Richard M: Right now I think is is always safe to assume bad intentions from anyone in the Democratic Party. They need to prove to me that they can be trusted, by actual positive action. Even if the higher-ups in the Biden administration are sitting on their hands and have taken no positive actions to slow SpaceX down, by doing nothing they are allowing it to happen, and thus are complicit in these events.

The history however suggests they are doing more than sitting on their hands. Before Biden SpaceX was doing regular and frequent Starship flight tests, and made it clear it intended to continue that approach as it moved toward an orbital launch. After Biden testing ground to a halt.

Why? Though as you say correlation is not causation I think that in politics it almost always so.

I despise this administration as much as anyone here, believe me, but….do we really have any evidence at all that this is actually happening?

Even if there has been a chance since January 2021, correlation is not causation: one other thing which has changed is that the Starship program itself has moved into a new phase.

That said, I agree that this discussion cannot be just about giving FAA more resources. It must also put on the table the nature of the regulations, and how they are interpreted. How many of these rules actually make sense?

One more point: Why do people assume the solution to these regulatory issues is always to give the government agencies more money and resources? “If we only had the right people and sufficient support we would certainly get it done right!”

Hogwash. It is the same logic used by leftists about communism. “Communism has never worked simply because the right people weren’t doing it. We are the right people! Give us the power and all will be well!”

The answer here is to cut the regulators out of the equation entirely, to return us to the free nation we once were. Sadly, I don’t see that happening, because most Americans no longer have faith in freedom. More important, they don’t have the courage to live in such a state. They want that Big Daddy in Washington to supervise things.

Richard M: As to the article itself, I have no doubt that the FAA is hampered by having too few resources, but I note several things:

1. It somehow didn’t have this kind of difficulty prior to Joe Biden’s arrival as president. Very clearly the higher-ups in this administration are demanding the FAA interpret the regulations far more strictly, which of course increased the workload enormously. Hence the delays.

2. None of these issues address the introduction of Fish & Wildlife into this launch license process. It has no place there, but once again the arrival of Joe Biden brought it into the game, increasing the regulatory load on SpaceX to a point of breaking it.

Actually, the Berger and Clark articles are just about the only ones at Ars where the comments are not completely insane.

But yes, this is a valuable article, and worthy of some special treatment here. It suggests that even with an agency where there are some bureaucrats of evident good will, the actual process is a seriously problematic one that is holding back not just commercial space development, but even NASA’s program of record!!

SpaceX is basically going on record as saying that the FAA is being cooperative and doing it’s best, but is woefully understaffed and unwilling/unable to innovate on ways to streamline their processes.

As usual with Ars, don’t read the comments if you value your sanity.

Fish & Wildlife, on the other hand…

From what I have heard, SpaceX was not *quite* ready to launch on Sept. 5. But they look pretty ready to launch now. Now they really do seem to be held up by bureaucracy.

The company desperately needs to get its second Starship/Superheavy launch site at Cape Canaveral operational.

The Cape has its own issues, though, not least of which is that as keen as NASA is to have Starship getting into operation, it is also less than keen on seeing Starship launch from LC-39A before it’s proven that it can actually get to orbit, and is a safe bet not to blow up on or near the pad.