SpaceX eyes Oct. 13 for next Starship launch, pending FAA approval

This is looking pretty bad for the decision process. Unless the FAA or EPA end up requiring some change in the SpaceX plans or facilities, this will just look like bureaucratic inability to get out of the way of development progress. And, if they insist on changes that are not perceived as realistically relevant, it will look political in the worst way - partisan political.

As already reported by Space.com, Musk has publicly called for the resignation of the FAA administrator. And, now he has endorsed and started actively campaigning for the candidate for U.S. President who would most likely replace the FAA administrator.

This whole mess is going to hurt NASA's ability to get commercial support for U. S. space exploration and development goals. When NASA was the "owner" of a project, there was some partisan argument over its budget in Congress, but not in its regulation of actual process and hardware development.

NASA did the environmental changes to Merritt Island in Florida that SpaceX is doing to the same environmental type of area around Boca Chica, Texas. NASA's SLS is similar in power to the SuperHeavy. The real difference is reusability.

The U.S. Congress is no longer supporting the NASA budget sufficiently for NASA to return to the Moon on its own, much less support a continuous base there. Without the commercial interest in doing those things, the U.S. will not be going back to the Moon at all. But, China will get there, and Russia is now partnering with China. As will most other countries if the U.S. Artemis program stumbles and falls.
 
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Sep 20, 2020
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Yep - the whole SpaceX vs FAA is a big mess alright.
Curious if Starship has the capabilities to launch its own moon missions without requiring services of NASA should the Artemis program tank?
Wondering how much NASA is involved with tracking & communication, even for current SpaceX / ISS missions?
 
SpaceX is already contracted by NASA to develop a lander to take the Artemis astronauts from lunar orbit down to the lunar surface and back to the "gateway" lunar orbiter.

So, SpaceX needs to develop Starship versions that will provide refueling in Earth orbit and probably also in lunar orbit. And SpaceX will need to develop the capability to get the lander(s?) and fuel to lunar orbit, because NASA is not working on that part, either.

So, it should not be a problem for SpaceX to put humans on the Moon, even without NASA being involved. The main component from NASA is the Orion capsule that can return from the Moon with direct reentry through the atmosphere, which creates a lot more heat to deal with than just reentering from low Earth orbit. But, it has already been done by the Apollo missions.

However, another approach would be to have the returning craft use rocket fuel for braking into low Earth orbit, and then take another vehicle down to the surface. That would make sense for a sustained lunar base scenario, where the idea is to make everything reusable to reduce costs. So, specialized craft to go between low Earth Orbit and lunar orbit does cost more fuel than coming in directly to atmospheric reentry, but probably costs less money, when you take into account the reusability and the fuel costs of putting throw-away spacecraft into space from Earth's surface.

As soon as I read that NASA had contracted with SpaceX to get the NASA astronauts onto the lunar surface from lunar orbit (and back again), I started wondering when it was going to become obvious that SLS could be replaced by StarShip + SuperHeavy.