Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
This is a show where we discuss the critical Crossroads, The
Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink,
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show notes SpaceX is setting its sights on a robust launch
schedule for the Starship rocket in 2024.
Aiming for at least nine missions is stated by a Federal
Aviation Administration FAA official in the Starship, which
is immense, has power and size, which we haven't seen before in
a rocket, and it's central for Spacex's aspirations of taking
people to Mars. Now, despite the goals, SpaceX
acknowledges the challenges ahead and making the Starship
Mars ready Company is under significant pressure to advance
its test flight program to meet its targets for the year.
And Kevin Coleman, the FAA Commercial Space Transportation
Administrator, highlighted Spacex's intention launch agenda
for 24. He said that the workload
involved preparing in these numerous launches said that
there's continuous dialogue between SpaceX and the FAA to
facilitate this brand new and aggressive schedule for this
monstrous rocket. Now, the FAA previously mandated
a cap of Starship launches about 5 attempts annually following an
in depth environmental assessment.
This restriction is something SpaceX is keen to modify to
accommodate its expanding launch itinerary.
And if they need to go to the moon, they need to launch
hundreds of these rockets to make sure that everything works
perfectly. Now SpaceX is inaugural
integrated flight test before the Starship occurred in April
of 2023, marking a moment in history that the Rockets
eventual failure happened during the first stage separation.
Now the event underscored the risks and the complexities of
the Starship program. And then they did a follow up
test IFT 2 conducted in November.
So they only did two tests that year.
But this laid the groundwork for future launches.
SpaceX is now gearing up for the third test flight anticipated
around mid March. Ish, which could set the pace
for monthly launches until the year's end.
The Department of Defense is exploring a potential new launch
site for Starship in Florida too, and this would be of
strategic importance for the rocket and also for the DoD.
This moves involves an extensive environmental impact study to
assess the feasibility of such launches for the Space Coast of
Florida. And as SpaceX prepares for its
first Starship launch of 2024 from the Starbase facility in
South Texas, regulatory hurdles remain a significant focus.
The FAA is actively working with SpaceX to streamline the
licensing process for new Starship launches going forward.
Now the environmental ramifications of Starship
launches have come under scrutiny, and especially after
the first launch in April 2023, which caused considerable damage
to the launch site and caught a few things on fire and raised
environmental concerns. And these incidents highlight
the challenges of balancing Spacex's Starship program, but
also their own environmental stewardship.
Now the second Starship launch proved more successful, though
with a super heavy first stage booster performing very well.
However, the upper stage encountered issues leading to
its loss, though without ground damage, reflecting iterative
improvements in Spacex's launch protocol.
Now, mind you, the first stage did blow up as well, so it was
better than the first trip, but that second one was better.
Now, Spacex's founder Elon Musk has indicated a target window
and early to mid March for the third Starship launch attempt,
and this launch is viewed as having a reasonable chance of
reaching orbit. The FAA's Commercial Space
Transportation division has grown significantly in response
to the increasing number of US launches and the emergence of
new spaceflight companies. This expansion is part of a
broader effort to enhance the FAA's regulatory capacity in the
rapidly growing space industry and the private space industry.
Now the Space Force and the Air Force, alongside other federal
agencies is conducting an environmental impact statement
EIS for potential Starship launches from Florida.
Like we discussed before now, this is a very stringent level
environmental review. There's high stakes here, and we
know that if SpaceX passes the environmental review, we're
going to see a few launch towers happen as soon as possible from
this launch site because the Department of Defense is
involved. SpaceX has conducted 2 notable
launches from Starship facility in 2023 at Starbase, with both
missions ending in explosions shortly after takeoff.
The potential for Starship to support NASA's missions and the
Department of Defense's interest in its capabilities shows that
Starship is very important. It's a strategic rocket.
It's not just a rocket that will get people to the Moon and Mars,
It'll be a rocket that sends cargo to orbit for the
Department of Defense. Numerous armed forces as well,
and the ongoing EIS process is exploring various options for
accommodating Starship launches from Florida going forward.
Hopefully that can be done within the next six months, but
we're expecting it to be 8 months to 12 months before this
all happens. And the EIS is just another set
of red tape that SpaceX has to go through in order to launch
from the Space Coast. It's not the primary mission, So
this is a secondary mission that SpaceX would do.
Public meetings are scheduled to discuss the environmental impact
of potential new Starship launch sites, and this is great for
community engagement and transparency for Starship,
SpaceX and the Department of Defense and the state of
Florida. Now Starship, with its giant
capabilities, is poised to revolutionize space travel, with
plans to replace the Falcon rocket family eventually and
support missions like Mars colonization for Starlink and
more satellite operations. It's payload capacity makes it a
key asset for both commercial space activities and defense
applications and the drive to overcome regulatory and
environmental hurdles. It's a huge challenge for
SpaceX. They've had to do it at Starbase
a few Times Now, and they've always come up.
The winner of stakeholders, including military officials,
emphasize the need for national support and investment to
realize the potential of transformative space
technologies like Starship on the Space Coast of Florida.
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