{"id":44827,"date":"2024-09-27T22:34:15","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T14:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/the-war-of-words-between-spacex-and-the-faa-keeps-escalating\/"},"modified":"2024-09-27T22:34:15","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T14:34:15","slug":"the-war-of-words-between-spacex-and-the-faa-keeps-escalating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/the-war-of-words-between-spacex-and-the-faa-keeps-escalating\/","title":{"rendered":"The war of words between SpaceX and the FAA keeps escalating"},"content":{"rendered":"

The clash between SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration escalated this week, with Elon Musk calling for the head of the federal regulator to resign after he defended the FAA\u2019s oversight and fines levied against the commercial launch company.<\/p>\n

The FAA has said it doesn\u2019t expect to determine whether to approve a launch license for SpaceX\u2019s next Starship test flight until late November, two months later than the agency previously communicated to Musk\u2019s launch company. Federal regulators are reviewing changes to the rocket\u2019s trajectory necessary for SpaceX to bring Starship\u2019s giant reusable Super Heavy booster back to the launch pad in South Texas. This will be the fifth full-scale test flight of Starship but the first time SpaceX attempts such a maneuver on the program.<\/p>\n

This week, SpaceX assembled the full Starship rocket on its launch pad at the company\u2019s Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas. \u201cStarship stacked for Flight 5 and ready for launch, pending regulatory approval,\u201d SpaceX posted on X.<\/p>\n

Apart from the Starship regulatory reviews, the FAA last week announced it is proposing more than $633,000 in fines on SpaceX due to alleged violations of the company\u2019s launch license associated with two flights of the company\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. It is rare for the FAA\u2019s commercial spaceflight division to fine launch companies.<\/p>\n

Michael Whitaker, the FAA\u2019s administrator, discussed the agency\u2019s ongoing environmental and safety reviews of SpaceX\u2019s Starship rocket in a hearing before a congressional subcommittee in Washington Tuesday. During the hearing, which primarily focused on the FAA\u2019s oversight of Boeing\u2019s commercial airplane business, one lawmaker asked Whitaker the FAA\u2019s relationship with SpaceX.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Public interest<\/h2>\n

\u201cI think safety is in the public interest and that\u2019s our primary focus,\u201d said Michael Whitaker, the FAA administrator, in response to questions from Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Republican. \u201cIt\u2019s the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters,\u201d he said, referring to the FAA\u2019s fines.<\/p>\n

The stainless-steel Super Heavy booster is larger than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. SpaceX says the flight path to return the first stage of the rocket to land will mean a \u201cslightly larger area could experience a sonic boom,\u201d and a stainless-steel ring that jettisons from the top of the booster, called the hot-staging ring, will fall in a different location in the Gulf of Mexico just offshore from the rocket\u2019s launch and landing site.<\/p>\n

The FAA, which is primarily charged with ensuring rocket launches don\u2019t endanger the public, is consulting with other agencies on these matters, along with issues involving SpaceX\u2019s discharge of water into the environment around the Starship launch pad in Texas. The pad uses water to cool a steel flame deflector that sits under the 33 main engines of Starship\u2019s Super Heavy booster.<\/p>\n

SpaceX says fines levied against it this year by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) related to the launch pad\u2019s water system were \u201centirely tied to disagreements over paperwork\u201d and not any dumping of pollutants into the environment around the Starship launch site.<\/p>\n

SpaceX installed the water-cooled flame deflector under the Starship launch mount after the engine exhaust rocket\u2019s first test flight excavated a large hole in the ground. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX\u2019s president and chief operating officer, summed up her view of the issue in a hearing with Texas legislators in Austin on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cTo protect that from happening again, we built this kind of upside-down shower head to basically cool the flame as the rocket was lifting off,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was licensed and permitted by TCEQ. The EPA came in afterwards and didn\u2019t like the license or the permit that we had for that, and wanted to turn it into a federal permit, which we are working on now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe work very closely with organizations such as TCEQ,\u201d Shotwell said. \u201cYou may have read a little bit of nonsense in the papers recently about that, but we\u2019re working quite well with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

SpaceX hoists the Starship upper stage atop a Super Heavy booster at the company\u2019s launch site in South Texas.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

In Washington, Kiley pressed the FAA chief on whether the FAA\u2019s delay of the Starship test flight was necessary to ensure a safe launch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the sonic boom analysis is a safety-related incident,\u201d Whitaker said. \u201cI think the two-month delay is necessary to comply with the launch requirements, and I think that\u2019s an important part of safety culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX has called for more funding for the FAA\u2019s commercial spaceflight division to keep up with the rapid pace of launch activity, primarily due to SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket, which flies at an average rate of one launch every three days. SpaceX disputes that the FAA-ordered Starship delay was rooted in safety issues. \u201cThis delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis,\u201d SpaceX said in a statement earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur leadership in the commercial industry is absolutely vital to US national security, our global leadership, and yet the FAA does not seem like it\u2019s operating in a way that\u2019s conducive with continued innovation,\u201d Kiley said. He asked Whitaker if the FAA needs to be \u201creformed in a way that\u2019s better suited toward the type of innovation that we should be moving towards in the commercial space industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Michael Whitaker, FAA administrator, testifies Tuesday before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cI agree that this is a vital mission, and I think SpaceX has been a very innovative company, but I think they\u2019re also a mature company,\u201d Whitaker replied. \u201cThey\u2019ve been around 20 years, and I think they need to operate at the highest level of safety. That includes adopting an SMS (Safety Management System) program, and it includes having a whistleblower program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked what SpaceX could do to shorten the delay in the next Starship test flight, Whitaker replied: \u201cComplying with the regulations would be the best path.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX called Whitaker\u2019s other claims in the House hearing inaccurate in a statement released Tuesday evening. Whitaker said the FAA levied fines on SpaceX for Falcon 9 launches last year because SpaceX launched the missions without a permit. SpaceX contends it was fully licensed, and the FAA has \u201cincorrectly alleged non-compliances.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the fines has to do with SpaceX\u2019s relocation of a fuel farm at its launch pad at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Whitaker alleged SpaceX moved it \u201ccloser to the population and did not do a risk analysis before launching.\u201d SpaceX says it moved the fuel farm farther from publicly accessible areas, and range safety authorities in Florida approved the change.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk, SpaceX\u2019s founder and CEO, has suggested a political motive for the FAA\u2019s scrutiny of SpaceX. Musk has endorsed former President Donald Trump in this year\u2019s presidential election. \u201cAmerica is being smothered by legions of regulators, often inept & politically-driven,\u201d Musk wrote on X, his social media platform, referring to the FAA.<\/p>\n

Shotwell took a different tone in Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not afraid of regulation,\u201d she said. \u201cIt helps keep businesses thriving as well as the community safe\u2026 All I\u2019m saying is, as this business grows, you will probably enhance the regulatory environment, and there\u2019s just a caution that you really want to make sure that regulation doesn\u2019t impede progress.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The clash between SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration escalated this week, with Elon Musk calling for the head of the federal regulator to resign after he defended the FAA\u2019s oversight and fines levied against the commercial launch company. The FAA has said it doesn\u2019t expect to determine whether to approve a launch license for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44829,"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":[291,1656,25,316,317,1898],"class_list":["post-44827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-commercial-space","tag-federal-aviation-administration","tag-launch","tag-spacex","tag-starship","tag-texas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44827"}],"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=44827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}