Musk hypes launch of Starship despite delays
Spacex lacks operator’s license from the FAA needed for blastoff
In March 2021, Spacex successfully launched a prototype of its Starship to 6 miles above its test site in Boca Chica. At the time, CEO Elon Musk said Starships would reach orbit “many times” and be “safe enough for human transport” by 2023.
Nearly two years later, Spacex is one of the world’s most valuable private companies and has a strong grip on the rocket business, having launched its Falcon 9 rocket more than 200 times into orbit from sites in Florida and California.
But Spacex has yet to manifest Musk’s orbital visions for Starship. And as testing continues in South Texas, he keeps making predictions.
On Saturday, Musk posted
on Twitter: “If remaining tests go well, we will attempt a Starship launch next month.” Then, on Monday, he responded to a news article about the company’s Falcon
Heavy rocket launches: “Hopefully, Starship this year.”
While many Musk fans, including Brownsville city council members, cheered his latest timeline, others have expressed skepticism about his claims that the nearly 400foot-tall Starship reusable rocket system will launch next month.
“Has anyone made a collage of all the Elon tweets where he says Starship is launching in next month?” Chris Combs, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said in a tweet Monday to his 20,000 followers. “It’s way more than 4 so you can’t just post each screengrab in a tweet.”
Musk’s latest launch projections come despite Spacex still lacking the operator’s license from the federal government needed to launch Starship and the Super Heavy booster that will carry it to orbit from Starbase.
After many delays, the Fed
eral Aviation Administration, which completed an environmental review of launch impacts in June, issued a finding of “no significant impact” on the 47acre South Texas compound but required Spacex to take more than 75 additional actions to mitigate the potential impacts.
The FAA said Tuesday the licensing process for Spacex was ongoing — a status it’s reported many times over the past few months.
“The FAA will make a license determination only after the agency is satisfied Spacex meets all licensing, safety and other regulatory requirements,” the agency said.
In response to questions about timeframe for issue of a license, the agency replied, “Some measures must be completed prior to launch while others are designed to occur during postlaunch activities or following a mishap event.”
Even without FAA approval, Musk took to Twitter in early January to announce the company
would launch Starship from its Starbase site by late February or March.
His prediction came as Spacex set out to raise $750 million in a funding round that values the
company at $137 billion.
Spacex is expected to invest the money into the Starship rocket system. The company has hyped the reusable vehicle as part of NASA’S Artemis program aiming to return astronauts to the moon and as a key to expanding its Starlink network of communication satellites.
It has made some progress toward orbit. Two weeks ago, Spacex fueled a stacked Starship for the first time and went through a practice countdown. The so-called wet dress rehearsal simulated a launch sequence without igniting the rocket engines as a way to work out potential problems with the equipment and procedures.
The test, which includes filling Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster with more than 10 million pounds of propellant, was seen as moving the company one step closer to a first orbital launch.
Spacex then suggested it would conduct its first full static fire test, which includes igniting all 33 Raptor engines on the booster. That test has yet to occur, but the booster is on the launch pad.