SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk hopes Texas site to get approval for Starship's first orbital launch

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he is hopeful that his company's launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, will receive regulatory approval for launch in March and the SpaceX's new Starship rocket's first orbital launch will take place sometime this year.

Musk shared the comments during his first Starship performance since 2019, which he gave last night at the company's test facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Standing in front of a fully stacked prototype of the rocket towering over the stage, Musk provided an overview of some of the vehicle's latest specs, why he wants to embark on journeys into deep space, and when he hopes to make all these plans. occur.

It was his fifth appearance on Starship overall, with Musk speaking for more than an hour on Thursday night. However, the CEO didn't provide any major updates on Starship that he hasn't already divulged. Some new details emerged during the event's Q&A projected costs and future flight plans. But for the hardcore SpaceX fan, it was a repeat of what Musk has shared earlier. The timing seemed well calculated, considering that the Federal Aviation Administration is about to decide whether to authorize Starship to launch into orbit from Boca Chica.

"Life can't just be about solving problems," Musk said about why the pursuit of interplanetary travel is worthwhile. "There have to be things that inspire you, that move your heart." It's a justification he's used in the past.

Starship is SpaceX's massive next-generation rocket, designed to carry passengers and cargo to deep space destinations like the Moon and Mars. A completely reusable system, the spacecraft is intended to be launched into space atop a giant booster rocket called the Super Heavy. Using its Raptor prime movers, Starship will be able to land on the surfaces of other worlds, as well as Earth. The Super Heavy booster will land back on Earth after launch.

Perhaps the biggest issue reporters wanted to know was where SpaceX stood to get its launch license from the FAA. The FAA is presently deciding whether to grant SpaceX approval to launch Starship from Boca Chica, as the agency is responsible for ensuring launches to orbit do not pose a danger to uninvolved people or property. The approval process has been highly polarizing, with a few environmentalists saying the FAA should conduct a deeper review of Starship's impacts on the surrounding area, Musk told that the decision would go in SpaceX's favor. "We don't have a ton of insight into the way things stand with the FAA," Musk told. "We have gotten sort of a rough indication that there may be an approval in March."

SpaceX has been actively developing Starship for the past several years from the company's Boca Chica launch site. At the site, located just north of the border, SpaceX engineers have been churning out prototype after prototype while executing various tests with the vehicles. So far, the company has made several high-altitude flights with the prototypes, launching them more than 32,000 feet above Earth before attempting to land them back on the ground. The goal was to test Starship's ability to use its engines to land softly on Earth, eventually, a type of landing technique will be used while landing on other worlds. Of all those tests, SpaceX managed to successfully land only one prototype that did not explode afterward.

Now, SpaceX is fully focused on launching Starship into orbit to prove that the vehicle can actually get to space. While SpaceX may still have more work to do on Starship to prepare it for launch, one big hurdle standing in the rocket company's way is regulatory approval. And the FAA's decision-making process has been plagued with turbulence, as SpaceX's plans for Boca Chica have expanded significantly in recent years.

The FAA authorized SpaceX to launch from Boca Chica in 2014, and even prepared a full environmental impact statement, or EIS, to detail how the launch site would affect the surrounding area and wildlife refuge. But that approval was decided when SpaceX planned to launch its smaller Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets from the area. Now SpaceX wants to launch Starship from Boca Chica, the FAA has to determine if the company can launch it into orbit on a regular basis, if site changes need to be made, or if a new EIS is needed. The latter option may take a significant amount of time as the FAA consults with more experts and collects more data on SpaceX's footprint in Boca Chica and and its potential impacts on the surrounding environment.

The FAA has said it plans to make a decision by the end of February, making the timing of Musk's talk a bit more relevant, perhaps as a way of putting pressure on the FAA. SpaceX is really confident that it can launch from the Boca Chica site, which the company has dubbed Starbase. Musk argued that the remote site allows SpaceX to make more experimental flights than the company's other main launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida. "Because we have had a lot of launches going out of the Cape, we didn't want to disrupt the Cape activity, the operational launches, with sort of the advanced R&D of Starship," Musk said. "So it was important to decouple the operational launches from the R&D launches."

Musk noted that if the FAA did not grant immediate approval for Starbase, SpaceX could use Cape in the future. "We do have the alternative of the Cape, Musk said. "And we actually applied for environmental approval for launch from the Cape a few years ago and received it." He pointed out that the worst-case may be that SpaceX would be delayed for up to eight months while the company developed a launch tower for the Cape so that Starship could take off there.

Even if Starbase gets the go-ahead, it's unclear when SpaceX will actually be ready for launch. Musk said he is "very confident" that Starship will reach orbit this year and that SpaceX hopes to launch its first orbital attempt once the company gets approval from the FAA. But he provided few concrete details about recent progress in Starship's hardware development. "I think we're close to having the hardware ready to go," Musk said. "So right now, I think we're tracking to have the regulatory approval and hardware readiness around the same time."