US government environmental reviews will delay the next Starship launch by more than two months, pushing it into November, SpaceX says.
“Unfortunately, we continue to be 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,” the company wrote in a Tuesday update. “This should never happen and directly threatens America’s position as the leader in space.”
The company’s lengthy post comes as SpaceX faces growing scrutiny and criticism over the environmental damage caused by its rocket launches. Last month, a state agency in Texas found that SpaceX had violated environmental regulations by releasing pollutants in local waters, according to CNBC. A month earlier, The New York Times published an investigation into how SpaceX allegedly misled local officials about the environmental impact of its rocket activities, which includes endangering local wildlife.
SpaceX has refuted the reporting as “factually inaccurate,” and “false.” But in Tuesday’s post, the company said “four open environmental issues” prompted the FAA to push back the next Starship launch, even though the craft has been ready since “the first week of August.”
“Unfortunately, instead of focusing resources on critical safety analysis and collaborating on rational safeguards to protect both the public and the environment, the licensing process has been repeatedly derailed by issues ranging from the frivolous to the patently absurd,” the company claims.
SpaceX says the delays threaten to slow progress of Starship, a rocket that CEO Elon Musk is hoping to send to Mars by 2026. The fifth Starship flight will attempt to re-land the booster at a SpaceX launch site by essentially catching the rocket as it descends to the platform, using two large robotic arms.
(Credit: SpaceX)
“The more we fly safely, the faster we learn; the faster we learn, the sooner we realize full and rapid rocket reuse,” the company wrote.
In the same post, SpaceX also insists it’s been following environmental regulations under supervision from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. It also takes some veiled digs at both government regulators for allegedly hampering the review process.
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“The narrative that we operate free of, or in defiance of, environmental regulation is demonstrably false,” the company added.
Still, some critics allege that SpaceX is trying to mislead the public by painting itself as a victim when it failed to follow firmly established environmental rules. “If SpaceX put the same level of effort into submitting their permit applications as they did in that manifesto they just posted, they wouldn’t be in this mess,” tweeted aerospace engineer Chris Combs.
The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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About Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
