The SpaceX Super Heavy booster in the FAA report was analyzed with up to 35 engines and 103 million newtons of thrust. This would be just short of triple the thrust of the Saturn V.
The SpaceX Starship was analyzed with up to 9 engines and 28.7 million newtons of thrust.
The Saturn V had 34.5 million newtons (7.6 million pounds) of thrust at launch.
The 9 engine SpaceX Starship upper stage would have 83% of the thrust of the Saturn V booster stage.
An 11 engines SpaceX Starship upper stage would surpass the thrust of the Saturn V.
There will be further improvements to the Raptor engines which will allow the 9 engine version to surpass the thrust of the Saturn V.
The FAA has a draft tiered Environmental Assessment for SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program to increase the launch and landing cadence to 25 per year. The 2022 FAA analysis was permitting 5 launches.
The FAA has concluded that the modification of SpaceX’s existing vehicle operator license for Starship/Super Heavy operations conforms to the prior environmental documentation, consistent with the data contained in the 2022 PEA, that there are no significant environmental changes, and all pertinent conditions and requirements of the prior approval have been met or will be met in the current action.
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The powers they are working with boggle the mind. It astounds me they do not shake themselves to pieces just from the sound alone.
If you look at the tile problems, maybe they do. It may be that pure acoustic energy is breaking some of them. Remember that a major purpose of the water deluge system during the Apollo program was actually to absorb sound energy; Without it they would have had to evacuate the entire Cape, well beyond the borders of the launch facility, to avoid killing people by noise alone.
It’s possible that enough of the launch noise is being reflected back at the rocket by its surroundings to cause damage, and they need to do further acoustic mitigation.
Floating barge landings are on the table. Which makes sense, even if they don’t have such a large barge yet as far as I know. The barges are safer for return tests and they can also return the rockets for refurbish and relaunch. Not very fast, but it would work.
They need other options than just returning to VLA, and to understand the operations for every case. Barges can take the rockets to nearby launch towers too, while return and capture in the launch tower is fully mastered.
Eventually these rockets out to have several potential landing targets abroad that could receive them, refurbish and relaunch them, going in a sequence of launches and landings before returning to their starting point, if that ever happens. Kinda like airplanes.