SpaceX hoped to be able to carry out the fifth test flight of Starshipthe largest rocket ever built and with which the company hopes to reach the Moon and Mars, this September, but You will have to wait and quite a bit. According to Elon Musk’s company in a statement, the Federal Aviation AdministrationFAA for its acronym in English, will not approve the flight license authorizing the launch until at least the end of November. More than two months after the date the FAA had previously set.
According to SpaceX, Starship is ready to take off again since the first week of August. This fifth test flight will take place after the last one achieved that both the propellant Super Heavy like the ship Starship will make a soft landing in the ocean for the first time. In the previous two, the craft exploded after takeoff and in the third it did not survive re-entry into the atmosphere.
SpaceX has noted regarding the flight license delay that ‘environmental regulations and mitigations serve a noble purpose, relying on common-sense safeguards to allow progress while preventing undue impact on the environment. However, with the licensing process for Flight 5 protracted, We are delayed for unreasonable and exasperating reasons’.
The main milestone that SpaceX hopes to achieve with the next test flight is the recovery of the Super Heavy booster that will have to land at the launch site. SpaceX has updated the structure of the platform so that when Super Heavy descends, progressively reducing speed until it almost floats, Two huge mechanical arms catch himBoth the first and second stages of the rocket, which together reach a height of 124 meters, are designed to be recoverablebut this will be the first time a Super Heavy landing will be attempted at the launch site.
‘It is understandable that such a unique operation would require more analysis time from a licensing perspective. Unfortunately, rather than focusing resources on critical safety analysis and collaborating on sound safeguards to protect both the public and the environment, The licensing process has been repeatedly sidetracked by issues ranging from the frivolous to the patently absurd.SpaceX said.
For Elon Musk’s company, delays in regulatory approvals for the upcoming Starship test flight have been driven by ‘False and misleading reports, based on bad faith by online detractors or special interest groups who have presented poorly constructed science as fact‘.
In a statement to the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, SpaceX said the obstacle to launching Starship’s next test flight is not SpaceX’s technical readiness or the FAA’s staff shortage to manage a rapidly growing commercial launch industry, but bureaucratic slowness, lack of transparency, poor methodologies and regulatory inefficiency and duplication.
Starship’s environmental problems
‘This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but was driven by superfluous environmental analysis. Open environmental issues are illustrative of the difficulties that launch companies face in the current regulatory environment for launch and reentry licensing,’ SpaceX said of the difficulties in obtaining authorization for Starship.
One of these environmental problems has to do with the water discharge carried out at the launch site to cool the steel flame deflector on which the rocket is positioned for takeoff. SpaceX says the fines imposed this year by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency were ‘entirely due to disagreements over paperwork’ and No to any discharge of pollutants into the water from the launch pad into the environment around the Starship launch site.
Another problem is that by following a different trajectory on the next flight, the stainless steel ring that comes off Super Heavy when performing the separation maneuver from Starship, will fall in a different location in the Gulf of Mexicoin front of the rocket launch and landing site. This change, which SpaceX calls ‘marginal‘, led the FAA to approve a 60-day consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service to reassess the ring’s impact on marine life.
On the other hand, by landing on land instead of in the Gulf of Mexico, a larger area will be exposed to the rocket’s sonic boom. This has led the FAA to approve another 60-day consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to examine the effect of the sonic boom on animals.
Starship delays could end affecting NASA and its Artemis programThe US space agency has selected Starship as the lander its astronauts will use to reach the surface of the Moon, something that is expected to happen this decade.