Nudists vs. rockets: Why some Floridians fight SpaceX Starship launches

Although Elon Musk’s SpaceX launches in Florida have faced opposition from various groups, including local residents complaining of shattered windows and environmental activists highlighting the negative impact on animals, another community has joined in – the nudists.

As it happens, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently completed a series of public hearings on SpaceX’s proposal to launch its Super Heavy Starship rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), both in-person and online, where there was some pushback.

Indeed, according to the FAA’s draft environmental impact statement (EIS), SpaceX seeks permission to fly its fully reusable Starship system from Launch Complex 39A, where construction of dedicated infrastructures has already started, and future operations would include landings at KSC or droneships across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

That said, the launches would, among other things, require about 60 closures annually of Playalinda Beach, a public beach that’s part of the Canaveral National Seashore, and might cause conflicts in nude sections of the beach between locals and (non-nudist) newcomers, as Erich Schutauff, executive director of the American Association for Nude Recreation, explained at the hearings.

Additionally, Schuttauf has argued that places like Playalinda are crucial for people who travel to places where public nudity is legal. Echoing his sentiment, fellow nudist Deborah Sue Stevens observed that “it’s probably a quarter million people that travel and think like I do, who look for destinations that are beautiful and surrounded by like-minded people.”

‘Tough luck,’ says Starship photographer

However, photographer Max West, who said he was planning to move to Florida to take pictures of Starship launches, said that the spacecraft would be a significant step forward for humanity, opining that there had to be some “little sacrifices along the way,” and that:

“The turtles and the nudists will have to migrate. That’s the cost that you have to pay for this incredible stuff that’s happening.”

Meanwhile, another one of Musk’s ventures is facing opposition. Notably, Starlink is one of the satellite constellations that astronomers blame for reflecting sunlight back to their telescopes, thus obscuring or even mimicking astrophysical phenomena.