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starship

phoenix.com technology news, september 11, beijing time, the u.s. space exploration technology company (spacex) publicly criticized the u.s. government on tuesday, believing that there was an unacceptable delay in the next launch licensing process for the "starship" rocket because the u.s. government's approval took several months longer than originally expected.

on tuesday, spacex published a long article on its official website, updating the latest progress of the starship. spacex said that it expects to obtain permission from the federal aviation administration (faa) to conduct the fifth starship test flight by the end of november this year. spacex said that the approval time frame mentioned by the faa in previous communications with the company was mid-september this year.

spacex said the delays were not due to new safety concerns but to "excessive environmental analysis." "unfortunately, instead of focusing resources on critical safety analyses and collaborating on reasonable measures to protect the public and the environment, the licensing process has been repeatedly disrupted by issues ranging from the insignificant to the patently absurd," spacex said.

spacex previously stated that the rocket used for the fifth starship launch was ready as early as august. in the upcoming test launch, the main booster of the starship will attempt to return to the launch site after takeoff and be captured by spacex's launch tower.

in august, cnbc reported that the texas commission on environmental quality (tceq) sent spacex a violation notice, warning the company that it had repeatedly discharged pollutants in violation of environmental regulations. the warning concerned the spacex water sprinkler system, a huge fountain under the starship launch pad that releases water when the rocket takes off to reduce damage caused by a powerful explosion. cnbc also reported that a tceq investigation found that spacex had repeatedly operated the sprinkler system without obtaining a wastewater discharge permit.

at the time, spacex criticized cnbc's reporting and disputed the claim that its water shower system emitted pollutants. spacex also argued that the company had been operating the water shower system with permission.

the criticism from spacex came as kelvin coleman, head of the faa's office of commercial space transportation, testified at a house hearing on how to better streamline the rocket launch permit process. in response to a question about the approval process, coleman specifically mentioned starship.

“missions are changing, the technology on the rockets is changing, and that requires changes to the licenses,” coleman said. “it’s spacex that’s driving the approvals on a mission-by-mission basis, and that determines the speed of approvals.”

as of press time, the faa has not yet commented on this. (author/xiao yu)

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