SpaceX made the request yesterday, and the FAA granted it today. Eric Berger turned out to be right.

SpaceX wasted no time in responding: “Targeting back-to-back Falcon 9 launches tonight from California and Florida → http://spacex.com/launches/”

Starlink Group 9-5 and Starlink Group 8-10 will be launching in the wee hours at 12:58am and 3:43am respectively.

At least We know it’s not a Stuck CAPS LOCK Key. You may have created a Monster. I rather enjoy This Formatting.

If you eat this in moderation, I understand – but You got to see It.

BLSinSC: I’ve said this to you before but it needs saying again. Using CAPS (which on the internet comes across as screaming) does not make your comment more convincing. Instead, it does the opposite.

I am not telling you this because I disagree with you (I don’t) but because I want you to be more convincing. Your continous use of CAPS is counter-productive. Your comment here would be entirely more effective without any CAPS at all.

And it didn’t really crash it just fell over. Now no one more than Space X wants to know exactly why. Did the leg not lock out or did it bend or crush or break off?

All the parts are heavy enough to not get totally burned up in that fire, so something will be recoverable.

FAA won’t go to Garver–more like Ralph Nader…

No, such pressure is likely to have a negative effect, like Varda trying to “pressure” the FAA into granting a re-entry license by launching without one. Now Varda can’t even launch until it has its re-entry license already in-hand.

”In the past it has allowed launches to proceed under that condition, even if the investigation was on-going.”

And that’s what is likely to happen in this case as well once the investigation gets far enough along to isolate the fault to the landing system or state, assuming that it does.

”…no grounding was required because no issues of public safety were involved in the failure.”

You don’t know that. No one does. All that is known is that there was a failure of the entry, descent, and landing of a multi-ton vehicle. No one knows what that failure was and what the implications of that failure are yet. Once those things are known it is almost certain that SpaceX will be allowed to launch again. In fact, they will most likely be allowed to launch again without those things being known if they can isolate the cause to a landing-only system or state.

Everyone got all over the FAA for not grounding the 737 Max until the second fatal accident, and that was a plane with only a 1 in 300,000 failure rate. So the FAA changed its regulations, and now the Falcon 9 is grounded with a 1 in 286 landing failure rate — a failure rate literally a thousand times worse. That may be overreach, but it’s the logical outcome of the panic generated over the 737 Max issue.

https://x.com/rookisaacman/status/1829230986128962029?s=46

as annoying, self interested and goading are Feds toward SpaceX, they are much preferred compared to international oversight. Think of an EU led coalition of regulators, environmental groups and equity concerns which would love to slow the advance of private enterprise in space. What Bernie Sanders had to say on the Senate floor a few years ago was chilling. May the almighty help us in case President Harris holds some thoughts on the matter.

Just thinking that maybe the FAA can be seen as a firewall which blocks much more harmful interests from shutting down the work of SpaceX.