Thursday, March 14, 2024

Stop the FAA from Hobbling SpaceX

I watched the SpaceX Starship launch while shopping at Costco this morning. The launch looked good and they made it through staging but the booster appeared to lose control at the start of the landing burn and they lost the second stage Starship during reentry. 

It looked like both stages had attitude control problems which could have contributed to the failures. I was amazed that they had video and telemetry from Starship through at least part of the reentry. They did make it a lot further with this flight so their iterative development process seems to be working. 

Unfortunately, the FAA had stuck its fingers in the pie by ruling that the launch was a mishap, which means another five- or six-month wait while the bureaucrats generate more paperwork before SpaceX can launch again. The US needs to get the FAA out of the loop on these launches so they can spend their time on more important things like making sure Boeing's airliners are safe.

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