starship flights. In 2021, the tests of the rocket did not have enough to do great damage, because only the ship had carried out tests, without the Super Heavy launcher contributing to the thrust. The flight of Thursday, April 20 was the very first to take off the rocket fully loaded, from the top of its 119 meters and its 5000 tons of thrust.
The one that exploded after 4 minutes of flight also and above all stood out the first seconds after starting its engines. “It was really terrifying”explained a resident of Port Isabel to the New York Timeswhile she was with her mother when residents heard the thud of the craft at 8:30 a.m. “It was on a completely different level”she added, a change of scale which is thus explained by the presence of the Super Heavy launcher in addition to the Starship vessel.
© SpaceX
The thrust of the machine is about twice as high as that of NASA’s largest rocket, the SLS (Artemis missions to the Moon), yet already spectacular.
View of Starship liftoff from South Padre Island pic.twitter.com/JrXCZLrQEy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023
The shock wave was indeed violent and also broke a window of a fitness room, something that had never happened in the past and which was also inconceivable. It must be said that a 119-meter rocket was something of the imaginary before Starship existed (it was assembled for the first time in October 2022, on the occasion of the production of its twenty-fourth copy). “It was like an earthquake” commented the manager of the gym to the American newspaper.
Closer to the launch pad, where the area was completely emptied of all human presence, the debris projected by the thrust of the engines also caused great damage. In particular in a car, we still say in the New York Times. The manager of a well-known YouTube channel for streaming live Starbase video, LabPadre, likened the debris to bowling ball-sized chunks of concrete, mostly from the launch pad.
Slow mo video of liftoff from the tower pic.twitter.com/tbf1aAKsgD
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023
Area cordoned off, potentially harmful fog
The day after takeoff, Boca Chica beach is still cordoned off, as is a large portion of State Highway 4, also called “Boca Chica Boulevard”, which connects the coast to Brownsville. The goal ? Let the SpaceX teams do the housework, complete their diagnostics, and warn of any anomalies. A step in the calendar that was not planned as such. Models of the liftoff largely spared the surrounding area and did not warn the residents of Port Isabel that the Starship liftoff would also plunge them into thick fog.
The dangers of this “brown grime rain”, are still not completely ruled out, according to independent experts. Neither SpaceX nor the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) responded to multiple questions from area residents on Thursday. One of them indicated that even if the space company had created multiple jobs in a fairly poor city, the presence of its launch pad had somehow sacrificed local living conditions. “The inhabitants here are simply sacrificed (…) He (Elon Musk editor’s note) just wanted to put this thing in the air” she said.
“The presence of this dust tells me in a way that the impact modeling was inadequate, as it hasn’t really been disclosed as a possible hypothesis”explained Eric Roesch, an expert in environmental compliance and risk assessment, at the New York Times. He particularly follows the takeoffs of SpaceX and indicated that he would need a chemical analysis to be able to confirm or not the presence of harmful products.
