Originally Posted by
Sam W
Easy to see why we use Cape Canaveral as a launch site. Using Boca Chica is a colossal blunder as there is so much “clutter” down range at risk from falling debris as 7 showed. If the FAA still has public safety as a mandate they should suspend future Starship launches from Boca and force Musk to use a more suitable launch site. (I know that they have a site being built at the Cape, but there are concerns it is too close to other facilities if a fully loaded Starship goes up.)
I think a lot will depend on how the debris fall matched (or didn’t) any assumptions made by the FAA when granting the required permissions, and the NOTAMs on the day.
If the actual debris footprint is outside of either then IMHO there’s going to have be a rethink,
Back in the day on one occasion I was airborne, downrange and and what looked pretty much under the ground track of an (unannounced by Russian ATC) night Soyuz launch. Fortunately that thing held together but it wasn’t a comfortable experience and I would expect the FAA to be somewhat more restrictive than their Russian counterparts.