Five environmental and cultural groups are suing the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for allowing SpaceX to launch the largest rocket ever built without a comprehensive environmental review, US media reported on Monday.
SpaceX’s Starship Super Heavy test flight blew up the company's launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, on 20 April, hurling chunks of concrete and metal sheets thousands of metres away into sensitive habitat, according to the CNBC channel. The explosion sparked an extensive fire in nearby state park.
The lawsuit against the FAA was filed in a district court in Washington D.C. on Monday. The plaintiffs are the Center for Biological Diversity, American Bird Conservancy, SurfRider Foundation, Save Rio Grande Valley (Save RGV) and a cultural heritage organisation, the Carrizo-Comecrudo Nation of Texas.
They argue that the FAA should have conducted an in-depth environmental report before allowing billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX company to move ahead with its Starship Super Heavy plans in Boca Chica.
The groups also charge that the agency waived the need for more thorough analysis based on proposed “environmental mitigations” it required of SpaceX.
However, these were not enough to offset the environmental damage resulting from the launch, construction and increased traffic in the area, as well as the destruction of the launch pad and mid-air explosion in April.
The massive Starship rocket, developed by SpaceX for trips to the moon and Mars, exploded in flight shortly after liftoff. Its launcher was to have separated about three minutes after lift-off and fall back into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. However, the separation did not take place, and the rocket continued to rotate before exploding.
After the explosion, Elon Musk congratulated SpaceX via Twitter and promised another Starship test flight “in a few months.”
