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Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

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Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#51

Post by gpm »

Qworg wrote: post #46
stefan_ wrote: post #3

The context here seems to be that SpaceX is in fact building an old boring fracked well gas plant in federally protected land, but because they cursorily mention rockets and call it a "methane processing thingamajig" instead of what it plain is, the FAA who has no experience doing environmental review but is involved because rockets is all too happy to just nod it through.

The EPA doesn't have a dog in this fight - the feds don't have much of a role at all, unless it is on federal lands of a particular class that would trigger special protections (ie National Park). Piping gas across state lines can involve the feds, or if they impign on a wetland or waterway. There's no interstate commerce to trigger any substantial federal involvement that I can see. Texas was an inspired choice - Ca…

> Texas was an inspired choice - California would have been a knife fight regulatorily.

California is also just on the wrong coast. You almost always want to launch eastward so you get the free rotational velocity from the earth to help you reach orbit, for the same reason you want to be as close to the equator as possible, and you can't (regulatory/safety wise) have a flight path over land. From within mainland US the only reasonable options are Texas and Florida.

The exceptions to this are polar orbits (for which the rotation of earth just doesn't help) and the rare military spy satellite that wants a retrograde orbit for ... reasons. The US/SpaceX does launch out of california for those orbits, but it's a small fraction of launches.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#52

Post by idiotsecant »

DisjointedHunt wrote: post #14
brabel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone had any doubt about whether Elon really had the environment in mind when he founded Tesla, I think now you've got your answer. In fact, most people driving electric cars likely wouldn't think twice about building a fracked well if they knew they could make millions from that... if they really cared about the environment, they wouldn't even drive around.

How much carbon does one year of fires in California produce? For all the regulations on reducing usage, the wise politicians enabled conditions through neglect of forest care and trimming to allow fires so large, the plume could be seen from space and darkened skies as far north as Seattle. The point here is, what is good for the climate isn’t the purview of these simplistic views of climate science. Drilling a well…

>the wise politicians enabled conditions through neglect of forest care and trimming

It baffles me that this is so often repeated when it is quite clearly inaccurate if you just think about it for a second.

First of all, you don't "trim" a forest the size of many small countries. This isn't a city park. It would take every man, woman, and child's sum efforts to 'landscape' even a fraction of the forests in the PNW. That's like saying that the reason the sea is rising is that nobody is running an ice cube maker to refreeze the ice caps.

But to speak to the real origination of this point - resource extraction for the benefit of those who control the cable news narrative: You don't prevent forest fires by logging. That is an old meme from the resource extraction industry - not only does it not prevent wildfires, it also destroys biodiversity of the ecosystems where old, diverse growth is replaced with pine stands.

Forest fires are required for the natural lifecycle of a forest - there are species that cannot reproduce without a forest fire. Not only small brush type plants that thrive in the absence of overgrowth but also the largest organisms in the forest- the trees themselves! Vast areas of the PNW are dominated by so-called 'serotinous cone' deciduous trees whose cones will lay dormant for years, coated in a thick plastic-like resin layer that only allows the cone to release seeds after the resin is melted away by forest fire (when the chances of successfully growing are highest)

Forests require fires to be healthy. A big part of why wildfires are so bad now is that we haven't let them happen for so long because there are more and more people moving into the areas that previously experienced healthy burns. This lead practices to try to prevent fires from happening. Meanwhile, brush built up year after year after year and eventually the fires that do happen are orders of magnitude worse. Climate change and the resulting temperatures and changes in the 'moisture battery' throughout the year are also massive contributors, but that is a whole other post.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#53

Post by aazaa »

The article shows many tables without ever quoting sources. In the previous article in the series, the author claims:

> ... I’m a “forensic environmental data specialist” (I invented the term just now). I use the troves of free to the public data located in regulatory submittals and permits to extract useful information. ...

Great. If free to the public, where are the links? Clicking on those table images just links to the images themselves.

The article itself is stream-of-consciousness writing with little effort to organize or edit down the useless brain droppings from this author. I bring this up because if the author wants to be taken seriously, style matters, as do bend-over-backwards efforts to document claims. Especially claims against large organizations with deep pockets.

Even for regular HN readers, it helps to be able to verify for oneself claims made of a quantitative nature.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#54

Post by speedybird »

8note wrote: post #49
oceanplexian wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO SpaceX should get an exemption for national security purposes (For the same reason the US Military doesn’t need to abide by the EPA). Access to space is in the national interest. I don’t think something that has an immeasurable impact on the climate is anywhere close to being more important.

The EPA is also a national security concern. No need to defend space that you've already turned into a toxic wasteland

> The EPA is also a national security concern.

I strongly agree, but not for the reason you give. Environmental destruction is likely to start more wars than it prevents...

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#55

Post by lazide »

DennisP wrote: post #31
speedybird wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could it be that SpaceX is answerable only to the FAA and is immune to the EPA? Why is it on the FAA to regulate a well? I think the author of the article should work on including a bit more exposition and a bit less snark (if he actually intents to persuade people, anyway.) Also I'm a bit confused why people are surprised the methane for these rockets will come from a well. Did people really think Elon Musk was…

The ultimate plan is actually to make it from water and CO2 in the air, using the same tech they'll use to make methane on Mars for the return trip. They're just not there yet.

Sure, and I have a bridge to sell you.

The technology already exists. Fundamentally (damn laws of thermodynamics) it is also a energy negative process, and hence expensive. It is far cheaper to just frack and burn fossil fuels (where that energy expense was paid however many millions of years ago by someone else), than it is to expend the energy to reverse the process - even if they were getting nearly free energy.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#56

Post by lazide »

consumer451 wrote: post #32
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the "The ends justify the means" move.

I was just thinking about this phrase in regards to Musk about ten minutes ago. “The ends” are the most laudable things I can imagine: electrifying the world and colonizing other celestial bodies. While I love the goals, I am afraid of what a mission-driven person might rationalize and do to achieve them.

Another thought to add here - he also gets paid very well in a very concrete way to LOOK like he is doing those things, and if he never gets in a spaceship but still enjoys the billions? Hard life.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#57

Post by MayeulC »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #21
Ericson2314 wrote: post #13

Guess solar isn't so good at industrial scale, eh? They should go build some fission reactors instead.

Yeah wow you sure showed those people trying to power rockets with solar power.

I mean you can produce methane trough CO2 capture and a lot of solar power. That's basically what musk said was the goal on mars, so they could develop that tech as well.

Or space-based solar. If anyone has the capability, it's spacex.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#58

Post by TigeriusKirk »

heavyset_go wrote: post #27
DisjointedHunt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Edit]: You’re a coward if you downvote to suppress an opinion without having the decency to engage in debate. Jesus. . You actually think carbon released from burning wood is exempt from the whole “making the planet unlivable” effect? Repeat that to yourself while you watch the skies turn red. That’s a ridiculous statement to make.

Forest fires are part of forests' natural life cycles and are, in general, carbon neutral. Forests fixate atmospheric carbon and release it through cellular respiration, decomposition and fires. That atmospheric carbon is then fixated again via vegetative growth. The issue is burning hydrocarbons we pump out of the ground, because doing so interrupts the equilibrium between atmospheric carbon and natural carbon sinks…

Where did you come across this idea?

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#59

Post by [deleted] »

8note wrote: post #49
oceanplexian wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO SpaceX should get an exemption for national security purposes (For the same reason the US Military doesn’t need to abide by the EPA). Access to space is in the national interest. I don’t think something that has an immeasurable impact on the climate is anywhere close to being more important.

The EPA is also a national security concern. No need to defend space that you've already turned into a toxic wasteland

[deleted]

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#60

Post by lazide »

smoldesu wrote: post #9
zionic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don’t see what all the fuss is about here. SpaceX making a well to power the human colonization of mars is a drop in the bucket vs all the other wells in the state.

Well, what SpaceX is doing doesn't really matter. I can't just show up to Arkansas and say I'm fracking for oil to cure cancer and get hand-waved through. They're private entities, no matter what they're doing, and they're subject to the same scrutiny that everyone else puts up with.

That is ideally how it is supposed to work, but there are many examples of regulations being bypassed and other folks being stepped on to get a desired employer or a potentially lucrative investment into a place.

It doesn’t sound like it is happening here necessarily, but it does happen pretty frequently.

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