Tag: Starship

Review of SpaceX’s 2026 Superheavy/Starship test flights

11:22 am

Link here. The article begins by reviewing the work SpaceX is doing at both Boca Chica in Texas and Cape Canaveral in Florida. In the end, the company is aiming to have two Starship launchpads at Boca Chica and three launchpads in Florida, with both locations have extensive manufacturing facilities capable of building ships and boosters almost continually.

It then provides a nice review of all five Superheavy/Starship test flights that took place in 2025, a review that makes it very clear how much was accomplished, and indicates the possibilities for ’26. If SpaceX could manage almost one flight every two and a half months last year, despite two test stand explosions, the odds are excellent it will exceed that pace this year.

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SpaceX doing trial runs of specialized barge for transporting Starship/Superheavy from Boca Chica to Florida

9:32 am

SpaceX has now confirmed that it is doing trial runs of a barge specifically designed for transporting Starship/Superheavy from the manufacturing facility in Boca Chica to its Florida launchpads.

[SpaceX’s Vice President of Launch, Kiko] Dontchev also clarified that both the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage would be tilted to a horizontal position for maritime transit, in response to an artist’s rendering of a Starship traveling vertically aboard a vessel. “Initial deliveries are a single booster or ship per trip, with the plan to move to multiple vehicles per transit sooner than later,” he wrote. “You’ll thank me later.”

These barge trials, combined with the fact that SpaceX has already shipped significant Starship/Superheavy components to Florida even as it builds rocket manufacturing facility there, strongly suggest the first Florida launches are not too far in the future, possibly even this year.

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Next Starship/Superheavy launch in March?

9:17 am

According to this detailed update on SpaceX’s work at Boca Chica by NASASpaceflight.com, we should expect the next orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy some time in March 2026.

As far as the launch date for this first flight of Block 3, sources point to March as the most likely viable timeframe. This launch will mark numerous firsts, from the vehicle, its Raptor 3 engines, and the first use of the upgraded Pad 2 architecture that will be mirrored at Pad 1, along with 39A and SLC-37 on the East Coast.

Block 3 refers to a major upgrade in Starship, which will fly prototype #39. Meanwhile, work getting Superheavy prototype #19 prepped has moved fast, following the loss of #18 from an explosion during ground fueling tests.

Recent observations show significant milestones: after welding the liquid oxygen (LOX) tank to the engine section (including pre-installed landing tanks and transfer tube), teams added methane tank barrels and the forward dome with its integrated hot staging ring. By December 20, all barrel sections were delivered and stacked, achieving this in just 25 days from November 25 — half the 42 days required for Booster 17, the final Version 1 booster.

The report also said that a February launch is a possibility, but is less likely.

Meanwhile, news outlets are reporting that the Trump administration is considering giving SpaceX about 775 acres in a wildlife preserve adjacent to Starbase in exchange for 692 acres SpaceX owns elsewhere. If confirmed, this deal would be similar to the land swap Texas had wished to do with SpaceX the company scrapped last year.

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SpaceX official confirms it is considering an IPO

10:58 am

In a message to employees on December 12, 2025, SpaceX’s chief financial officer, Bret Johnson, confirmed the company is considering issuing an initial public offering of stock sometime in 2026, but that nothing has been decided in any way.

His announcement also indicated the reason to do so would be to raise enough funds to “ramp Starship to an insane flight rate, deploy AI data centers in space, build Moonbase Alpha and send uncrewed and crewed missions to Mars.”

I think the question is whether the company is raising enough revenue from Starlink to do what it wants, or whether it now sees a need for more investment capital that it cannot get from either that revenue or private stock sales. If it finds in the coming months the former is sufficient, the stock sale will be put off, probably for several years. If it finds the latter, than we shall see this IPO sometime in 2026.

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Academia makes its first comprehensive attempt to plan science missions to Mars using Starship

1:28 pm

Figure 2-2 from the NAS report
Figure 2-2 from the National Academies
of Science report

A new report released today by the National Academies of Science, entitled “Highest Priority Science for the First Human Missions to Mars,” is essentially the first attempt by the planetary science community to plan its future science missions to Mars using the gigantic capabilities that SpaceX’s Starship is expected to provide them.

You can download the report here.

Even though the report made the search for life on Mars its big priority — a bugaboo that NASA and the science community trots out repeatedly to garner clicks from the ignorant propaganda press — this report is radically different then all previous similar NASA studies proposing future Mars exploration, as indicated by the graphics from figure 2-2 of the report to the right. Unlike those past studies, which were badly limited by the inadequate capabilities of any spacecraft NASA could send to Mars, this new report recognizes how much the game is changed by SpaceX’s Starship.

First, the new panel did not attempt to place any limit on any landing zones. Earlier reports had forbidden landings in the high latitudes or high altitudes because of the risks to NASA’s proposed landers. Starship overcomes much of those risks, giving researchers much greater flexibility.

Second, the focus of the missions will not be solely devoted to scientific or geological research, as had been the case for all previous similar reports by NASA and the academic community. Instead, the proposed research goals includes important engineering and human exploration requirements outside of science, including efforts to use the resources on Mars itself as well as find locations better suited for human habitation. Once again, the vastly greater capabilities of Starship influenced this change.

Even more important, the study doesn’t assume the future missions will be unmanned, as all previous NASA reports have done. In fact, it does the opposite, proposing multiple 30-day manned missions, as shown in the graphic. One set of three missions would go to three different locations, while another set of three missions would focus on one place in particular.

Much of this shift towards manned flight I think stemmed from the presence on the panel of representatives from the private companies SpaceX and The Exploration Company (a French startup), as well as an engineer from the National Academy of Engineering. Previously studies were almost always entirely dominated by planetary scientists, so the goals outlined were always focused on their interests. Now the idea of human exploration has become prevalent.

The panel’s work was clearly also influenced by the realization that SpaceX’s Starship is not only far more capable, its first flights are just around the corner. SpaceX plans sending it numerous times to Mars in the very near future, as shown in the graphic below that Elon Musk released during a presentation in May 2025.
» Read more

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SpaceX issues 1st statement regarding Superheavy test explosion

9:27 am

Damaged Superheavy
Click for original image.

SpaceX yesterday issued its first update regarding the explosion in the lower half of the Superheavy booster that it had planned to fly on the next orbital test flight.

Booster 18 suffered an anomaly during gas system pressure testing that we were conducting in advance of structural proof testing. No propellant was on the vehicle, and engines were not yet installed. The teams need time to investigate before we are confident of the cause. No one was injured as we maintain a safe distance for personnel during this type of testing. The site remains clear and we are working plans to safely reenter the site.

That no propellant was involved explains why the booster and test pad experienced relatively little damage. They were likely pumping nitrogen through the system to test it, and while something exploded, the gases were not volatile.

The picture to the right is a screen capture from aerial drone flights performed by RGV Aerial Photography and posted on nasaspaceflight.com. I have enhanced it to bring out the details. Note the lack of damage on all sides of the booster at its base. The explosion was clearly confined to the booster, and appears to have occurred from within.

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SpaceX and Arianespace make launch predictions for ’25 and ’26

9:40 am

In separate announcements this week, officials from Arianespace and SpaceX revealed their launch plans for the rest of this year and next.

First, Arianespace officials revealed yesterday that it is hoping to do six to eight Ariane-6 launches in 2026.

During a post-flight conference following the launch of Sentinel-1D, Arianespace CEO David Cavaillès stated that while the company preferred to wait until next year to reveal details about its 2026 launch manifest, it was aiming to double its launch cadence. He added that a cadence of between six and eight next year “will be great.”

If the company does manage eight Ariane 6 flights in 2026, it will already be close to reaching the stated maximum launch cadence of between nine and ten flights per year. When asked if this cadence could be increased, Cavaillès explained that the decision would be driven by customer demand.

Since customer demand for Ariane-6 has been quite low, because of its high cost, don’t expect this launch rate to rise much higher. Arianespace’s only big contract is 18 launches for Amazon’s Kuiper constellation. Once that is completed it is not clear where much future business will be coming from, even with some bureaucrats lobbying the European Space Agency to require its members to use it. There are too many cheaper options available now, with many more coming on line, both in America and Europe.

Next, a SpaceX official noted at a conference this week that the company hopes to complete another 25 to 30 Falcon 9 launches before the end of the year.

“We’re aiming for around 170 — between 165 and 170 — which means 25 to 30 more launches to go,” Kiko Dontchev, the company’s vice president of launch, said during a Wednesday session at the Space Economy Summit 2025.

…All together, “we’ll get to 2,400, 2,200 [metric tons launched] or something like that, which is absurd in the grand scheme of where things have been,” he added. Historically, that is close to the global record for metric tons launched to space by all companies and nations — about 2,500 metric tons in 2024, according to Jonathan’s Space Report, compiled by astronomer Jonathan McDowell.

In other words, SpaceX hopes its Falcon 9 rocket will this year alone place in orbit almost the same tonnage launched previously by everyone in the three-quarters of a century since Sputnik.

Cavaillès’ forecast means the company is likely to get very close to its prediction for launches at the beginning of the year, 180, that also included its Superheavy/Starship test launches. Quite an amazing achievement.

And as Al Jolson once said, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

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Someone is apparently considering putting a helicopter on Starship when it goes to Mars

2:53 pm

Potential Starship helicopter location

In my regular trolling through the images sent down from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), I sometimes come across things that imply truly exciting future missions. That happened when in 2019 I found a bunch of photos each labeled as a “candidate landing site for SpaceX Starship”. Without fanfare SpaceX had begun researching locations for where it intended to land Starship on Mars, in the northern lowland plains, research that it later solidified considerably.

Similarly, I have found MRO images in 2022 suggesting scientists were thinking of running a helicopter mission inside Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system. Another image in 2024 suggested that a helicopter mission might go to another region in Mars’s southern cratered highlands.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is another new example of a potential Martian helicopter mission. It was taken on August 19, 2025 and is labeled provocatively “Characterize Possible Rotorcraft Landing Site.” Unlike the previous two proposed helicopter locations, however — which appeared to be aimed at uncertain NASA funding — this image’s location suggests it is far more certain, and might launch far sooner than you can imagine.
» Read more

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Two former NASA administrators express wildly different opinions on NASA’s Artemis lunar program

1:07 pm

At a symposium yesterday in Alabama, former NASA administrators Charles Bolden and Jim Bridenstine expressed strong opinions about the state of NASA’s Artemis lunar program and the chances of it getting humans back to Moon before the end of Trump’s term in office and before China.

What was surprising was how different those opinions were, and who said what. Strangely, the two men took positions that appeared to be fundamentally different than the presidents they represented.

Charles Bolden
Charles Bolden

Charles Bolden was administrator during Barack Obama’s presidency. Though that administration supported the transition to capitalism, it also was generally unenthusiastic about space exploration. Obama tasked Bolden with making NASA a Muslim outreach program, and in proposing a new goal for NASA he picked going to an asteroid, something no one in NASA or the space industry thought sensible. Not surprisingly, it never happened.

Bolden’s comments about Artemis however was surprisingly in line with what I have been proposing since December 2024, de-emphasize any effort to get back to the Moon and instead work to build up a thriving and very robust competitive space industry in low Earth orbit:

Duffy’s current messaging is insisting it’ll be accomplished before Trump’s term ends in January 2029, but Bolden isn’t buying it. “We cannot make it if we say we’ve got to do it by the end of the term or we’re going to do it before the Chinese. That doesn’t help industry.”

Instead the focus needs to be on what we’re trying to accomplish. “We may not make it by 2030, but that’s okay with me as long as we get there in 2031 better than they are with what they have. That’s what’s most important. That we live up to what we said we were going to do and we deliver for the rest of the world. Because the Chinese are not going to bring the rest of the world with them to the Moon. They don’t operate that way.” [emphasis mine]

In other words, the federal government should focus on helping that space industry grow, because a vibrant space industry will make colonizing the Moon and Mars far easier. And forget about fake deadlines. They don’t happen, and only act to distort what you are trying to accomplish.

Meanwhile, Jim Bridenstine, NASA administrator during Trump’s first term, continued to lambast SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander contract, saying it wasn’t getting the job done on time, and in order to beat the Chinese he demanded instead that the government begin a big government-controlled project to build a lander instead.
» Read more

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New orbital radar data confirms large ice deposits in Phelgra Mountains near Starship landing zone

3:18 pm

Overview map

A new paper published this week used the SHARAD radar instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to confirm that the glacial features found everywhere within the Phlegra Mountains where one of Starship’s four prime landing sites is located contains significant quantities of very accessible pure water ice.

The red dots on the map to the right mark two of those prime landing sites, with one inside the Phelgra Mountains in a region directly studied by this paper. The numbered black dots were other images taken by MRO for SpaceX, reported here in 2020. From the paper’s abstract:

We examined mid-latitude landforms on Mars that resemble Earth’s debris-covered glaciers in a region called Phlegra Montes. Our study site is a 1,400-km-long mountain range in the northern hemisphere of Mars that houses numerous debris-covered glaciers also called Viscous Flow Features (VFFs). Using data from the SHallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument, we detected eight new glaciers and estimated the thickness and volume of ice within them as well as the thickness of the debris on top insulating the ice. Our findings suggest that the region holds around 1.2 trillion cubic meters of ice below the surface. We detected two notable types of glaciers for the first time on Mars using SHARAD: (a) a glacier system with terrace-like steps and (b) a perched “hanging” glacier on the eastern side of the mountains

The study also found that the layer of dust and debris that covers these glaciers and protects them from sublimating away ranges from 6 to 25 feet in thickness, well within reach of any future colonists.

This study only confirms what all the orbital data for the past two decades has suggested, that Mars is an icy world like Antarctica, not a dry desert like the Sahara. As the researchers themselves note in the very first line of their paper, “Mars is a frozen world where water ice is abundant above, at, and under the surface.”

Their research also confirms that SpaceX has made a good choice for its Starship prime landing sites. Though it will likely not make its first landing at site #3, because it is inside the mountains and thus more risky, expect a landing there not long thereafter.

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Fake blather from NASA administrator Sean Duffy to hide more Artemis delays

9:47 am

Sean Duffy
Sean Duffy: “Look at the shiny object!”

During a press interview yesterday, interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy revealed almost as an aside that NASA’s mid-2027 launch for the first Artemis manned lunar landing is no longer realistic, and that NASA is now targeting a 2028 launch date instead.

Duffy managed to hide this revelation by also announcing that he is re-opening the bidding for the manned lunar lander NASA will use on that third Artemis mission. To quote Duffy:

Now, SpaceX had the contract for Artemis III. By the way, I love SpaceX and it’s an amazing company, but the problem is, they are behind. They pushed their timelines out and we are in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the moon in this president’s term. So, I’m going to open up the contract and I’m going let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin. Whatever one gets us there first to the moon, we are going to take. If SpaceX is behind and Blue Origin can do it before them, good on Blue Origin.

By the way we might have two companies that can get us back to the Moon in 2028.

The propaganda press of course is going wild about this SpaceX announcement, making believe it signifies something of importance. “SpaceX is behind! Elon Musk can’t do it! Duffy is giving Jeff Bezos the job!” And as I think Duffy intended, everyone is ignoring the fact that NASA has now admitted it won’t meet that 2027 launch target.

The irony is that Duffy’s decision to re-open bidding on that manned mission is utterly meaningless. » Read more

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Eleventh Starship/Superheavy a complete success

6:18 pm

Starship and Superheavy during ascent
Starship and Superheavy during ascent today.

On the eleventh orbital test flight today of Starship/Superheavy, SpaceX basically achieved all its engineering goals, with both Superheavy and Starship completing their flights as planned, with Superheavy doing a soft vertical splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, and Starship doing a soft vertical splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

The Superheavy flown was on its second flight, having flown on test flight #8. Of its 33 Raptor engines, 24 had flown previously. In returning, it successfully used a new configuration of engine burns, first firing thirteen engines, then six, then three.

More significant was Starship’s flight. The engineers had purposely left tiles off in some locations that would experience the greatest heat during re-entry, to find out if the ship could survive a loss of those tiles. It did, and did so in a truly remarkable manner, always flying in a controlled manner, even as it attempted a radical and previously untried banking maneuver as it approached the ocean in order to simulate a return to the launch tower chopsticks at Boca Chica.

Prior to splashdown and during its coast phase, Starship once again successfully tested the deployment of eight dummy Starlink satellites, as well as a relight of one of its Raptor engines to demonstrate it will be able to do a planned de-orbit burn once it enters a full orbit on future test flights.

Once again, the word to describe this flight is remarkable. While no else has yet been able to recover a first stage and reuse it, SpaceX has been doing it with its Falcon 9 for almost a decade, and doing it hundreds of times.

And now it has twice reused a Superheavy booster, out of only eleven test launches. Based on this and the last test flight, the company will almost certainly begin reusing Starship prototypes during next year’s orbital test flights, when it will begin flying full orbits using its third version of Starship, including returns to Boca Chica for chopstick tower catches. Furthermore, expect the deployment of real Starlink satellites on those missions.

The next mission should likely take place close to the end of this year, and it should likely be followed by additional flights about every two months.

The Liberty Bell
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

While politicians and media swamp creatures focus on the relatively inconsequential race to do an Apollo-like manned landing on the Moon, the real American space program is being run privately by SpaceX, and its goal is to not only go to Mars, but to do so in a manner that will quickly establish a human colony. Along the way the company will help facilitate that government space program, but only as it helps SpaceX learn better how to get humans to Mars.

Most significantly, SpaceX is doing its space program entirely on its own dime. It is being financed by the revenues coming in to the company from the now more than seven million subscribers to Starlink. And those numbers will only rise with time, as Starship begins launching the next generation of satellites with capabilities that will dwarf all of SpaceX’s competitors.

Once again, freedom, private enterprise, and the American dream wins. May all humans someday live under rules that will allow them the same possibilities.

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Watch the eleventh orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket

8:32 am

The eleventh orbital test launch of Starship/Superheavy is scheduled for 6:15 (Central) today. It will be the last flight for version 2 of Starship, and will also include the second reuse of a Superheavy booster.

Starship will repeat its flight plan from the previous flight, testing the deployment of dummy Starlink satellites, the relighting of its Raptor engines once in orbit, and various new configurations of its thermal protection system. It will come down in the Indian Ocean, either controlled or not. Future flights will use version three, and quickly move towards orbital flights and a return to Boca Chica for a tower chopstick capture and later reuse.

Superheavy, which flew previously on the eighth test flight, will do more engine configuration tests on its return, and will attempt a soft vertical splashdown in the Gulf.

You can watch SpaceX’s X live stream at the link above. I have also embedded Space Affairs youtube feed below.
» Read more

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Court throws out environmental lawsuit against SpaceX, FAA, and Starship/Superheavy

8:45 am

The federal district court judge for the District of Columbia yesterday dismissed entirely the environmental lawsuit that had been filed against SpaceX and the FAA by anti-Musk activists following the first orbital test launch of Starship/Superheavy.

More details here. The lawsuit itself [pdf] was filed in 2023, claiming that the FAA’s environmental assessment of SpaceX’s activities at Boca Chica would do no harm to the environment were wrong.

SpaceX activities authorized in the FONSI/ROD [the environmental reassessment issued last year] have and will adversely affect the surrounding wildlife habitat and communities. In addition to harm from construction activities and increased vehicle traffic, rocket launches result in intense heat, noise, and light pollution. Furthermore, the rocket launches and testing result in explosions which spread debris across surrounding habitat and cause brush/forest fires — including one that recently burned 68 acres of adjacent National Wildlife Refuge. The FAA calls these explosions “anomalies,” but in fact they occur frequently, with at least 8 over the past 5 years. FAA acknowledged that many more such “anomalies” are expected over the next 5 years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has found that prior SpaceX rocket explosions harmed protected wildlife and designated habitat in violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

At the time I noted this:

In other words, rockets and launch sites should never be placed inside wildlife refuges, because such activity is detrimental to wildlife.

A more false statement cannot be made. Under this conclusion the launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, which have been operating in the middle of a wildlife refuge now for more than six decades, should be shut down immediately. All the wildlife there must certainly be dead!

We have almost three-quarters of a century of empirical data in both Florida and California that spaceports are clearly beneficial to wildlife, because they actually create the refuge by reserving large areas where development cannot occur. This court decision merely confirms reality, something it appears increasingly the left doesn’t have much grasp of.

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Update on what SpaceX learned about Starship’s tiles during the 10th test flight

11:27 am

Superheavy after its flight safely captured at Boca Chica
Superheavy after the October 2024 flight,
safely captured during the very first attempt

Link here. The update comes from a presentation given this week by Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s executive in charge of build and flight reliability, at the American Astronautical Society’s Glenn Space Technology Symposium in Cleveland.

Lots of new details. First, almost no tiles fell off during this flight. More significant, they found that the use of metal tiles won’t work. They tested three, and found that “The metal tiles… didn’t work so well.”

Gestenmaier also outlined how the flight provided the necessary data for sealing the gaps between the tiles better.

Gerstenmaier pointed to a patch of white near the top of Starship’s heat shield. This, he said, was caused by heat seeping between gaps in the tiles and eroding the underlying material, a thermal barrier derived from the heat shield on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. Technicians also intentionally removed some tiles near Starship’s nose to test the vehicle’s response.

“It’s essentially a white material that sits on Dragon and it ablates away, and when it ablates, it creates this white residue,” Gerstenmaier said. “So, what that’s showing us is that we’re having heat essentially get into that region between the tiles, go underneath the tiles, and this ablative structure is then ablating underneath. So, we learned that we need to seal the tiles.”

They hope to do the 11th test flight in October, repeating the same suborbital configuration of previous flights, using the same version 2 of Starship. The plan will then be to follow up with a first suborbital flight of version 3 in 2026, followed quickly by orbital flights. During one of those orbital flights they will also try to do a chopstick catch of Starship. They also hope to do the first refueling tests next year.

All in all, it appears the test program is proceeding as hoped, and is about to accelerate significantly.

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SpaceX gets major tax credit for the jobs its new Starship factory will create.

1:29 pm

Because SpaceX’s new Starship factory, dubbed Gigabay, will create more than 500 new jobs in the Boca Chica region, the Starbase city commission this week awarded the company a sales tax refund valued as much as $3.75 million.

Gigabay will create about 630 new jobs, according to information Barrera showed the City Commission. That number included 315 entry-level jobs, which pay nearly $50,000 a year; 277 staff jobs, which pay nearly $90,000 a year; and 26 manager positions, which pay about $164,000 a year. … At least 25% of the jobs must be filled by veterans, residents of the enterprise zone or people who are considered economically disadvantaged.

SpaceX may receive a sales tax refund of $7,500 per job if the company invests $250 million. The program is capped at 500 jobs, allowing SpaceX to receive a maximum of $3,750,000.

Once again, the opposition to SpaceX does not come from the general public, which overwhelming supports what the company is doing in south Texas because of the wealth it is bringing to the region. The only opposition comes from fringe and very tiny leftist activist groups who oppose anything new, and specifically hate Elon Musk because he backed Donald Trump in last year’s election.

Sadly, those fringe groups are also backed by the propaganda press, which gives them a loud bullhorn they don’t deserve. It is imperative that Texas politicians recognize these facts, and not let that bullhorn bully them into actions detrimental to their constituents.

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Oh by the way, the FAA has approved the August 24th launch of Starship/Superheavy

12:07 pm

Increasingly irrelevant in the right places
Increasingly irrelevant in the right places

My headline reflects the sense of utter irrelevance of the FAA in announcing its approval of the launch licence for the tenth test launch of Starship/Superheavy (now scheduled for August 24, 2025) as well as its “closing” of its “investigation” into the failure during test flight nine.

As per the FAA in its statement, “There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property. The FAA oversaw and accepted the findings of the SpaceX-led investigation. The final mishap report cites the probable root cause for the loss of the Starship vehicle as a failure of a fuel component. SpaceX identified corrective actions to prevent a reoccurrence of the event.”

The FAA did not “oversee” SpaceX’s investigation. No one at the FAA has the slightest qualifications for doing so. All its bureaucrats did is sit in and watch, and when SpaceX’s engineers completed their work and “identified corrective actions,” the FAA paper-pushers pushed some paper to rubber stamp those conclusions.

Moreover, unlike during the Biden administration, the FAA did not waste any time or money retyping the SpaceX investigation. They simply approved it as is, and issued the launch license. And they apparently instantly agreed to the schedule proposed by SpaceX. In fact, it appears almost as if SpaceX announced the date before the FAA announced the license approval.

Elections matter. And they would matter less if we had had the sense in the past century to not cede so much power to an unelected federal bureaucracy that is really unfit to do the work we gave them. The goal now should be to take that power away from them, and to do it as quickly as it is humanely possible.

It appears at least when it comes to FAA launch licenses, Trump has made some significant progress towards this goal.

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A protest of boats now intends to violate the range and prevent the next Starship/Superheavy test launch

1:15 pm

Protest announcement.
Protest announcement. Click for original.

A Mexico activist group now plans to launch a fleet of boats that plan to violate the range and prevent the next Starship/Superheavy test launch.

A translated version of the protest announcement can be seen to the right. From the first link above:

A Mexican environmental group, Comité Global A.C., said it plans to protest the launch by sending boats into the Gulf of Mexico near Starbase. If they enter designated safety areas during the planned launch period, they could delay the mission.

The group’s leader said the Matamoros Port Authority gave permission for the protest dubbed “Operación Golfo de México.” It will also include protesters on Playa Bagdad, a Mexican beach just south of the Rio Grande where people often gather for Starship launches.

I have not yet gotten confirmation that the local port authority has approved this protest as the organization claims, but it also appears that this activist group intends to show up in boats regardless. If so, this protest could easily cause the next test launch, now scheduled for August 24, 2025, to be delayed endlessly.

It seems this is a matter for Trump and the Coast Guard. Someone must move in and remove these boats, arresting and fining the occupants for violating launch range restrictions that apply to all international waters.

Hat tip to reader Richard M.

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Update on next Starship/Superheavy launch

10:06 am

Superheavy after its flight safely captured at Boca Chica
Superheavy after the October 2024 flight,
safely captured during the very first attempt

Link here.

SpaceX now appears to have completed the prelaunch testing of Starship prototype #37, having tested the ship again after swapping out an engine after the first static fire test. It is now moving to put Superheavy on the launchpad for its own static fire tests.

The bottom line is that SpaceX appears moving successfully towards a launch of the next test flight of Superheavy/Starship, its tenth, for sometime between August 22nd and August 28th.

The report also describes the company’s work to preserve Superheavy prototype #12, the first to be captured and recovered during the fifth orbital test flight in October 2024.

The picture to the right shows that Superheavy booster, hanging from the chopsticks just after it was captured.

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