Washington Post By Christian Davenport 10/17/2023
Elon Musk’s company is pushing to fly its massive Starship rocket again as it hits record launch cadence with its Falcon 9 rocket fleet SpaceX so far this year has launched its rockets more than 70 times, about one every four days, an unprecedented rate that has upended the industry. But as the company continues to dramatically increase that flight rate, and with its massive Starship rocket ready for another test flight, company officials say they are concerned that the government is not keeping up and is stifling NASA’s ability to return astronauts to the moon.
SpaceX executive William Gerstenmaier, the company’s vice president for build and reliability, told The Washington Post that he intends to press that point at a Senate hearing scheduled for Wednesday, where intends to urge Congress to streamline regulations and increase the number of Federal Aviation Administration staffers devoted to issuing space launch licenses.
“With the flight rates that are increasing, with the other players that are coming on board, we see there’s potentially a big industry problem coming where the pace of government is not going to be able to keep up with the pace of development on the private-sector side,” Gerstenmaier said ahead of his testimony before the Senate Commerce subcommittee on space and science at a hearing titled, “Promoting Safety, Innovation, and Competitiveness in U.S. Commercial Human Space Activities.”
SpaceX officials told The Post that they worked for two years to obtain the initial Starship launch license and have been waiting for months for the second.
“We’ve been ready to fly for a few weeks now,” said SpaceX senior vice president Tim Hughes, who oversees global business and government affairs for the company. “And we’d very much like the government to be able to move as quickly as we are. If you’re able to build a rocket faster than the government can regulate it, that’s upside down, and that needs to be addressed. So we think some regulatory reforms are needed.”
More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/17/spacex-congress-licenses-faa-starship/
