FAA issues launch license for 8th Starship/Superheavy test flight
The FAA yesterday announced that it has given SpaceX the launch license for its 8th orbital test launch of Starship/Superheavy, presently scheduled for March 3, 2025 at 5:30 PM (Central).
“After completing the required and comprehensive safety review, the FAA determined the SpaceX Starship vehicle can return to flight operations while the investigation into the Jan. 16 Starship Flight 7 mishap remains open,” the FAA’s emailed statement reads. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted phrase reveals much. There is a new boss in Washington now who will not tolerate unnecessary red tape that stymies private enterprise unnecessarily. SpaceX is the only entity qualified to investigate the loss of Starship in the seventh flight, and it has completed its investigation. All the FAA can really do in its own “investigation” is retype SpaceX’s conclusion. It might have some clean-up work of its own relating to clearing the air space after Starship was destroyed, but even there SpaceX’s conclusion note that the plan worked out before launch between the company and the FAA worked perfectly.
Under Biden the FAA would have made SpaceX wait while that retyping took place, likely assigned to someone who can only hunt and peck at an old manual typewriter. No more.
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The FAA yesterday announced that it has given SpaceX the launch license for its 8th orbital test launch of Starship/Superheavy, presently scheduled for March 3, 2025 at 5:30 PM (Central).
“After completing the required and comprehensive safety review, the FAA determined the SpaceX Starship vehicle can return to flight operations while the investigation into the Jan. 16 Starship Flight 7 mishap remains open,” the FAA’s emailed statement reads. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted phrase reveals much. There is a new boss in Washington now who will not tolerate unnecessary red tape that stymies private enterprise unnecessarily. SpaceX is the only entity qualified to investigate the loss of Starship in the seventh flight, and it has completed its investigation. All the FAA can really do in its own “investigation” is retype SpaceX’s conclusion. It might have some clean-up work of its own relating to clearing the air space after Starship was destroyed, but even there SpaceX’s conclusion note that the plan worked out before launch between the company and the FAA worked perfectly.
Under Biden the FAA would have made SpaceX wait while that retyping took place, likely assigned to someone who can only hunt and peck at an old manual typewriter. No more.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
One of the more concerning papers on the subject:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380812262_About_feasibility_of_SpaceX's_human_exploration_Mars_mission_scenario_with_Starship
The capper:
“…we were not able to find a feasible Mars mission scenario using Starship, even when assuming optimal conditions such as 100% recovery rate of crew consumables during flight.”
Now, maybe this is Europe whistling past the graveyard—and maybe it isn’t.
But I think this is concerning enough to NOT kill SLS.
People can Bash MSFC all they like–but there is a reason why it takes time to get a good HLLV going
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190033330/downloads/20190033330.pdf
You know what I look for?
Individuals who take the time to write papers
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19690013408/downloads/19690013408.pdf
Jeff Wright wrote: “People can Bash MSFC all they like–but there is a reason why it takes time to get a good HLLV going”
It takes even longer if you don’t start developing the next good heavy lift launch vehicle. MSFC would be well advised to get started on that rather than depend upon the old, obsolete Saturns, Shuttles, and Space Launch Systems. The world is moving on, making advances, achieving goals, and MSFC has not joined that race, yet.
“You know what I look for? Individuals who take the time to write papers”
Papers are all nice and good, and everything, but they aren’t quite as useful as flight hardware. It is the hardware that gets you to the Moon and to Mars, not the papers. The papers might tell you how to do it, but it is the actual doing that counts.
You know what I look for? Individuals who take the time and spend the money to make the rockets, the spacecraft, and the space stations. Robert keeps telling us about those guys, and they are much more impressive than the stuff coming out of Marshall, these days. Maybe Marshall might consider joining the race, one of these days.
“One of the more concerning papers on the subject:”
Well, the conclusion that:
We didn’t need a paper to tell us that. We have known that since Musk said his goal was to colonize Mars.
And that recommendation to include international partners and perhaps political organizations is the worst idea ever! That is how projects die horrible deaths or go over budget and slip their schedules. There is a reason that SpaceX is a vertically integrated company, and my recommendation is that they stay that way.
Or, this is Europe — or should I say, several German scientists — admitting up front that they have very limited information about Starship design details or SpaceX plans, and making assumptions (like a 1200t wet mass) that are based on an already obsolete iteration of Starship, and then further stacking the deck with other assumptions about a crewed Mars surface mission (excessive estimates of power needs in transit, requirement of nuclear energy for the primary power surface source, assumption of the utter infeasibility of generating propellant through ISRU systems, etc.).
And then, to echo what Edward says, there’s this amazing claim: “We recommend several remedies, e.g. stronger international participation to distribute technology development and thus improve feasibility.”
That is not how you speed up a program. That’s how you slow down a program.
But whatever Starship’s prospects for Mars, *none* of this makes a case for SLS there. Looking at NASA’s design reference mission 5.0, the two main options considered are 1) “SEP-Chemical option,” would see Solar Electric Power (SEP) units used to pre-deploy elements to near-Mars space, and 2) a hybrid of SEP and storable chemical propulsion systems for both the crew and cargo missions. Under option (1) , the total number of SLS flights needed for the Phobos mission would stand at 10, with 12 SLS flights needed for the first human Mars surface mission and then only 10 SLS flights for the second human Mars surface mission. Under option (2), the total number of SLS missions for the Phobos campaign drops to 8, whereas the number of SLS flights for the first human mission to the Mars surface increases to 14.
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/09/nasa-considers-sls-launch-sequence-mars-missions-2030s/
Think about that. We are talking about a launch architecture (with a single launch pad available to it, mind you) that is going to struggle to reach even a single launch per year. Barring some massive increase in funding to NASA of a scale not seen since Apollo, even abandoning all further Moon missions means needing at least a decade to assemble the components for a Mars mission. And that just isn’t remotely feasible.
That Eurotrash paper reads like someone asked them to provide a report on what they did last month so they frantically wrote it.