Starship update: SpaceX still awaits FAA approval before the orbital test flight

It’s now ten months since our last article on Starship. Although SpaceX is still waiting for the Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) that’s necessary to move forwards, the end might now possibly be in sight. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recently given itself a new deadline of 13th June - but this is the fifth time they’ve shifted the date since the end of last year. Changes that SpaceX made to its application and “interagency consultations” are the stated reasons for the delays. The FAA has also made clear that “completion of the PEA will not guarantee that the FAA will issue a launch license”. This bureaucratic process has been painfully slow.

Starbase launch facility, with build site in the background, Boca Chica, Texas (Credit: SpaceX)

Meanwhile, whilst the paperwork is being sorted, further testing and modifications have taken place at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. The Starship and Super Heavy booster combo of S20 and B4, which were originally going to make the first orbital test flight, have been replaced with S24 and B7. The earlier test flights only required three Raptor engines, whereas a staggering thirty-three Raptors on Super Heavy and another six on Starship will be used in the first attempt to reach orbit - a significant step-up. And these will be Raptor 2 engines, a simplified but more powerful improvement on the Raptor 1 version. It’s a good example of “Less is more” and “Keep It Super Simple” (KISS).

Raptor 2 is simpler and more powerful than Raptor 1 (Credit: SpaceX)

The orbital launch tower at Starbase has been more or less finished and further tested.

SpaceX have also been busy with the early stages of construction for a second Starship manufacturing and launch facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida. It’s thought that this will serve as the future operational base for Starship missions, with Starbase at Boca Chica in Texas continuing to focus on further testing.

SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell said in May that she expected Starship’s first orbital launch attempt to occur as early as June or July, but this ambitious estimate seems unlikely a few weeks on. Gwynne also predicted that Starship would go to Mars before the end of this decade - and to the Moon beforehand - which seems feasible. If the FAA gives the go ahead, regarding both the PEA and a subsequent licence to launch, we can realistically expect the first attempt of Starship to reach orbit sometime in the coming months. After a flurry of exciting prototype test flights, culminating in the success of SN15 13 months ago, we’re hopefully at last getting close to a new phase of Starship’s journey into space.

Update: The FAA granted the necessary PEA approval on 13th June, as expected.

Further update: Elon Musk then said, on 14th June: “Starship will be ready to fly next month. We will have a second Starship stack ready to fly in August and then monthly thereafter.” Perhaps, but static fire tests will likely cause delays as well as FAA approval for launch. PEA restrictions include a limit of 5 orbital launches per year from Boca Chica.

2nd August update: Elon Musk has today tweeted that he expects the orbital test flight will happen within one month to twelve months from now.

Written by Cal Stewart & Victoria de las Heras, 8th June 2022