Starship orbital test flight delayed one more week due to FAA delays
According to a tweet yesterday by Elon Musk, the first orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy has been delayed again.
Starship launch trending towards near the end of third week of April
Musk had made it clear in an April 8th tweet the cause of this delay or any other delays:
Starship is ready for launch. Awaiting regulatory approval
Musk needs to be somewhat diplomatic as it will not help him to make federal bureaucrats his enemies. What he is doing here is subtly letting everyone know the sole cause of the delay, in order to press the FAA to get a move on, without saying so directly. He leaves that to others, such as myself, to say it instead.
I fear that the FAA is now demanding that it must look at the data from any wet dress rehearsal countdown, including the short engine burst that Superheavy will likely do at T-0, before it will issue the permit. If so, we could see more than a week delay. The launch should easily slip to late May if not later.
The absurdity of this is that it is utterly pointless for FAA bureaucrats to look at any of this data. What do they know? Nothing. If something was significantly wrong SpaceX engineers would know far sooner, and delay the launch themselves.
The delays seen in issuing this one launch license however give us a nice picture of what it will be like for the launch industry once the moratorium on heavy regulations by the FAA and other federal agencies expires on October 1, 2023. Expect a substantial slowdown in development and launches, with many of the new companies about to become operational instead going bankrupt in a replay of the destruction of Virgin Orbit by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
According to a tweet yesterday by Elon Musk, the first orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy has been delayed again.
Starship launch trending towards near the end of third week of April
Musk had made it clear in an April 8th tweet the cause of this delay or any other delays:
Starship is ready for launch. Awaiting regulatory approval
Musk needs to be somewhat diplomatic as it will not help him to make federal bureaucrats his enemies. What he is doing here is subtly letting everyone know the sole cause of the delay, in order to press the FAA to get a move on, without saying so directly. He leaves that to others, such as myself, to say it instead.
I fear that the FAA is now demanding that it must look at the data from any wet dress rehearsal countdown, including the short engine burst that Superheavy will likely do at T-0, before it will issue the permit. If so, we could see more than a week delay. The launch should easily slip to late May if not later.
The absurdity of this is that it is utterly pointless for FAA bureaucrats to look at any of this data. What do they know? Nothing. If something was significantly wrong SpaceX engineers would know far sooner, and delay the launch themselves.
The delays seen in issuing this one launch license however give us a nice picture of what it will be like for the launch industry once the moratorium on heavy regulations by the FAA and other federal agencies expires on October 1, 2023. Expect a substantial slowdown in development and launches, with many of the new companies about to become operational instead going bankrupt in a replay of the destruction of Virgin Orbit by the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Bob – Gentle typo check
“The launch should easily *sleep* to late May if not later.” Although from Musk PoV maybe sleep is right.
Delays are frustrating, I agree
It seems the FAA is taking retribution on Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and subsequent release of the damning evidence of Government intervention in a supposedly “free speech” Internet platform. The National Government (I am going to quit calling it Federal as there is no Federal in it) wants Elon to come grovelling to them in repentance of his sins against It.
Doubting Thomas: Typo fixed. Thank you. Such a mistake indicates that I am asleep it seems.
I was told the classic definition of a Pioneer was some guy lying in a ditch with a couple of arrows sticking out of his back.
I have been reflecting on the last 10-15 years of commercial space development, and I find it despicable that the attitude of the big space companies and the government has been, in a nut shell, “we will help you small rocket companies learn how to do LEO, while we go out and do the real space exploration”. This was the tenner of the speeches of NASA officials as SpaceX and Orbital ATK prepared to deliver cargo to ISS. Also, when the commercial crew program started, and NASA brought management from Bowing and SpaceX to present their plans for crewed vehicles, the Bowing VP’s attitude was essentially, “we’ve done this before, we know what we’re doing, you don’t, and even though you think you can do it for less, you can’t”. Bowing had to fly two un-crewed demo missions (the first one failed), and they still have yet to fly a crewed mission. SpaceX has already flown, not only a crewed demo mission, but how many crewed missions to ISS, plus two Axium missions? I really do hope Starship launches, but I don’t think anyone in NASA, the FAA or big space want SpaceX coming anywhere close to making a mockery of SLS. It’s really a shame. The designers and engineers of the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo vehicles and computers were really pioneers in their fields, and while I may stop short of calling the astronauts heroes, they were elite test pilots of the highest order in their own right, and they deserve praise. The shuttle was a flawed design that killed 14 innocent people, not because it didn’t work, but because designers and engineers refused to make changes to resolve issues that existed from the very first launch. I Remember hearing on the news several times in the early days of shuttle how the o-rings on the SRBS were failing, until finally Challenger was destroyed one day with 7 people aboard. Also, from the first launch of Columbia, foam was coming off the external tank, and it kept happening, until one day a brief case sized piece of foam came off and damaged the orbiter, causing the destruction of Columbia 16 days later. Go Starship!
Bet after 10/01/2023 the FAA demands a full flight review prior to *any* SpaceX launch including the Falcon 9’s,
Who wants to bet it’s political and another example of weaponization of government? Me!
Say intentions FAA.
When I went to the Lab Padre site this morning , it appeared Starship and Super Heavy no longer were stacked. Is that likely because of the delay?
Gary – No. It is because the Flight Termination System (FTS) installation and arming requires the second stage to be destacked. Seems overly cumbersome but maybe this will be modified once some flights are under SpaceX belt.