Starship Flight Test 13 looking good for Thursday

There are two things that I ought to get to before much else of the news. 

1. That's as of now, Wednesday night July 22, less than 24 hours to go on the clock, and the criticality of that time goes up every minute until the Thursday 6:45 PM EDT launch time. That is, a problem that happens now might be fixable but if the same problem showed up an hour before launch, it might not be fixable.
2. It hints at a problem that SpaceX has that isn't specifically related to Starship and FT-13. SpaceX is absolutely hated by environmentalists that want every square inch that they like to be pretty; to match their ideas that a natural and pretty environment is more important than anything else humanity might want in their future. Environmentalists keep indigenous populations around the world stuck in the 1800s, denying them electricity, clean water and more - to keep the places they live "wild."

While there might be problems with this rule of thumb, the people who absolutely hate SpaceX are a close overlap with the people screaming for socialism now. SpaceX is a very rich company led by a very rich man, so they are therefore very, very bad. 

The second story made news this morning on Space.com. While the date the agreement was reached doesn't appear in the Space.com article, it focuses on a deal SpaceX made with the federal government.

That deal, which the company made with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), gives SpaceX 727 acres (294 hectares) of public land that's currently part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. In exchange, the company hands over 683 acres (276 hectares) of its territory in the area, not all of it contiguous, to the USFWS.

Last month, a coalition of conservation and tribal groups sued the USFWS over the swap, saying it degrades the refuge and violates multiple laws, including the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997. And yesterday (July 20), those groups filed an emergency injunction, asking a federal judge to stop the exchange until the courts can rule on the ongoing case.

"Federal officials are racing to fork over America's public lands to one of wealthiest corporations on Earth before the courts can even weigh in," Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement yesterday (July 20).

The people opposed to this trade just seem to want more. As in they'll be quiet if SpaceX stops developing that area, but they'll be even quieter if SpaceX just goes away. Laiken Jordahl added, "This refuge is one of the last places left for the public to enjoy nature in the Rio Grande Valley. Why should Texans be forced to surrender even more of their public lands to a trillion-dollar corporation? The court has to intervene now, because once these refuge lands are transferred to SpaceX, they’re gone forever."

I say, "so what?" He doesn't say why the market value of a company's stock should have any bearing on what it's behavior should be. That idea that whoever "THOSE people are" are so rich they're getting away with crime is so baked into the modern left. The "gospel of envy" as Winston Churchill put it. 

SpaceX's Starbase site sits amid wetlands with high biodiversity in South Texas. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Laiken Jordahl never says what's so special about these 727 acres, such that trading for an area 44 acres smaller isn't considered a reasonable swap. My guess is it's prettier. "Wilder looking... so it's prettier." Or they just want to see how much more they can get.