Comments | irishnutt: NASA hates everything I love

irishnutt

NASA hates everything I love

Feb 26, 2008 08:40

NASA is considering building a private launch site in the wildlife preserve at Merritt Island, one of the only remaining scrub jay habitats, a haven for manatees, brown pelicans, roseate spoonbills, bald eagles, gopher tortoises and hundreds of other endangered species, not to mention me.

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surfing, birdwatching, conservation, nasa

Comments 8

tstairs February 26 2008, 15:21:06 UTC

WOW! That's awful! What is NASA thinking??? Seriously...can they leave NOTHING that God made alone??? Must everything be man made and used for things they really could do without??

fenrah February 26 2008, 15:30:53 UTC

:'-( That's terrible! I really hope they don't do it.

mistiewatkins February 26 2008, 18:41:45 UTC

It makes me sad, mad, and feel completely impotent. I hope that it doesn't happen.

irishnutt February 26 2008, 21:37:10 UTC

Well, if you want to do something you can always write to NASA expressing your outrage or drive to New Smyrna Beach on Thursday to go to a public meeting about it. More than 200 people went to the one in Titusville last night. I wish I had known about it earlier. Alex and I would have been there for sure. I think the idea is obscene. One person at the meeting said, "It's like putting a Starbucks in the Vatican." I don't know if it's like that, but it's wrong, wrong, wrong.

mistiewatkins February 27 2008, 08:08:48 UTC

That's a good idea. I doubt that I will be able to go to the public meeting, but I can definitely write an outraged letter. My senior english teacher can tell you that I do righteous indignation really well.

anonymous February 26 2008, 18:53:29 UTC

That's messed up. Seriously.

Erin

ladygzb February 27 2008, 03:20:42 UTC

Point of note...Bald eagles aren't endangered anymore. Brown pelicans and manatees are both proposed to be downgraded to threatened:
http://www.fws.gov/home/feature/2008/pdf/BrownPelicanFINALDOIFWSV2.pdf?newsId=C67EC573-DB8D-000A-DC4BE8736767495D
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/09/america/NA-GEN-US-Manatee-Classification.php

Buuuut that doesn't really apply to this discussion; just a happy note, really, that some species are recovering. I feel pretty strongly about protecting what wild areas we have.

Well, this is fortunate:
NASA officials said the idea of a private launchpad is in its infancy.

"We have not made a decision on a site or even on going forward with the project"

irishnutt February 27 2008, 21:18:45 UTC

Actually, after reading NASA's quotes, I wonder if this is a smoke screen. I have a feeling they actually want to build on the KSC grounds, which would also hurt the environment but not to quite such an extent. Maybe if we're all enraged at the idea of building in the preserve, we'll let building in Kennedy Space Center slide.

I had heard that they were considering changing the manatee's status to threatened. There are a lot of pros and cons to that as well, but it is good to know that some species' populations have gone up in recent years. I worry most about the scrub jays, the sea turtles that nest along the dunes, and my own sanity if I can't regularly enjoy the serenity of Playa Linda.

There's so little relatively undisturbed coastline in Florida, and hardly any dune. Willfully destroying what's left seems frankly evil to me.