Yes. As I noted, it would not help much, either. It isn’t just bowing to government, it is capitulating to stupid. We really, really don’t want stupid to be driving our innovations. That is what happened to Boeing when McDonnell Douglas, after being stupid with their own company, took over Boeing.

Edward: The worst approach here would be to bow in any way to the government. We have been doing it for too long, and that approach has gotten us to where we are today, no longer free to do anything without its permission (always given reluctantly and also requiring major payoffs, including bribery).

SpaceX has successfully proven you can push back and succeed, though this has gotten more difficult under Biden. So far it seems it is continuing to do so, as indicated by how that SpaceX official worded things at the conference: “We’ll be ready in January, but expect the FAA to delay us until February.”

She was throwing the ball into the media’s hands, but sadly so far it appears I am the only one willing to run with it. As far as I can tell, all other outlets treated that extra month delay as perfectly okay.

The second test was to reach stage separation, however, SpaceX once again registered a complete flight plan, and once again the company learned more than it had intended. The FAA is again treating it as a failed commercial flight rather than a successful test.

I’m now thinking that the company should register flight plans that include flight termination after the major test goals are achieved. Then they would be successful flight tests in the eyes of the FAA. They would have to be. The problem, though, is that this method would create a slower learning curve, because bonus flight times would not be flown and the lessons being learned from them would be missed until later flights, thus still slowing development.

Thus, stupid governments result in slowed developments. It happens in Britain, too.