SpaceX says it’s been ready to launch the mighty Starship rocket on its fifth test flight since early August, and had been expecting the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to give it the green light for the flight to take place in mid-September. But it’s now emerged that the FAA is unlikely to grant a launch license until late November at the earliest.
SpaceX is deeply upset about the development, criticizing the FAA in a lengthy blog post on Tuesday for the time that it’s taking to grant a license.
“We recently received a launch license date estimate of late November from the FAA,” SpaceX said in the post. “This is a more than two-month delay to the previously communicated date of mid-September. This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis.”
It added: “Environmental regulations and mitigations serve a noble purpose, stemming from common-sense safeguards to enable progress while preventing undue impact to the environment. However, with the licensing process being drawn out for Flight 5, we find ourselves delayed for unreasonable and exasperating reasons.”
SpaceX said it was “stuck in a reality where it takes longer to do the government paperwork to license a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware,” adding that this “should never happen” and “directly threatens America’s position as the leader in space.”
NASA is waiting on SpaceX to fully test the new Starship rocket so that it can use it for Artemis missions to the moon in the coming years. A modified version of the upper-stage spacecraft is set to put the first humans on the lunar surface since 1972 in the Artemis III mission that’s currently scheduled for 2026. The Starship’s fifth test flight will include the first-ever attempt by SpaceX to “catch” the returning first-stage Super Heavy rocket using giant mechanical arms.
In a statement to Space.com, the FAA has repeated its assertion that SpaceX “must meet all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements prior to FAA launch authorization.”
It explained that SpaceX’s current license authorizing the Starship’s fourth flight “also allows for multiple flights of the same vehicle configuration and mission profile,” but said that “SpaceX chose to modify both for its proposed Starship Flight 5 launch, which triggered a more in-depth review.”
It said that SpaceX had also submitted new information in mid-August “detailing how the environmental impact of Flight 5 will cover a larger area than previously reviewed,” adding that “this requires the FAA to consult with other agencies,” and it will therefore need more time than originally expected.