SpaceX wants to increase the number of flights of its giant Starship rocket next year, and regulations clearly won’t get in the way.
On Wednesday (November 20), the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a draft environmental assessment (EA) for Starship operations at Starbase, SpaceX’s facility in South Texas.
You can read the 160 page document. hereapproves the company’s request to increase the number of annual Starship launches from Starbase by a factor of 5, from the currently allowed 5 to 25 — SpaceX Inc. Reported launch target Towards 2025.
The EA draft also authorizes 25 landings at starbases for both starship elements (superheavy boosters and “ship” upper stages). These landings are made on a launch tower, which uses a “chopstick” arm to capture the returning vehicle. SpaceX accomplished such a capture once, snagging a Super Heavy during the fifth Starship test flight on Oct. 13.
Related: What’s next for SpaceX’s Starship after its sixth successful test flight?
SpaceX is developing Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, to help humans settle the Moon and Mars. The 400-foot-tall (122-meter) ship is designed to be completely and quickly reusable, and SpaceX plans to eventually conduct multiple Starship launches a day.
The giant stainless steel rocket has been launched six times, all on test flights from Starbase. The latest launch on Tuesday (November 19) was successful, but communication issues prevented Super Heavy from returning to Starbase to catch Chopsticks. Instead, the booster was diverted to perform a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
The newly released EA is only a draft, so its results are preliminary. The FAA will hold four in-person public meetings in South Texas (two each on January 7th and January 9th) and one virtual meeting on January 13th to discuss the EA. . You can find out more about them here.
SpaceX and its founder and CEO Elon Musk have frequently complained recently to the FAA, saying that overly burdensome regulations have hindered Starship’s progress, and the U.S. launch industry as a whole. They argued that it was suppressing the progress of the
After President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, companies in the spaceflight field, and most if not all others, will have more freedom to do what they want. And Musk will have a say in the effort. President Trump has appointed a billionaire entrepreneur to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory body designed to help “dismantle government bureaucracy” and “reduce excessive regulation.”
