say for example, the FAA wanted to issue a warrant, or subpoena , for any random FAA administrative law violation. Are they instituting administrative or criminal actions?
–in the SpaceX example here– failure to secure a launch-license, is exactly what sort of violation?

(depending on what Federal Regulation one might be violating, one may be criminally liable and face prison, or one might only be incurring civil-fines & administrative actions, short of prison, or anywhere in between. This is the true insidiousness of the administrative-state.)

Kirk: Can you imagine any situation where a company like SpaceX, responsible, competitive, striving to demonstrate intelligence, capability, and good product, would have wanted “to launch west, overfly Orlando?” You can’t. Competition forces good behavior. SpaceX cannot afford to do foolish things that will hurt its brand.

In truth, my words however were bit over the top. I agree that the FAA does have a role. I just despise the fact that people today assume it is far larger than it should be.

I wonder if NASA would be satisfied with SpaceX launching their unmanned Dragon V2 demo flight from pad 40, of if they need to simulate crew loading and closeout on that mission itself.

They have a legitimate role here. Had SpaceX wanted to launch west, overfly Orlando, and land the central booster in the gulf, then FAA would have had good grounds to deny a permit.

The same as for the Delta II. It will be used as long as it is useful, then retired when it is obsolete.

From the article: “A knowledgeable rocket engineer who asked not to be named said the Heavy is too powerful for routine use launching Earth-orbiting satellites but not powerful enough to serve as a stand-alone lunar exploration rocket.
He said it’s generally agreed that meaningful missions to the moon or beyond will require rockets capable of boosting 130-metric-ton payloads into Earth orbit.”

I’m not sure who suggested that Falcon Heavy should be in the category of lunar exploration rocket, but it wasn’t SpaceX. Falcon Heavy may be more powerful than necessary to launch Earth-orbiting satellites, but if the price is right, then customers will come to it, and SpaceX has already announced a larger rocket suitable for lunar and interplanetary manned travel.

Customers have already come: Arabsat (Arabsat 6A), Inmarsat, U.S. Air Force (STP-2), and Viasat.
reference: http://www.spacex.com/missions

The general answer to both Logsdon and the unnamed but knowledgeable rocket engineer is that Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are stepping stones to larger rockets, just as Falcon 1 was. Rather than starting big and learning all the lessons the hard way, on the large expensive stuff, they did as every business does and started out small and affordable then working to larger size as revenue allows and as customers desire.

I may be a little harsh on the unnamed rocket engineer, as he probably wants to be unnamed due to his statement being paraphrased out of context. He may be smarter than the author, William Harwood, makes him appear, although I would not suggest unmanned probes to the Moon or other planets are meaningless.

Harwood does a nice job of presenting some of the reasons that this first launch is risky.

Only perhaps that it has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with willful blindness. So the next question is why society allows any blind person to lead us into the abyss?

I promise you. These people would never be employed by me. This is just too fundamental to trust their judgement on anything else. It will never change as long as we continue to reward this nonsense.

Worse, because our system of govt. allows such morons to decide all our fates and the imbecile ratio seems to be growing. The future hangs in the balance.

“The human race? Yeah, they had a shot but ultimately didn’t make it. We’re really hopeful for the goop on sigma 9 though.”

http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-02-05