SpaceX Starship Launch Faces FAA Delay. Again

Getting to space is difficult. The technical, gravitational, atmospheric, aerodynamic, and fiscal challenges are immense—and then there’s the red-tape …

The Federal Aviation Administration has delayed the release of its final, Programmatic Environmental Assessment of SpaceX's Starship development program until next month. The move—which the FAA attributes to ongoing interagency consultation—will see the originally scheduled release date of 31 May pushed back to 13 June. 

Completion of the environmental assessment—which is but one of the regulatory hurdles SpaceX must clear prior to proceeding with testing of its Starship/Super-Heavy-Booster prototype—will not guarantee that the FAA will issue a launch license. SpaceX's application must also meet FAA safety, risk and financial responsibility requirements. 

The vehicles SpaceX intends to launch, Starship 24 and Super Heavy Booster 7, feature extensive design changes, including an upgraded version of the Raptor engine. 

If the mission goes to plan, the maiden flight of SpaceX’s two-stage launch vehicle will see the booster separate from Starship main-craft 170-seconds after lift-off, then return safely and land approximately 32-kilometers offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. The second stage will subsequently achieve orbit before performing a powered, targeted splashdown approximately one-hundred-kilometers off the northwest coast of Kauai (Hawaii). 

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars. SpaceX operates from multiple launch-sites on the East Coast of the U.S. The company also operates from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, and its Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. 

FMI: www.spacex.com, www.faa.gov