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SpaceX defied public safety rules during its last Starship launch over South Texas in December, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Tuesday, approving a license for SpaceX’s next scheduled high-altitude test flight. the same day.
In a statement, an FAA spokesperson said the agency determined on Monday evening that SpaceX “complies with all federal safety and related regulations and is authorized to conduct Starship SN9 flight operations in accordance with its launch license.
SpaceX plans to fly the stainless steel test rocket at an altitude of about 10,000 meters, or 32,800 feet, with three Raptor engines fueled by methane. After taking off from its launch pedestal at SpaceX’s rocket factory and launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, the 50-meter-high rocket will climb vertically and stop its Raptor engines in succession, then flip horizontally. . position and fall to the ground, using actuating flaps and fins to control its descent.
Finally, seconds before reaching the ground, the Raptor engines will re-ignite and flip the rocket vertically to attempt a propulsive landing on a platform next to the launch site on the Texas Gulf Coast.
The Tuesday test window opens at 9:00 a.m. CST and continues until 6:59 p.m. CST (10:00 a.m. – 7:59 p.m. EST; 2:00 p.m.-2359 GMT). SpaceX will provide a live video feed of the SN9 test launch.
SpaceX is building and testing prototypes of its next-generation fully reusable Starship rocket, which the company says will be the most powerful launcher in history. The Starship will ultimately fly with six Raptor engines, each producing around half a million pounds of thrust, and will be stacked at the standstill of an even larger booster called Super Heavy with around 28 Raptor engines.
The Starship will ultimately be designed to enter the atmosphere from orbit and perform precision landings. The Super Heavy will land within minutes of launch, as will boosters from SpaceX’s operational Falcon rocket family.
The entire vehicle will be nearly 400 feet, or about 120 meters tall, and will carry more than 100 metric tons, or 220,000 pounds, of cargo into low earth orbit, more than any rocket in the world. With life support systems and refueling in space, Starship missions could eventually transport people to the Moon, Mars, and other distant destinations.
Starship is at the heart of the vision of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who created the company with a mission to send people to Mars. The Starship is also one of three vehicles vying for a NASA man-classified lunar landing contract to transport astronauts to and from the moon’s surface.
But first, SpaceX takes a quick approach to testing the Starship system, first by flying prototypes of the upper stage and the transport segment in space of the massive rocket.
SN9’s flight profile will be similar, but not identical, to SpaceX’s high-altitude spacecraft’s first test flight on December 9. On that flight, SpaceX said the spacecraft aimed to reach a maximum altitude of around 41,000 feet, or 12.5 kilometers, although the company has never publicly confirmed how high the rocket was actually flying.
The December 9 test flight used SpaceX’s previous spacecraft test article, titled Serial Number 8. The launch sequence and descent appeared to be going as planned, but the rocket crashed on the runway. landing at high speed after its Raptor engines were not generating enough power. to brake for landing.
SpaceX said the low pressure in a fuel collector tank, which supplies thrusters to the Raptor’s engine bay for landing burn-off, led to the hard landing.
The rocket was destroyed in a fireball, but SpaceX hailed the test flight as a success after collecting data and proving much of the Starship’s atmospheric flight characteristics.
A replay of the Starship SN8 test flight is posted below.
Video credit: Stephen Clark / Spaceflight Now
What SpaceX and federal regulators failed to say in December is that SpaceX launched the rocket without FAA approval.
“Ahead of the Starship SN8 test launch in December 2020, SpaceX requested a waiver to exceed the maximum public risk allowed by federal security regulations,” an FAA spokesperson said on Tuesday. “After the FAA denied the request, SpaceX proceeded with the flight.”
The FAA is responsible for licensing the launches and re-entry of commercial spaces made by all US companies. The role of the agency is to ensure that the launch and re-entry providers comply with public safety rules, limiting the risk to the general population. The FAA also requires launch and return providers to purchase liability insurance to cover potential damage to property owned by third-party property or the government, which helps ensure that U.S. taxpayers are not required to pay for the cleaning or destruction of property.
It was not immediately clear whether SpaceX had been fined or paid some other penalty for launching the SN8 test flight without FAA approval.
The FAA said it anchored SpaceX’s Starship program after the company launched the SN8 test flight without a safety waiver. SpaceX has deployed the SN9 test vehicle, the next in the company’s line of mass-produced Starship prototypes, from the company’s Boca Chica assembly site to the seaside launch site for ground tests.
After a series of test fires in January, SpaceX planned to launch the SN9 vehicle last week. The FAA issued airspace restrictions at the launch site in South Texas, but the agency did not give final approval for the launch, prompting Elon Musk to criticize federal regulators over Twitter.
“Unlike its aerospace division, which is good, the FAA’s space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure,” Musk tweeted on Jan. 28. “Their rules are intended for a handful of consumable launches per year from a few government facilities. According to these rules, humanity will never reach Mars. “
The FAA said it had asked SpaceX to investigate the SN8 incident.
“All testing that could affect public safety at the Boca Chica, Texas launch site has been suspended until the investigation is complete and the FAA has approved the company’s corrective action for protect public safety, ”said an FAA spokesperson. “The corrective actions resulting from the SN8 incident are included in the SN9 launch license.”
Last week, SpaceX deployed its next prototype spacecraft, SN10, to a second launch pad in Boca Chica to begin ground testing before performing the company’s next test flight.
Jared Zambrano-Stout, former FAA official and National Space Council chief of staff during the Trump administration, tweeted that he was “completely in shock” that SpaceX had violated its launch license. “And there doesn’t seem to be any repercussions,” he added.
“If a licensee violated the terms of their launch license, they did so knowing that an uninvolved member of the public could have been injured or killed,” Zambrano-Stout wrote. “This is not an exaggeration. They took a calculated risk with your life and your property.
“Knowing this, the FAA has the responsibility, charged by Congress which gave it this responsibility in the first place, to enforce their licenses and the parameters of their licenses,” he added. “It’s (because) every launch has the potential to harm the uninvolved public and taxpayers could be charged with damages through the compensation scheme. In other words, the FAA doesn’t really care about the harm done to the licensee, it’s responsible for protecting the public.
“Failure by the FAA to enforce its launch licenses will hurt the long-term viability of the launch industry and its credibility with Congress,” Zambrano-Stout wrote. “The industry may face significant regulatory burdens imposed by Congress to ensure safety.”
A SpaceX spokesperson did not respond to questions on the matter Tuesday morning.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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