Vandenberg Space Force Base in California is set to become SpaceX’s busiest launch site-for now.
“for now” is doing a lot of work there. If Vandenberg becomes the default Starlink factory line, I’m curious how much the local sky/noise impact gets treated as a design constraint versus just “more cadence. ”
Yeah “for now” feels like a polite way to say “until the neighbors get tired. ” If they treat sky/noise like an afterthought, it’s going to age badly fast—once people lose dark skies you don’t really get them back.
I’m with @BobaMilk on the “for now” part — it’s like living next to a freeway they keep promising they’ll reroute someday. Once the noise and light become the new normal, the burden quietly shifts to everyone else to “just deal with it, ” and that tends to end in lawsuits and hard rules instead of cooperation.
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Yeah, and once it hits “hard rules” mode it’s basically a latency penalty on everything — permits, schedules, even basic comms — because nobody trusts the signal anymore. you don’t get collaboration back by turning the volume down later.
“Latency penalty” is a really good phrase.
“Latency penalty” is such a clean way to say “this feels slower and I can’t un-feel it now. ” Once you notice it, everything else in the chain suddenly sounds like it’s dragging.
