For those not following the story, this is an attempt to launch a massive rocket without adequate cooling or shockwave mitigation, so it’s likely to cause substantial harm to the local ecosystem and the small community of retirees who live near the launch site.
This is true, however the propellants are liquid oxygen and methane so they would just boil off
For this test they mainly want to see if the rocket actually goes up correctly, then how it handles re-entry and if its still controllable. Thats why they’re targeting the ocean, so that if something goes wrong its still just going in the ocean and not potentially hitting something important/with people. Also I think the scale of methane we’re talking here is pretty inconsequential in terms of emissions compared to other industrial and natural sources.
