SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the must-protect-endangered-competitors dept.
FAA warns SpaceX that massive Starship launch tower in Texas is unapproved:
The Federal Aviation Administration warned Elon Musk's SpaceX in a letter two months ago that the company's work on a launch tower for future Starship rocket launches is yet unapproved, and will be included in the agency's ongoing environmental review of the facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
"The company is building the tower at its own risk," an FAA spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday, noting that the environmental review could recommend taking down the launch tower.
[...] SpaceX has conducted multiple short test flights of Starship prototypes over the past year. However, the company needs the FAA to complete the environmental review and issue a license to take the next step in the rocket's testing.
[...] Starship prototypes stand at about 160 feet tall, or around the size of a 16-story building, and are built of stainless steel – representing the early version of the rocket that Musk unveiled in 2019. The rocket initially launches on a "Super Heavy" booster, which makes up the bottom half of the rocket and stands about 230 feet tall. Together, Starship a\ nd Super Heavy will be nearly 400 feet tall when stacked for the launch.
Elon Musk's SpaceX could be ordered to take down its huge Starship launch tower in Boca Chica, the FAA has warned:
[...] "It is possible that changes would have to be made at the launch site, including to the integration towers to mitigate significant impacts," the FAA letter said, per Reuters. The FAA added that it had only learned that the integration tower was being built "based on publicly available video footage."
[...] The FAA said SpaceX told it in May that it doesn't think the review is necessary because it plans to use the launch tower "for production, research, and development purposes and not for FAA-licensed or permitted launches," per Reuters' report.
But the FAA said that SpaceX documentation "indicates otherwise," including one document saying that the towers would be used to integrate the Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle, the report said.
[...] Musk blasted the agency in February for canceling SpaceX's Starship flight following a reported launch license violation, and claimed that "humanity will never get to Mars" under new FAA rules.
Maybe launch platforms in the ocean are more regulation friendly.
Also at Ars Technica.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Spamalope on Saturday July 17 2021, @12:48PM
The FAA themselves reported that Boeing had been allowed a substantial self regulatory role. A role based on the strong engineering strength of the company... which no longer existed via the Douglas management team. (the arguably criminal behavior at Boeing surrounding the MAX certification is another matter, as well as what was done to avoid pilot retraining that compromised safety)
Those two things were discussed at length by aviation vloggers and insiders. Also mentioned was the policy change to making previously standard safety equipment expensive upgrades, like redundant sensors.
Why get salty about this? The coverage I've watched has been apolitical and there doesn't seem to be a dispute over what happened. The two year and counting grounding of the entire fleet to review the certification wasn't done lightly.
(as an aside: I'd argue the whole trim fakery system should be removed as it compromises safety by adding the critical failure modes directly leading to the fatal crashes. The plane's flight characteristics without it are fine, they just aren't exactly the same as the NG model so pilots would require training for the difference - basically a pitch up with increased throttle due to the forward engine position. Trying to avoid that expense to sell upgrades to airlines, then skimping on the execution is what lead to the whole MAX fiasco)