SpaceX's Shotwell Says US Regulators Must 'Go Faster'
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell fired off fresh criticism at US regulators on Friday, saying rocket launch approvals need to catch up with the pace her company is innovating.
[....] Elon Musk's rocket and satellite company plans to launch the sixth major test of its new Starship vehicle on Tuesday, and sees as many as 400 launches of the moon and Mars craft over the next four years, Shotwell said. That compares with a record 148 missions that US regulators authorized for the entire commercial space industry in the government's most recent fiscal year.
[....] In September, Musk, SpaceX's founder and Chief Executive Officer, called on the head of the FAA to resign and claimed that government paperwork to license a launch takes longer than building the actual rocket.
On Thursday, the FAA said it plans to update its launch and reentry licensing rule, as the number of space operations could more than double by 2028, it said.
What did FAA do back when aircraft were new and novel, and could be dangerous?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by choose another one on Friday November 22, @02:38PM (3 children)
SpaceX approach is risky wrt. their hardware - which starts off as disposable with the aim of reusability.
But this is mitigated for SpaceX because they also build cheap and in volume (compared to other rocket builders).
But is SpaceX approach actually risky wrt. death or injury? Doesn't seem to have been so far.
One previous argument was that you could never get man-rated with SpaceX approach - but they have disproved that. Crew Dragon is already, I think, safer than NASA Apollo program, not really enough data to compare with Shuttle program but a few more successful flights and I think they would arguably beat shuttle safety record.
The Starship test flights so far show that they are clearly risk averse when it comes to consequences of hardware ending it's mission where it shouldn't - they basically just used up an entire Starship to test whether they could relight engines in orbit and so do controlled de-orbit to hit landing/splashdown target area.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pe1rxq on Friday November 22, @11:24PM (1 child)
The first launch left a huge crater and launched not only a rocket but also large chunks of the launch pad. Parts of that debris reached publicly accessible areas. Luckily nobody got hurt, but in hindsight they did take a larger than expected risk wrt death and injury. And they probably knew it was a risk as the water deluge system was already planned to be added.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 23, @02:07AM
And now they won't do that again. That's how one learns to do things safely.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gnuman on Saturday November 23, @11:07PM
So far being the operative word here. It's only a matter of time, statistically speaking.
I love SpaceX. I wish they could do things faster. But, safety is also important. FAA is this safety agency here. When they went 'easy' on Boeing, WTF happened? Yes, this is experimental rocket, but you want to make sure this is not going to come down on some town somewhere. SpaceX at least will not be doing that, unlike the Chinese, and one reason for that is FAA.
Musk can cry me a river over FAA, but they are doing a good job here. One thing we do not want is companies overseeing their own safety standards.