{"id":177032,"date":"2020-01-16T19:17:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T00:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/01\/16\/looks-like-fcc-and-spacex-are-in-for-a-world-of-hurt\/"},"modified":"2020-01-16T19:17:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T00:17:00","slug":"looks-like-fcc-and-spacex-are-in-for-a-world-of-hurt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/01\/16\/looks-like-fcc-and-spacex-are-in-for-a-world-of-hurt\/","title":{"rendered":"Looks Like FCC and SpaceX are in for a World of Hurt"},"content":{"rendered":"
It appears that the FCC’s approval of the SpaceX Starlink satellite constellation may have made a complete dog’s breakfast out of their review and approval process<\/a>:<\/div>\n

A battle for the sky is raging, and the heavens are losing. Upcoming mega constellations of satellites, designed to blanket Earth orbit in spacecraft beaming high-speed Internet around the world, risk filling the firmament with tens of thousands of moving points of light, forever changing our view of the cosmos. Astronomers who rely on unsullied skies for their profession and members of the general public who enjoy the natural beauty of what lies above stand to lose out<\/a>. The arrival of such a large number of satellites \u201chas the potential to change our relationship, and our connection, with the universe,\u201d says Ruskin Hartley, executive director of the nonprofit International Dark-Sky Association. But with no binding international laws or regulations in place to protect the night sky, anyone opposing the advancement of mega constellations is surely fighting a losing battle. Right? <\/p>\n

Wrong. <\/p>\n

A new paper to be published later this year in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law argues that the Federal Communications Commission\u2014the agency responsible for licensing the operation of these constellations in the U.S.\u2014should have considered the impact these satellites would have on the night sky. In ignoring a key piece of federal environmental legislation, the FCC could be sued in a court of law\u2014and lose\u2014potentially halting further launches of mega constellations until a proper review is carried out. <\/p>\n

\u201cAstronomers are having these issues [and think] there\u2019s nothing they can do legally,\u201d says the paper\u2019s author Ramon Ryan, a second-year law student at Vanderbilt University. \u201c[But] there is this law, the National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA, pronounced \u2018Nee-pah\u2019], which requires federal agencies to take a hard look at their actions. The FCC\u2019s lack of review of these commercial satellite projects violates [NEPA], so in the most basic sense, it would be unlawful.\u201d <\/p>\n

Enacted in 1970, NEPA obligates all federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of any projects they approve. Such impacts cover a variety of issues, from the effects of casino barges on rivers to any project\u2019s contributions to climate change\u2014the latter has been a recent target<\/a> of the Trump administration\u2019s regulatory rollbacks. The reviews can take multiple years, producing anywhere from hundreds to thousands of pages of paperwork. Federal agencies can circumvent NEPA, however, if they are granted a \u201ccategorical exclusion\u201d for some or all of their activities\u2014usually by arguing that such activities do not impact the environment and thus do not require review. The FCC has had a sweeping categorical exclusion since 1986 across almost all of its activities\u2014including its approval of space projects\u2014despite other agencies involved in space\u2014most notably NASA<\/a>\u2014being required to conduct NEPA reviews. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are other agencies that use categorical exclusions, but I don\u2019t think there is one that\u2019s as broad as this,\u201d says Kevin Bell, staff counsel at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a nonprofit organization that works with government whistle-blowers on environmental issues. \u201cIt is a policy that was designed for another time, before large scale space exploration.\u201d <\/p>\n

In light of the concerns about the impacts of satellites on the night sky, Ryan says, this categorical exclusion would be unlikely to stand up in a court of law. SpaceX alone has been licensed by the FCC to launch 12,000 satellites in its Starlink constellation in the coming years, dwarfing the current number of approximately 1,500 active satellites in orbit\u2014and the company has plans for 30,000 more<\/a>. It has already launched about 180 Starlink satellites, with another 1,500 scheduled for 2020. Following the first launch of 60 satellites in May 2019, many observers were surprised by their brightness at dawn and dusk\u2014popular times for both astronomy and simple stargazing. \u201cThat\u2019s the time that most people enjoy the sky,\u201d Hartley says. \u201cThese new satellites are brighter than 99 percent of [those] in orbit at the moment. And really, that\u2019s the root of this concern.\u201d <\/p>\n

In its reasoning for its categorical exclusion, the FCC states<\/a> that its actions \u201chave no significant effect on the quality of the human environment and are categorically excluded from environmental processing.\u201d Ryan says that the FCC may have been wrong in this assessment, however. \u201cThe FCC has never performed a study showing why commercial satellites deserved to be classified as categorically excluded from review,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd the evidence shows that these satellites are having an environmental impact. If the FCC were sued over its noncompliance with NEPA, it would likely lose.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026 <\/p>\n

A key question is whether the night sky could be argued to fall under NEPA in a federal court. According to Section 1508<\/a> of the policy, there are both direct and indirect effects that can warrant NEPA review, with the latter including \u201caesthetic, historic, [and] cultural\u201d ones. Ryan says that these factors could, in a court of law, be argued to apply to the night sky. \u201cI definitely think that the night sky would fall under [that],\u201d he says. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Considering Elon Musk’s record of “regulatory arbatrage”, and general lack of concern for the consequences of his actions, the creation of PayPal was an exercise in evading banking regulations, the FCC should have gone over his application with a fine toothed comb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears that the FCC’s approval of the SpaceX Starlink satellite constellation may have made a complete dog’s breakfast out of their review and approval process: A battle for the sky is raging, and the heavens are losing. Upcoming mega constellations of satellites, designed to blanket Earth orbit in spacecraft beaming high-speed Internet around the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[688,437,419,382],"class_list":["post-177032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-pollution","tag-regulation","tag-space","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177032"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}