SpaceX clearance for 25 Starship launches a year is 'ludicrous,' Texans say

SpaceX can now launch Starship 25 times a year in South Texas, a change that Elon Musk 's rocket company welcomes as communities in affected regions worry about potential destruction from the powerful vehicle.

On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration released its long-anticipated final assessment surrounding a proposal for 25 Starship launches a year as opposed to a limit of five. The agency said that after "careful and thorough consideration," it found that modifying SpaceX's license to allow for a more rapid launch cadence is consistent with existing national environmental policies and "will not significantly affect the quality of the human environment."

But others were critical of the assessment. Moriba Jah, a professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, said he thought the FAA assessment "wasn't good enough" and unnecessarily increases the launches out of Texas.

"I'm all for technology, and I'm all for space exploration and utilization of space for humanity's benefit. There's a right way to do it and a dumb way to do it," Jah told . "I feel that we're just doing the dumb way, which is just trying to accelerate making these things happen, versus pacing ourselves and having a successful conversation with the environment so that we can make environmentally informed and sustainable decisions."

To Jah, the right launch cadence is one where "we make some decisions that are inclusive in terms of who we bring to the table to have a voice in those decisions, and we experiment and see what the response from the environment is."

Meanwhile, Christopher Basaldú, a member of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, said that neither SpaceX nor the FAA have consulted with the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribal Nation, which lives near the Boca Chica launch site.

"The FAA must send SpaceX back to 'square one' and demand SpaceX complete a new and full Environmental Impact Statement," Basaldú said in a news release. "SpaceX has been polluting the land and the water and lying about it for years. For the FAA to pretend that this has 'no significant environmental impact' is ludicrous."

Starship and other rocket launches have noticeably affected the areas surrounding their operations. A December 2024 study in the scientific journal Nature explored how rocket launches threaten global biodiversity conservation, finding that more than 62 percent of operating sites are located within or near protected areas. In Texas, SpaceX's launch pad site is near Boca Chica State Park land, where a Starship test flight in 2023 sparked a fire covering 3.5 acres south of the launch site at the state park. Starship's tests have also damaged nearby shorebird nests and brought an earthquake-like noise that researchers say could cause structural damage to properties near the launch site.

The study also noted the launch site's proximity to a National Wildlife Refuge containing about 1,200 plants, 300 butterflies and 700 vertebrates. Researchers went on to say that launch failures can lead to serious ecological consequences, citing a fire caused by Russia's Proton Rocket Launch Crash in July 2013, where the soil and vegetation cover was destroyed and many wildlife species lost their habitats.

Even outside of Texas, others are concerned about what increased launches could mean for their community. In a January meeting the FAA held over the proposal , some shared concern for Starship's end destination often being a splashdown off the coast of Hawaii, overlapping with humpback whale migration routes while others are concerned if the vehicle would affect Hawaiian monk seals, endangered mammals residing in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and the Main Hawaiian Islands.

Still, the splashdown in the ocean only happens if SpaceX's tests go according to plan rather than explode, as the rocket has in previous launches . Jah referenced the January Starship launch when the rocket exploded and caused flaming debris to rain down near the Turks and Caicos Islands . In response, Musk had posted on X, "success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed."

"People in Turks and Caicos, when they saw rocket pieces landing in the ocean, they weren't considering that as entertainment, certainly the wildlife wouldn't either," Jah said.