SpaceX Decries Sluggish Regulatory Pace

2023, to date, has seen SpaceX conduct upwards of seventy successful orbital launches—an average, more or less, of one blast-off every four-days. Notwithstanding the brisk tempo of ascending rockets, leaders of Elon Musk’s world-leading space-launch concern contend the U.S. federal government is acting—perhaps vindictively, perhaps in a spirit of nonfeasance—against SpaceX’s stated purpose of accelerating the cadence of its spaceflights.

During an 18 October 2023 Senate hearing, SpaceX vice-president for build and reliability William Gerstenmaier urged lawmakers to streamline extant regulations for purpose of increasing the number of FAA personnel tasked with issuing space-launch licenses.

Mr. Gerstenmaier remarked: “With the flight rates that are increasing, with the other players that are coming on board, we see there’s potentially a big industry problem coming where the pace of government is not going to be able to keep up with the pace of development on the private-sector side. Promoting Safety, Innovation, and Competitiveness in U.S. Commercial Human Space Activities.”

The April 2023 inaugural orbital test-flight of SpaceX’s Starship platform—the largest, most powerful rocket yet conceived of by humankind—proved something less than a resounding success.

Approximately one-minute eight-seconds after lift-off, intermittent plumes of flame were observed within Starship’s otherwise stable thrust column. Two-minutes after liftoff, as Starship neared first-stage separation, a pronounced jet of flame erupted from the spacecraft’s thrust column. Three-minutes four-seconds after lift-off, the Starbase control room fell silent as Starship commenced flipping end-over-end. Four minutes into Starship’s first orbital launch attempt, the great rocket exploded in an adiabatic cataclysm of rapidly-depressurizing cryogenic fuels.

Notwithstanding the mishap having claimed no lives and damaged only property belonging to SpaceX, the FAA, characteristically reactionary, summarily grounded Starship before stipulating the implementation of 63 corrective actions—a bold gambit for an agency only semi-competent in the certification and oversight of conventional atmospheric aircraft.

Shortly thereafter, a gaggle of reflexively outraged environmental non-profits sued the Federal Aviation Administration, alleging the agency violated the National Environmental Policy Act by allowing SpaceX to launch Starship from the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, Starbase facility.

The plaintiffs—the Center for Biological Diversity, the American Bird Conservancy, SurfRider Foundation, Save Rio Grande Valley, and the Carrizo-Comecrudo Nation of Texas—contended the FAA failed to undertake a “comprehensive environmental review” of the Starship launch.

The vociferous quartet argued the FAA ought to have conducted an exhaustive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) prior to allowing SpaceX to attempt the 20 April Starship launch from Boca Chica.

By way of documents filed in Washington D.C. district court, the group claimed: “The FAA failed to take the requisite hard look at the proposed project and has concluded that significant adverse effects will not occur due to purported mitigation measures.”

The plaintiffs argued the FAA waived more thorough analyses based on proposed “environmental mitigations,” contending as one that such mitigations as the agency actually did require of SpaceX were woefully insufficient to offset environmental damages resultant of: launch events, the construction of launch infrastructure, increased ground traffic on and near SpaceX’s Starbase, and “anomalies” the likes of the destruction of the Starship launch pad and mid-air explosion of the spacecraft itself.

Prior to undertaking a second Starship orbital launch attempt, SpaceX must obtain authorizations from the FAA as well as environmental approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That subject authorizations may prove decidedly—and unjustly—more difficult to secure is a concern by which SpaceX’s upper management is collectively plagued.

In a proclamation conforming uncannily to the assertions of the aforementioned, litigiously-inclined environmental non-profits, the FAA declared SpaceX must adhere to an additional environmental review process the agency is undertaking in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The FAA’s consultation with the latter agency will, for reasons at once self-evident and acutely suspect, extend into November 2023.

The same SpaceX officials who reportedly worked for two years to obtain the initial Starship launch license have passed a period measurable in months waiting for the second.

Addressing the delay, SpaceX senior vice-president Tim Hughes stated: “We’ve been ready to fly for a few weeks now, and we’d very much like the government to be able to move as quickly as we are. If you’re able to build a rocket faster than the government can regulate it, that’s upside down, and that needs to be addressed. So we think some regulatory reforms are needed.”

The FAA’s apathy belies SpaceX’s salience to a number of high-profile and spectacularly expensive NASA initiatives. In 2021, the agency awarded SpaceX $2.9-billion to convey astronauts to and from the moon aboard Starship under NASA’s Artemis program.

Mr. Hughes opined: “There should be some sort of prioritization relative to programs of national importance, for instance, launches that serve the Artemis program. One would think that those would be treated with the utmost efficiency, all within the context of protecting public safety.”

A clever, task-oriented chap, SpaceX proprietor Elon Musk is, by nature and practice, an impassioned and inveterate loather of regulators who’s previously criticized the FAA’s indolence.

To the subject of the 2020 launch of a Starship prototype, Musk tweeted: “Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure. Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per-year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars.”

In a recent blog post, Kelvin Coleman, head of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, conceded the agency has been “challenged to keep pace with this industry. … keeping pace intellectually, not just in licensing. That’s what makes it fun. We like rising to the challenge.”

Colemen, whose conflation of fun and duty is contemporaneously inappropriate and worrying, added: “As we see more companies and the cadence of operations increase, what that means for us is increased demand for our products and services. We still have some growth to do on how we deliver on that demand.”

A senior FAA official who spoke on condition of anonymity contended the agency’s space division “has been calling for more resources for several years, but with little luck.” The unnamed official reported the FAA has “had to shift all of the resources that we have allocated for [SpaceX’s] programs to Starship to support the next launch; meaning work on Falcon [SpaceX’s historic workhorse launch vehicle] is on hold for the moment. So they’re starting to feel it in a real way.”

Referring to the worsening incongruities between SpaceX’s operational aspirations and the FAA’s regulatory facility, Mr. Gerstenmaier posited: “We’re jeopardizing U.S. leadership by the current approach. And I think this is a very pivotal time, because I only see it getting more intense as other providers come online and more activities are going to be moving forward.”

Gerstenmaier concluded: “The innovation that we need to keep to be a leader in spaceflight is being jeopardized because it’s incompatible with the regulatory approach. I want to stress, we’re not saying we want to put public safety at risk in any way, shape or form. We want to protect public safety. But we want to move as fast as we can move within that framework.”

SpaceX intends to launch as many as a dozen rockets per-month throughout 2024—to include a number of Starship launches in support of the company’s Starlink enterprise. Moreover, a new generation of spacecraft currently being developed by United Launch Alliance, a Boeing/Lockheed-Martin joint-venture, and Blue Origin, the space-launch outfit founded by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, are nearing operational readiness and will presently further crowd the FAA’s launch approval docket.

FMI: www.spacex.com