The FAA to SpaceX “Nice company you got here.
Sure would be a shame if something happened to it.”

In the past week the FAA proved unequivocally that it is abusing its regulatory powers for political reasons, imposing much harsher regulatory restrictions on SpaceX while allowing other companies much more free rein.

That reality became most evident first with the FAA response to the serious failure of one of the strap-on solid-fueled boosters during the second test launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket on October 4, 2024. During that launch something went seriously wrong with that booster 38 seconds after launch, involving an explosion and what appeared to be ejection of that booster’s nozzle. Though the launch succeeded in placing its payload into the correct orbit, it required the rocket’s main engines to compensate aggressively.

Despite this, the FAA decided no investigation by it was necessary.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial space launches in the United States, said in a statement that it assessed the booster anomaly and “determined no investigation is warranted at this time.” The FAA is not responsible for regulating launch vehicle anomalies unless they impact public safety.

This decision is correct, but the contrast with the FAA’s treatment of SpaceX is quite striking. If the FAA applied the absurd standard it has been using against SpaceX, it would claim that this Vulcan launch threatened public safety because the incident occurred 38 seconds after launch and was thus relatively close to Florida, where an out of control rocket could potentially threaten public safety.

Such a threat of course really doesn’t exist, as the FAA correctly concluded, because the rocket has a self-destruct system to prevent it from crashing in habitable areas.

Yet the agency failed to use this logic with SpaceX. Instead the FAA decided anything SpaceX launches that doesn’t work perfectly poses a serious public safety threat, no matter where or how it happens, and thus has repeatedly grounded SpaceX launches. A first stage, flown already 23 times, falls over after soft-landing successfully on its drone ship in the middle of the Atlantic, and somehow this justified the FAA grounding SpaceX due to the threat to public safety. A second stage, after successfully placing two astronauts into orbit, misfires during its de-orbit burn but still lands in the middle of the ocean, far from any habitable regions, and somehow this justified the FAA grounding SpaceX due to the threat to public safety.

And the fact that a Superheavy returning to its launchpad at Boca Chica will cause a sonic boom — as do every Falcon 9 landings at Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg — is now justification for grounding Starship/Superheavy test launches, even though sonic booms pose zero threat to anyone other than startling them with the sudden noise.

The FAA further illustrated its bias against SpaceX when it decided to allow the company to do its launch this morning of Europe’s Hera asteroid mission, but specifically stated that the company’s other launches remain grounded.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle is authorized to return to flight only for the planned Hera mission scheduled to launch on Oct. 7 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The FAA has determined that the absence of a second stage reentry for this mission adequately mitigates the primary risk to the public in the event of a reoccurrence of the mishap experienced with the Crew-9 mission.

Safety will drive the timeline for the FAA to complete its review of SpaceX’s Crew-9 mishap investigation report and when the agency will authorize Falcon 9 to return to regular operations.

When compared with the agency’s decision regarding ULA, this decision is ridiculous, because it is certain that the Vulcan strap-on boosters as well as its first stage did not return to Earth in the locations planned, though all landed in the ocean safely. The risk to public safety is the same, nil. Why then is the FAA blocking SpaceX and not ULA?

Using this same crazy criteria, the agency would immediately ground ULA, insist that no further launches can occur until the agency completes its own “investigation” (which will simply be a retyping of whatever conclusions ULA’s engineers come to after they complete the company’s probe). That grounding would last weeks, maybe months, based on the FAA’s behavior in connection with SpaceX.

But the FAA has not done this. With ULA it has acted properly, staying out because it has no place at the table. That it doesn’t do the same for SpaceX now proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the agency is putting its thumb on the scale and treating SpaceX more severely.

We must then ask why? Of all the rocket companies that have ever existed, SpaceX has clearly proven it is the most reliable and safest ever. It launches and relaunches its rockets more frequently than anyone has ever done before, and does so with remarkably few issues. ULA meanwhile is a typical old style rocket company that cannot reuse any of its rockets, and routinely has niggling problems during each launch because those rockets aren’t built to the same reliable standards as SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9.

To regulate SpaceX so harshly while letting ULA off the hook shows us the FAA management has a political agenda in its actions. It is going after SpaceX, and the only reason I can identify is Elon Musk’s public support of Donald Trump and the Republican Party and his opposition to the Democratic Party that controls the White House and most of the federal bureaucracy.

In other words, the FAA is abusing its regulatory power for political reasons.

The FCC proves its partisan hostility to SpaceX

Nor is this anti-Musk/SpaceX effort by the White House apparently limited just to the FAA. For example, Musk immediately offered to provide free Starlink terminals to aid the rescue efforts following the Hurricane Helene, including using them for direct cellphone-to-satellite service in partnership with T-Mobile. Yet, the FCC did not give its approval for this latter service for almost a week, thus hampering that rescue effort. That approval required a waiver because the agency is still weighing the SpaceX/T-Mobile plan in the face of objections from other cellular companies.

In a sane world, the FCC would have instantly approved the waiver, noting that it was very temporary pending its normal regulatory review. Instead, the agency sat on its hands for a week, preventing SpaceX from getting positive PR but seriously hindering the rescue effort.

Similarly, the FCC last year canceled an almost billion dollar grant it had previously awarded to SpaceX for providing high-speed internet service to rural regions, claming absurdly that the company had failed to “demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service,” even though SpaceX is the only company successfully doing so. Had that grant been allowed to go through, the region hit by Helene would have had that high speed Starlink service already.

Adding to the attacks by the FAA and FCC, the EPA has also piled on, imposing its own absurd regulatory rules to block further Starship/Superheavy test launches at Boca Chica, claiming ludicrously that potable water used in the rocket’s launch deluge system will somehow harm the environment.

Public safety and the environment have nothing to do with these actions. The Biden administration and its Democratic Party political appointees at these agencies are going after SpaceX simply because of Elon Musk’s political choices. They don’t like his decision to support their political opponents, and are telling every other businessman in the country that if you don’t kowtow to them, if you dare oppose them, they will do the same to you.

Such behavior violates every decent, legal, and moral law in a democratic republic. Anyone who is willing to play that kind of vicious game of extortion and blackmail should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, as fast as possible. At a minimum, this behavior justifies the need for a harsh and merciless house-cleaning, beginning first with the thugs in the White House who think Americans are a plaything they can slap about at will.