Slow FAA Reviews May Push Starship orbital Launch To 2022

Slow Federal Aviation Administration Reviews(environmental assessment ) May delay Starship orbital Launch To 2022 .
SpaceX and the FAA have officially issued what is known as a draft environmental assessment (EA) of the company's South Texas Starship launch plans, in a rare sign of substantial progress.
On Friday, the FAA issued a draft environmental evaluation of SpaceX's plans for orbital launches from South Texas, kicking off a 30-day public comment process.
The long-awaited procedural step is the first of numerous regulatory barriers that SpaceX must overcome before receiving final approval to fly its Super Heavy rocket and Starship upper stage from a launch site near Boca Chica, Texas.
As mentioned before, formally known as a Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment is a study that assesses the environmental consequences of SpaceX's Starship program, encompassing launch and reentry.
In other words, SpaceX's initial draft Environmental Assessment is quite cautious, asking authorization for a bare minimum concept of operations for orbital Starship flights.
An Environmental Assessment and subsequent launch license accepted as-is would likely allow SpaceX just enough slack to execute basic Earth orbit launches and no more than one or two orbital refilling tests per year, with a maximum of 3-5 orbital flights per year.
Above all else, SpaceX’s slimmed-down draft Assessment should be far easier for the FAA to approve than an Environmental Assessment pursuing permission for Starship’s ultimate ambitions, dozens to hundreds of launches annually, from the beginning.
Combined with the uphill battle it’s starting to look like SpaceX will have to wage for an orbital Starship launch license in South Texas, it’s looking increasingly likely that Starship, Super Heavy, and Starbase will be technically ready for orbital launch tests well before the FAA is ready to approve or license them.
Barring delays, the public now has until mid-October to read and comment on SpaceX’s draft Environmental Assessment, after which the FAA and SpaceX will review those comments and hopefully turn the draft into a completed review.
Even if the FAA were to take just two months somehow to return a best-case FONSI, clearing Starbase of environmental launch hurdles, it’s hard to imagine that the agency could then turn around and approve an orbital Starship launch license or even a one-off experimental permit in the last few weeks of 2021.
Ultimately, that means that nothing short of a minor miracle is likely to prevent the FAA’s environmental review and licensing delays from directly delaying Starship’s orbital launch debut.
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[max-q]

I have always said it wouldn’t launch til 2022 with or without FAA approval. They don’t have anywhere near the infrastructure to launch. Ship20 only started testing and they can’t start testing Super Heavy till they get the tower built. That’s on hold for the carriage and chopsticks that have been sitting painted for a week now. If they got one thing done a week towards launch they still wouldn’t be ready. The GSE methane tank hasn’t even been set much less plumbed, tested, capped and insulated. Now they have heat tiles falling off but while he was fiddling with his tower, ship16 could have done a self-launched flight to get high enough to test the heat tiles or at least make sure they don’t fall off like they did. We can blame the FAA but honestly, if they got approval tomorrow, when do you think they would launch? February, March 2022? Elon likes to put the FAA on blast but it draws attention from the fact that SpaceX isn’t ready.

[richardwatts]

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