FAA Hit With Lawsuit Over SpaceX’s Explosive Starship Launch – SlashGear

The lawsuit targets the FAA and claims that despite having knowledge of “anomalies,” the agency failed to ensure that the harms would be controlled. The aviation control body is also said to have violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) over its failure to address alternatives like reducing the number of launch events that it approves or alternating between different launch sites. The complaint highlights how the FAA allegedly failed to look at multiple risk scenarios, such as light, heat, and atmospheric pollution, alongside habitat destruction, biodiversity damage, and a high potential for igniting wildfires.

According to an assessment by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cited in a Reuters report, the Starship launch test “ignited a 3.5-acre (1.4-hectare) brush fire and sent a cloud of pulverized concrete drifting 6.5 miles (10.5 km) to the northwest.” The lawsuit, which also invokes the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) over alleged FAA lapses, claims that the agency’s conduct was “arbitrary and capricious” and that it should furnish a fresh environmental impact statement (EIS) pursuant to its approvals after doing a sub-par job in the immediate past that allowed SpaceX to go ahead with its controversial Starship test.