Although we are still waiting for SpaceX to signal when it will fly the Starship rocket again, the company got some good news from the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
After a lengthy review, the federal agency agreed to allow SpaceX to substantially increase the number of annual launches from its Starbase launch site in South Texas. Previously, the company was limited to five launches, but now it will be able to conduct up to 25 Starship launches and landings during a calendar year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe FAA has determined that modifying SpaceX\u2019s vehicle operator license supporting the increased launch and landing cadence of the Starship\/Super Heavy launch vehicle would not significantly impact the quality of the human environment,\u201d states the document, known as a Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact. This finding was signed by Daniel P. Murray, executive director of the FAA\u2019s Office of Operational Safety.<\/p>\n
This ruling follows a draft finding issued six months ago that indicated this would be the final outcome.<\/p>\n
Among the impacts considered were increased trucking operations to deliver water and various propellants needed to support Starship launches. An earlier analysis by the FAA found that, to support a cadence of 25 launches a year, the vehicle presence on State Highway 4 to Boca Chica Beach will grow from an estimated 6,000 trucks a year to 23,771 trucks annually.<\/p>\n
Because of this, the FAA is requiring SpaceX to undertake dozens of mitigating actions. For example, for trucks, it has sought to reduce employee miles driven on the primary artery leading to the Starbase launch site.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Proposed Action would increase annual truck traffic, but mitigation measures like employee shuttles and limiting water truck deliveries to daytime hours would help reduce traffic impacts to wildlife,\u201d the FAA document states.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
The FAA considered all manner of fish, wildlife, and environmental impacts, as well as those that could affect resources for residents of Brownsville and other nearby communities. For example, the FAA found that the increased water use would not affect supplies available for the area\u2019s residents. \u201cWhile water use for launches would increase by 10.27 million gallons annually, this represents only 0.1% of the City of Brownsville\u2019s 2018 usage and remains well within capacity,\u201d the document states.<\/p>\n
Although the new finding permits SpaceX to significantly increase its flight rate from South Texas, the company still has work to do before it can fly Starship again.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s engineers are still working to get the massive rocket back to flight after its eighth mission broke apart off the coast of Florida on March 6. This was the second time, in two consecutive missions, that the Starship upper stage failed during its initial phase of flight. The FAA is still investigating this mishap and has not yet issued a launch license for a ninth test flight.<\/p>\n
After two consecutive failures, there will be a lot riding on the next test flight of Starship. It will also be the first time the company attempts to fly a first stage of the rocket for a second time. The stage designated for the upcoming test flight, Super Heavy \u201cBooster 14,\u201d flew successfully on the rocket\u2019s seventh test flight in January 2025. The upper stage, \u201cShip 35,\u201d has undergone test firings at Starbase, but there may have been some issues during this process. SpaceX has not definitively said the ship is ready to fly.<\/p>\n
However, according to some sources, if additional testing of this upper stage goes well, Starship could launch as early as May 19. This date is also supported by a notice to mariners, but it should be taken as notional rather than something to be confident in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although we are still waiting for SpaceX to signal when it will fly the Starship rocket again, the company got some good news from the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday. After a lengthy review, the federal agency agreed to allow SpaceX to substantially increase the number of annual launches from its Starbase launch site in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9592,316,317],"class_list":["post-44263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-space-spacex","tag-spacex","tag-starship"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44263"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}