After Starship Test Flight Pushed Back to November, SpaceX Says It’s ‘Taking Longer’ to Paperwork ‘Than It Does to Design and Build’ Rocket: Elon Musk Says ‘We Won’t Get Humanity On Mars If This Keeps Up’
Elon Muska company that makes spacecraft SpaceX on Tuesday it confirmed regulatory red tape as the cause of delays in the development of its powerful Starship launch vehicle whose fifth flight test is now expected in late November.
What happened: Starship has been preparing for its fifth flight test since the first week of August but it was canceled due to “unreasonable” and “illogical” licensing issues, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday. .
“Unfortunately, we continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes longer to do the government paperwork to issue a license to launch a rocket than it does to design and build the actual equipment,” SpaceX said.
The company said it recently received a license budget to start from the end of November from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which marks a delay of two months from the previously stated date of mid-September. The company said the delay was not based on a new safety issue but based on an “extensive” environmental assessment.
Environmental Concerns Around Starship Launch: Concerns have been raised about Starship’s water-cooled metal reactor spewing waste into the environment and the company’s Starbase facility having a negative impact on local flora and fauna, among others.
SpaceX has previously denied these allegations.
“At Starbase, we implement an extensive list of mitigation measures developed by federal and state agencies, most of which require year-round review and regular updates to regulators and experts. autonomous biological systems,” SpaceX said on Tuesday. “The report that we operate without, or against, environmental regulation appears to be false.”
Flight Tests: SpaceX has conducted four flight tests with Starship so far.
SpaceX last launched Starship in the first half of June. During the test, the two stages of the vehicle – the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster – separated, and the booster had a soft explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. The spacecraft ignited its engines and went into space, made a controlled re-entry to Earth, and had a gentle splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
The entire flight took one hour and six minutes from take off. The mission’s mission was to re-enter Earth and the mission was accomplished while sustaining vehicle damage.
The first planes were less efficient. When the spacecraft failed to reach space on the first flight, it reached space and exploded on the second test flight. During the third test flight, the spacecraft broke up as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere from space.
Incoming Flight: The two-stage Starship is considered the world’s most powerful launch vehicle, measuring 121 meters long and weighing nearly 5,000 tons. For the next flight, SpaceX’s goal is to hold the Starship’s power platform back to Starbase using the launch tower’s mechanical arms, marking a major demonstration of Starship performance once again.
The company relies on frequent test flights to test and improve the vehicle’s capabilities. Musk said in March that Starship is expected to have at least six test flights this year. However, only two test flights have been completed so far in 2024.
The Starship is the key to NASA’s dream of returning humans to the Moon.
NASA’s Artemis 3 mission scheduled for launch before September 2026 is expected to help humans return to the surface of the moon with the help of a different version of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft. The last time humans set foot on the Moon was in 1972 with Apollo 17. Since then, no crew has traveled outside of low Earth orbit.
Meanwhile, Musk is looking to take humans to Earth’s neighboring planet Mars in a Starship.
“We’re not going to get humanity to Mars if this continues,” Musk said of the regulatory hurdles the Starship faces on Tuesday.
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