SpaceX Stresses Starship Sonic Booms Aren’t Dangerous After FAA Draft Shares Concerns 

In a new Starship update, SpaceX has anyone who might be concerned that the sonic booms from its Starship rocket will not be harmful to anyone present in the surrounding areas. Sonic booms are a characteristic of SpaceX's rockets during a landing since they displace the air around them in specific ways. With Starship being even larger than the Falcon 9, SpaceX has confirmed that the rocket's size means that its sonic boom will be louder and larger than the one produced by the Falcon 9 rocket.

Its latest announcement follows after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a draft assessment of SpaceX's plans to increase its Starship launches in Texas, and it appears to be targeted at local residents who might be worried about the loud noises disrupting their daily lives.

SpaceX Assures Local Residents That Sonic Booms From Starship Landings Will Not Be Dangerous

Earlier in the day today, the FAA shared its draft environmental assessment for SpaceX's plans to launch as many as 25 Starship orbital launches from its Texas sites in a year. Since this changes the impact that the launches will have on the surrounding environment, the FAA sought comment from the public on SpaceX's plans. Its environmental assessment document outlined that SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy booster will produce sonic boom "exposures up to 21 psf for booster landings."

The FAA added in the document that while smaller sonic booms are less than two pounds per square foot (psf) in magnitude, the probabilities of large or small windows breaking are low. However, booms greater or equal in magnitude to those created by the Super Heavy booster represent "a threshold where prevailing literature indicates window breakage becomes possible for standard condition windows," adds the FAA, with specific window breakage depending on "size, age, orientation, surrounding structure, and other effects," according to the regulator.

In its release, SpaceX notes that sonic booms were present during NASA's Space Shuttle return and are also a regular part of its Falcon 9 booster landings. It adds that the booms generated by the Super Heavy booster will "be more powerful than those generated by Falcon landings."

However, SpaceX believes that they will not "pose any risk of injury to those in the surrounding areas" since the "strongest effects will be localized to the area immediately around the Starbase launch pad."

This launch pad is described as the vertical launch area (VLA) in the FAA's document. SpaceX's latest plans aim to launch 24 daytime Starship missions from the VLA and one night time mission. Its previous plan had included five total annual launches, with four planned for the day and one for the night.

Crucially, for its Super Heavy booster landings, SpaceX plans to use the deluge water system. According to the FAA, during a landing, "the deluge system would be reactivated and would run for approximately 30 seconds," while a Starship upper stage landing will not require any water cooling for the landing site.

About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.

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