(Bloomberg) -- US air safety regulators are working overtime to keep up with safety and launch license applications at Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the world’s most prolific rocket launch company.
“They get the majority of our resources,” Daniel Murray, an executive director at the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Office, told an aerospace summit in Washington on Wednesday. “80% of the overtime that we log, and this is hundreds of hours a month, goes to SpaceX,” he said, referring to his office specifically.
Murray also said that an ongoing environmental review is the main driver of fresh launch-schedule delays with SpaceX’s Starship, but the schedule is also tied to changes the company made to the scope of its flight plan.
SpaceX said on Tuesday that FAA approval for the fifth launch of its colossal Starship rocket is going to take months longer than it originally expected. it said the delay is “driven by superfluous environmental analysis” rather than safety concerns. SpaceX has previously said the agency lacks the resources and takes too long with approvals.
“We will never get humanity to Mars if this continues,” Musk said in a social media post Tuesday.
Murray pushed back on Wednesday, saying the office had cleared the way for SpaceX to apply for multiple flights following its last launch in June “with the same configuration and the same profile.”
“They chose to do something different,” Murray said. “They pivoted. We pivoted with them.”
Murray said the safety review for Starship’s next flight wasn’t yet completed. Both that and the environmental review are factors in delaying the next Starship launch until November from mid-September.
Several items weigh on the timing of approvals for launch license applications, including the scope of the plan, timing, safety and the “stability” of the proposal, Murray said, speaking generally about the agency’s review process.
SpaceX has said that the vehicles it needs for its fifth Starship launch have been ready since August. The upcoming test launch will see Starship’s main booster attempt to come back to the launch site after taking off, where it will be caught by SpaceX’s launch tower.
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