1. SpaceX

Last week, I wrote about “Nova Scotia’s next dystopian tourist destination: The Moms Gone Wild Memorial Spaceport.” Yesterday’s explosion of the SpaceX rocket in Florida underscores the danger poised by space launches.

SpaceX spun the explosion of its Starship rocket as a success, and credulous media mostly went along. But now we’re getting more detailed reports about the real world effects of rockets blowing up. From the New York Times:

Near the launch site, the residents of Port Isabel, known for its towering lighthouse and less than 10 miles from the border with Mexico, were left to deal with the mess.

Virtually everywhere in the city “ended up with a covering of a rather thick, granular, sand grain that just landed on everything,” Valerie Bates, a Port Isabel spokeswoman, said in an interview. Images posted to social media showed residents’ cars covered in brown debris.

A window shattered at a fitness gym, its owner, Luis Alanis, said. Mr. Alanis, who was at home at the time of the launch, said he felt “rumbling, kind of like a mini earthquake.” He estimated that the window would cost about $300 to fix.

Closer to the launch site, large pieces of debris were recorded flying through the air and smashing into an unoccupied car. Louis Balderas, the founder of LabPadre, which films SpaceX’s launches, said that while it was common to see some debris, smoke and dust, the impact of Thursday’s liftoff was unlike anything he had ever seen.

“There were bowling ball-sized pieces of concrete that came flying out of the launchpad area,” Mr. Balderas said. The blast, he added, had created a crater that he estimated was around 25 feet deep.

The ESG Hound blog Substack has been using the freedom of information act to uncover the environmental damages caused by SpaceX rockets (even successful launches), and concludes:

The damage from SpaceX’s incursion into South Texas’ pristine coast is already real. The harm from the full launches will undoubtedly be greater than what was disclosed to the public. These damages may show up as shattered windows and the corpses of hundreds of dead shorebirds; immediate and obvious. Or they may not be entirely clear until years from now when SpaceX eventually closes shop on the Texas coast for greener pastures. The scars on the land, the people, and the wildlife won’t just disappear. They’ll linger, and hopefully, by then people will be willing to…