Did they have to scrub SN9 completely? I’m seeing that SN10 is rolling out.
Yep. FAA is still dragging its feet. I’m not sure why, since this is a repeat of the sn8 flight which was already approved.
I hope this isn’t the result of political change at the FAA. There were rumblings a while ago about forcing a full environmental review, site survey, and canvassing nearby residents before allowing SpaceX to continue launching Starship - a process some have said could take a couple of years, and open up the site to attempts to shut it down by various activist groups. That seemed to calm down for a while and I haven’t heard more about it, but this is a worrying sign that the regulatory environment may have changed with the new administration.
For the FAA’s part, they claim they are working as fast as they can. I guess we will see.
One thing for sure - Musk is the kind of person who won’t tolerate excessive regulatory delays. If he keeps getting stalled by bureaucrcy, he could easily decide to move Starship testing out of country. There are lots of equatorial countries that would love to have SpaceX investment.
I’m wondering if it could have something to do with the damage to the nose that was repaired.
Oh, that’s a good point. It would at least give them an excuse for further review.
Good luck dealing with the ITAR issues in that case.
So… back to the Marshall Islands again? There must be some equatorial countries not on the ITAR sanctioned list.
There’s also those oil platforms he bought. They are deep water rigs, and presumably could be dragged out into international waters. But then he’d still have to deal with at least ICAO.
But I suspect the FAA will get its act together at some point.
Good FAQ at ArsTechnica:
Brian
Monday (1 February) now.
I’m not saying when it is. I’m clearly jinxing it.
FAA gives thumbs up:
No ETA that I can find.
Brian
Head’s up: Starship is loading fuel, and could fly as soon as 15 minutes from now.
Livestream:
Over 200k watching right now!
I love seeing both rockets on pads at the same time; it looks awesome!
They must be confident that either Starship won’t RUD on landing again, or that the explosion won’t send shrapnel into SN10. I actually thought they’d move SN10 off the pad before launching SN9.
Go big or go home!
I always thought this picture was very cool looking:
But it was always kind of bittersweet, too, because the only reason there were two Shuttles queued up like that was because by the point that picture was taken, NASA had realized that the Shuttle was so unsafe that they needed to have a second one ready to go in the event they had another Columbia situation, with a ship in orbit that was already fatally damaged. (The picture is from 2008, at which point the Shuttle was well along to being retired.)
But the picture looks like the Shuttle had somehow lived up to its early promise; like Shuttles were lining up to launch like Delta airplanes at Hartsfield or something. There’s even a rainbow! (There’s another two-Shuttle picture that’s also cool, but it doesn’t have a rainbow.)
Well, darn.
We should hire Elon Musk to do the Fourth of July, though! BOOM!
dang
so close
It sounds like a problem they can fix tho.
The second engine didn’t light. That’s a different failure mode than last time. They may have some more design work to do on the Raptors or the fuel system.
Disappointing but you can see this thing is going to nail it soon.
Some piece of… something flew out of the engine skirt when the second engine ignited. Might be a Raptor problem, not a Starship problem.