The U.S Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has delayed completion by at least one month of an environmental review for SpaceX’s Starship Program. It is now scheduled for April 29th.
The FAA has been conducting a programmatic environment assessment (PEA), of Starbase, a South Texas site. SpaceXFor months, the agency has been developing, building, and testing its next-generation Starship vehicle. In mid-September, the agency published a draft PEA. It estimated that the final report would be completed by the end of 2011.
The FAA didn’t do that. Instead, they pushed back the completion date to February 14. They cited the need for further consultation with other agencies as well as to analyze the thousands and millions of public comments submitted to the draft PEA.
Photos: SpaceX launches Super Heavy rocket into launch stand
The target date was again pushed back. To March 28For similar reasons, The FAA Today’s announcement(March 25): The same factors have pushed April 29 to the right, pushing the target date to the right once again.
However, today’s news won’t likely have much impact on Starship development timeline. SpaceX is getting ready to launch the first-ever Starship orbital flight test flight, but it won’t likely be ready until May, Elon Musk stated recently.
SpaceX’s Starship is a fully reusable rocket-spaceship pair that SpaceX is creating to transport people and cargo to Mars, the moon, and other distant locations. Musk believes that the vehicle can make it economically possible to accomplish ambitious exploration feats, such as colonizing Mars.
Starship has not yet been orbital but it has made several flights. A three-engine prototype, known as SN15 (“Serial Number.”) was launched in May 2021. 15″) A flight of approximately 6.2 miles (10 km) was completed by aceIn the South Texas sky
SpaceX’s Raptor engine, which will power Starship, will be used. Each rocket-spaceship stack will require 39 Raptors — 33 for the first-stage booster, which is known as Super Heavy, and six for the upper-stage spacecraft, which is called Starship.
One of the biggest challenges facing Starship is likely to be building enough Raptors to support it and its high flight frequency. SpaceX is not yet ready to launch its first orbital mission because of a engine bottleneck.
“We’ll have 39 flying engines built by next months, then another month for integration, so hopefully May is for orbital flight test.” Musk tweeted Monday (March 21).
Mike Wall is the writer of “There is more” (Grand Central Publishing 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), A book about the search to find alien life. Follow him on twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom Oder on Facebook.
