“Why deprive Florida surfers our little slice of undeveloped heaven? Might Elon Musk see it in his heart to appease the pilgrims?”
No doubt you’re familiar with Elon Musk’s Starship-Super Heavy Launch Vehicle – aka “Big Fucking Rocket” – the 500-foot-tall stainless steel crown jewel of his SpaceX fleet which regularly rains fiery debris over Boca Chica airspace.
As we speak, Musk is trying to obtain FAA permits to launch his BFR out of Cape Canaveral, Florida. Apparently, this requires him to blockade beach access to Playalinda beach – one of the choicest surf spots on the Space Coast – 60 days out of the year.
Florida surf community up in arms, mobilizing troops, etc.
Musk’s attempted sand grab aside, the BFR arouses conflicting emotions on the Space Coast. It’s not without pride that we claim mankind’s only takeoff spot to the moon, and prouder still, tout ourselves as the birthplace of the surfing aerial. Launchpad of heroes, home to Chosen Ones, all that.
So the Artemis program, with its new-age moon landings and Mars shots, does hold a certain allure. It’s just… where are we supposed to go on a northeast swell and a southwest wind?
Last Thursday I attended an FAA ‘informational session’ at the Cape Canaveral Radisson. Old salts in flip flops and visors mingled with pocket-protector types sporting non-ironic mustaches, Barbaras and Beatrices handing out retro “Keep Playalinda Open” bumper stickers, duck hunters, leather-bound fishermen, environmental enthusiasts, and a lone New York Times reporter who scurried about the floor taking notes and asking for clarification,
“So you say Playalinda is a beach?”
“It was the same thing back in 1980, when the Shuttle Program came,” one of the Barbaras informed the Times man. “They wanted to take away our beach access. We fought it, and the road was moved.”
The Florida Faithful settled into their chairs, listened as a spokeswoman in a smart lilac dress and greige blazer took the podium to announce the 25-minute presentation. SpaceX, or the FAA, or whoever organized this get-together, had been clever enough to convene four separate meetings, and instead of public comment had positioned court reporters along the side walls where detractors could voice their concerns in private, so as not to stir up any rabble rousers.
Up on the big screen, an image of the fully-erect Starship bursting from clouds to stratosphere, spewing horizontal plumes of fire, looked suspiciously like a giant cross, lending the conference space the feel of an evangelical megachurch. Narrated by a droning AI voice, the “presentation” was obviously a wholesale production of Grok 4, complete with muddled, mostly-incomprehensible flow charts. The surfers, dog-tired and noodle-armed from seven consecutive days of Hurricane Erin swell, were lulled to sleep within the first few slides.
I fought off my post-Erin torpor, inspired by the chipper Times man, and did my best to apprehend the meaning.
An environmental study had been conducted, and Musk’s team had somehow procured a FONSI, or “Finding of No Significant Impact.” (Here, Grok somehow resisted the urge to display an image of Henry Winkler.) We were informed that 35 Raptor engines would possibly induce sonic booms and shatter windows in Titusville, and, depending on ‘perception of noise’ and the ‘human hearing mechanism,’ jolt approximately 82% of people from their beds in the middle of the night, 22 times a year. Otherwise, nothing much – flight disruptions, maritime vessel restrictions, plus the slightly humorous “Rapid Unscheduled Disassemblies” (RUDs) which would ‘expend’ ten-thousand-ton canisters of supercooled liquid methane into the Atlantic.
By the time the issue of the Playalinda access road came up, the surfers had been in REM for nearly 15 minutes. A minor tragedy, given their usually reliable tendency to audibly groan, boo, and cat-call ‘suck its’ at these types of events. A few emphatic coughs were heard every time the AI voice mentioned the “Gulf of America.”
Otherwise, silence.
When Grok wrapped, the spokesmodel awakened the surfers and directed them to the back of the room where FAA employees stood at the ready to field questions alongside 20 informational posterboards. While the Times man scampered to the environmental display to delve into the roasting of gopher tortoises and deep-frying of scrub jays, the surfers descended upon the transportation board, honing in on aforementioned access road. One of the old salts had done his homework, and asked the representative why they had to close Playalinda beach, which was over three miles from launchpad 39A, while the Boca Chica launch site had been approved for a safety radius of only 2 miles?
Answers, cryptic and elusive.
I logged my own public comment with the court stenographer. You can’t schedule the surf, I said, Sebastian Inlet hasn’t worked since ’03, and Playalinda provides the only south wind blockage within 200 miles.
Why deprive Florida surfers our little slice of undeveloped heaven? Might Elon see it in his heart to appease the pilgrims, à la NASA in the ’80s? A little bridge to salvation? Was I casting pearls before swine?
What think you, BeachGrit loyalists? Rolled out to Playalinda recently? Is Musk supercool or expendable? Who wins the 21st century space race? America First? Have you dreamed of wave pools on Mars? Do we have enough stainless steel?
And what about those square fins up high on the Big Fucking Rocket – ’66 Hansen 50/50 glass-ons?
Could the engineers consider a little Nuuhiwa curve on that trailing edge?
Are you the type to sign online petitions?