Yeah, 63 is a surprisingly small number. And some of those are just procedural, apparently. SpaceX says they’ve made over 1000 improvements to the new booster.
Turns out that only 57 are needed for the next flight, while another 6 are for some future flight.
These are all very high-level descriptions, of course, like “redesign of launch pad deck”, but still interesting to read through. I’m not sure if they’re specified in more detail elsewhere, or if it’s up to SpaceX discretion.
So presumably, it is now a matter of SpaceX convincing the FAA that they’ve finished the list, and then the FAA actually finishing the process on their end. Hopefully fairly quick.
Typically the FAA will approve a pile of paperwork showing the SpaceX engineers did their homework on what was changed. And the Feds of course retain the right to go see if the new hardware matches the new paperwork.
How much they actually clamber around looking at factories and and installed hardware I cannot say. But I can predict how much shit there’d be if the Feds found widespread intent to pencil-whip the changes. Ask Boeing how well that’s going for them.
“We’re working well with them and have been in good discussions. Teams are working together and I think we’re optimistic sometime next month,” acting FAA Administrator Polly Trottenberg told reporters on the sidelines of a conference.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has to complete an environmental assessment of SpaceX’s environmental impact mitigation measures (like the deluge system) from an endangered species and clean water perspective.
Apparently, this assessment can require between 30 and 135 days and allegedly hasn’t started yet.
Undoubtedly. But whose, and where?
I hadn’t heard of that movie; guess I’ll have to find & watch it!
Meanwhile, I’m waiting for the spindizzy to be invented by some left-field genius in Latvia or somewhere using a couple of tin cans and bits of an old TV set. Quantum gravity? No, you’re looking at it all wrong… just wind the coil THIS way and use uranium instead of iron for the armature…
If this delays Starship too long, Musk should announce that Fish and Game is putting the Artemis program at risk. Starship HLS has to be ready in just two or three years. That’s already a stretch, but a four month delay or more for bureaucracy is crazy. They already did the environmental assessment. I can’t believe it would take 30-135 days to check if a water deluge system might affect the environment in an area that receives torrential rain on a regular basis.
At the very least they should issue a flight permit and THEN do the analysis of the effect of regular flights while SpaceX preps for the next one. They could examine the aftermath of this flight to inform their decision.
Maybe if Artemis is at risk someone in the government will get their head out of their ass and move this along.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would be starting to suspect that there is some well-organized group behind the scenes that has an interest in stopping Starship.
Did SpaceX have to wade through this level of regulatory nonsense when they were developing Falcon?
I must admit I can’t remember…
You would think that someone as smart as Musk and with as much experience as Musk would have seen this coming back when he started planning for the new equipment and worked with all the regulators to get things started. You know, like any normal company. OTOH, this gives SpaceX 3 months more to work on their system AND someone else to pin the delays on. So there is that.
Yeah. I am not a Musk hater by any means, and I think SpaceX is doing awesome things, but I don’t see how you can lay the blame for not meeting basic environmental requirements on anyone other than SpaceX.
I would say to those conspiracy theorists that there is not a very good record from rich guys that demand the dismissal of regulations when making their cutting edge creations.
Musk has not called for the end of any significant regulations. In fact he’s said recently that there are no Federal agencies he’d like to see the end of, and that the FAA is only rarely a bottleneck in their current operations. Though I do remember a time when they had to delay a test launch because the FAA couldn’t get a person on site on the day they promised–like the guy missed his flight or something.
He has regularly complained about the speed at which these agencies operate, which I don’t think is completely unwarranted. 135 days to perform an environmental review of a water deluge system seems a little ridiculous. They aren’t discharging some toxic waste stream. It’s less water than you’d get in an ordinary rainfall.
He has also said repeatedly that the current FAA framework for launch isn’t compatible with a space-based economy. This isn’t a call for ending all regulation–just make it work more like their airplane operations. The FAA safely handles thousands of plane flights a day. But the current setup doesn’t support even a single rocket launch a day. SpaceX wants to fly many times a day.
The Falcon 9 is the safest rocket in the business. They haven’t had a failure in the last 230 flights, and have landed their rocket more times in a row than any of their current competition has launched in a row. That’s not due to adherence to regulation; the FAA doesn’t care if your rocket has a 10% failure rate if you do the right paperwork. But they do recognize that a reliable rocket is also a more competitive one. They have the lowest insurance rates around.
I’m saying that their high degree of reliability is not due to regulation. The F9 is of course subject to all kinds of regulation. But the reason they have >99.5% reliability instead of 90% is not because of conditions the FAA or anyone imposed on them. The FAA mainly cares about impacts to human life.
