Welcome to C.A.R.N.
Communities Against Rocket Noise
because sonic booms and communities are incompatible.
Submit a Comment
We have until Monday, Jan 27th to submit comments. These are SUPER important. No comments = no public concern about rocket noise.
You can copy and paste this suggested comment and/or add your own personal experience (i.e. shaken windows and broken glass, being woken up, etc.)
We must let them know how we feel!
To Whom it May Concern,
The sound from the sonic booms wakes up me and my family at night, shakes our house, and is incompatible with living in our community.
There is plenty of evidence to support the physiologic harm of loud noise to human health including hearing loss, sleep disruption, stress, cardiovascular disease, and cognitive impairment. That is why the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has set Maximum Permissible Sound Level Readings for motorcycles at 80 decibels and also why supersonic jets were banned in 1973, after the US Navy received 40,000 complaints about the negative impact of the loud sonic booms. Given this, I have the following feedback and requests for your consideration.
1. Use the appropriate measurement standard for Sonic Booms, shifting from an FAA/OSHA average to an EPA standard of Maximum Permissible Sound Level Reading. It makes no sense that Vandenberg is measured according to FAA/OSHA standards, which were intended for average noise thresholds over extended periods of time in communities facing sustained air traffic noise. If a sound as loud as a gunshot wakes you up in the middle of the night in a startled panic, it is nonsensical to average or spread out that impact over the subsequent 24 hours.
2. Implement a Best Management Practice that all launches should follow a Dog Leg trajectory, sending the sonic boom carpet over the ocean before launching into orbit, rather than directly over communities. It may lead to smaller payloads and cost more money, but this will reduce the physiologic and emotional impact of the noise on human communities.
3. Initiate prospective community-based research on the human impact of sonic booms for individuals living within the boom carpet. This could include distribution of ANSI type 1 sound meters to individual homes or a collaborative study with Kent Gee from BYU who is already studying acoustic impact of SpaceX launches in other communities.
Sample Comment
Topics to Consider Avoiding
We are best off making specific, regulatory-focused decisions that are within the scope of the upcoming Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Among the angles that are unlikely to get traction:
Politics, Elon Musk, or questions of fairness or private use of public land: All very reasonable points, but these are regulators who care only about interpretation of the law. The net worth of Elon Musk is not relevant to the EIS and regulators doing their job.
Whales: The Air Force decided decades ago that the reflective properties of water prevent most sound from entering affecting whale migrations (while swimming underwater consider how well you can hear what is happening above water.) Making a whale-focused argument is unlikely to move the needle.
Contrails: The Air Force feels rocket contrails are mostly water and trace amounts of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide.The chemical properties emitted from these rockets are unlikely to be persuasive.
Get Informed
Vandenberg Space Force Base wants to increase the annual number of rocket launches from 36 to 100. Learn more about it…
Decibels Explained
According to Space Force’s own data, the engine noise from a Falcon 9 rocket over Lompoc is 8 times the legal limit of a motorcycle.
The Falcon 9 engine produces 110 decibels of sound by the time it reaches Lompoc. The federally determined peak decibel limit for a motorcycle is 80 decibels (Source).
To understand why 110 decibels is 8 times louder than 80 decibels you have to understand a little about decibels. Very unhelpfully, decibels are measured on a logarithmic scale. For every increase of 10 decibel is ten times the energy and twice the loudness perceived by the human ear. So a 30 decibel difference has 1,000 times the energy (10 x 10 x 10) and 8 times the loudness (2 x 2 x 2.) In other words, these rockets are crazy loud. And if they were being made by a motorcycle, the driver would be arrested.
Regulations
When looking for a noise-level standard for rockets, the U.S. Space Force didn’t look to EPA rules. Instead, they relied on OSHA’s rules. This was an easy choice. Unlike the EPA whose regulations were built around peak decibel levels, OSHAs rules were built around average decibel levels. Which makes sense for OSHA. OSHA oversees workplace safety so their standards are designed around sound exposure over an eight-hour work day.
This is the wrong standard for regulating rocket noise. OSHA’s rules are designed for adults working in a factory - adults who have chosen to work there - and has nothing to do with the standard for children who have chosen nothing more than to go to sleep.
But just to be extra sure, Space Force went a step further and determined they should average the sound impact of these rockets over a 24 hour period instead of eight. In other words, they took an irrelevant standard and made it 3 times more permissive.
The real-world standard should be based on peak decibels, not averaged over hours.
Solutions
There are two possible solutions:
Dogleg the launches out to sea on their way to orbit. This requires more fuel which, in turn, means smaller payloads, but there is no technical reason why these rockets cannot head due south before changing their trajectories. Yes, it will be more expensive, but there’s also a cost to shaking hundreds of thousands of houses in the middle of the night.
Relocate the launches to Kodiak, Alaska. The southeastern tip is a designated space launch facility that is already used by California based rocket companies Astra and ABL Space Systems. One benefit: The atmosphere is thinner as you get that far north so less fuel is needed to reach orbit. But most importantly, rockets launched from Kodiak fly only over the ocean, not cities.
Kodiak will be more expensive to launch from, but with a $350 billion market cap, SpaceX can afford it.
Who We Are
We are parents and students, doctors and teachers, patriots, neighbors, Republicans and Democrats, and we all are tired of being woken up in the middle of the night and having our windows rattled by a private company flying over our homes.
Just because you send someone an email doesn’t given you the right to shake their house at 3 am.
We are not against rockets or progress or jobs or direct-to-cellular communication. We simply feel private companies like SpaceX that use public facilities should ‘dog leg’ their launch trajectories - even if it means incurring higher costs per-pound of payload.
Last year, SpaceX’s valuation went from $180 billion to $350 billion, more than Boeing ($94B) and Lockheed Martin ($144B) combined. So they can afford it. And that’s the difference between SpaceX and the rest of us.
Get Involved
We need your help! Maybe you’re an expert in graphic design. Or the law. Or you just want to show your support. In any case, we need your help!
Also, please share this page on NextDoor, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram - wherever you are active.
Sonic Boom Bans: The 50 Year Old Precedent
Passenger planes have not been allowed to generate sonic booms over land since 1973, when an FAA ban went into affect following 40,000 complaints to the U.S. Navy.
SpaceX skirts this ban because they do not carry passengers. (Source)
Share On Social
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Did anyone else just hear that rocket? Just because you send an email in advance doesn’t give you the right to shake someone’s house. They HAVE TO HEAR from us before Jan 27th. See where to submit a comment and suggested talking points here:
https://www.stopsonicbooms.org/
Contact Us
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