Since my first mention of Flight Test 9 (FT-9) being "real soon, now" back last Tuesday (May 13) every mention of the mission has moved the launch date further out. By last Friday, the launch date on NextSpaceflight had slipped from this Wednesday, May 21st, to Memorial Day (next Monday, 5/26). Now that the weekend is over, it has slipped to Tuesday, May 27.
Don't get your hopes up.
The reality is that the FAA has the final word and they have yet to approve the launch.
"However, SpaceX may not launch [Flight 9] until the FAA either closes the Starship Flight 8 mishap investigation or makes a return-to-flight determination," agency officials said in an emailed statement on Friday. "The FAA is reviewing the mishap report SpaceX submitted on May 14."
That's not to say they won't approve the mishap report or otherwise allow the launch, but we simply have no way to know. If you're betting some money to travel to the Starbase area to watch the launch, beware that the risk is higher than usual. Instead of just the possibility of delay due to weather or some sort of hardware issue, add to that the risk that they won't even be able to start the launch preparations. The loss of both FT-7 and 8 has made it a bigger political football than before largely due to the Caribbean nations that had regular airline services interrupted by the falling debris.
These two mishaps spurred U.K. government officials to reach out to the U.S. State Department, requesting that the Flight 9 trajectory be changed to help safeguard British territories in the Caribbean, according to ProPublica. (The Turks and Caicos are a British Overseas Territory; The Bahamas is an independent nation but is part of the Commonwealth.)
"For the Starship Flight 9 mission, the FAA is expanding the size of aircraft and maritime hazard areas both in the U.S. and other countries," agency officials wrote in the Friday statement. "This is a result of the FAA requiring SpaceX to revise the Flight Safety Analysis following the prior launch mishap and because SpaceX intends to reuse a previously launched Super Heavy booster rocket for the first time."
There are persistent reports that SpaceX won't attempt to recover the
SuperHeavy booster from this flight, which implies they'll just dump it in the
Gulf. I simply don't have a source better than the many comments around
online.
Flight Test 8, launched on March 6th. Image Credit: SpaceX
Almost seems as if there are efforts to interfere with SpaceX's operations. There where recently published articles, regarding how Blue Origin has attempted to inhibit SpaceX Florida proposed launch cadence down to a few to one a month in their legal complaints.
ReplyDeleteThe FAA is "expanding the size of aircraft and maritime hazard areas". Wasn't that what was the problem of the 7 and 8 flights, that we ordered the airspace in entire countries shut down for extended periods? It seems some people suggested it would have been better to better monitor and limit the closed areas. Is the FAA intentionally defaming SpaceX?
ReplyDeleteLooking at those hapless countries on Google maps, I see Google has acknowledged it is "Our Sea", or in Latin Mare Nostrum, or in modern English the Mediterranean Sea. As a Floridan, what are your thoughts on the renamed Gulf?
Ellie in Space says "no catch". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29zreDA4y9E&ab_channel=EllieinSpace
Ellie's channel was the first place I saw mention of no landing, and since then I've seen other channels echoing it. I've watched one or two of Ellie's videos because she visited on another channel I was watching as a guest, and her story was she was a TV journalist and found working around SpaceX more interesting than local TV news (ISTRC she was in Arizona). My impression of her is overall positive, but neither Ars, Space.com, or any of the commercial sites that do news have said it.
DeleteIt's just that I've been suckered so many times into time-wasting videos that are just click bait that with the exception of the ones I subscribe to (Lab Padre and NASA Spaceflight), I don't watch many videos.
To me, the only aspect of renaming the gulf is the inconvenience of embedding the new name in memory and throwing out things like calling it the GOMEX. 99% of the time I just call it the Gulf anyway, which is still valid.
Blue Origin and ULA doing things to interfere with (and slow down) SpaceX? What a surprise! {end sarcasm}
Interesting post over at Come and Make It blog, addressed to you SiGB:
ReplyDeletehttp://comeandmakeit.blogspot.com/2025/05/sigb-what-say-you.html?m=1
(...talk about antennas!)
"Blue Origin and ULA doing things to interfere with (and slow down) SpaceX? What a surprise! {end sarcasm}"
ReplyDeleteMight be, more than sarcasm thats warranted, Mr. SiGB, as you say, not being sarcastic though in total sync with you Sir, maybe it is warranted to express disgust, for something, us little people are witness to. Way I can describe that comment, here are these two very very wealthy corporations, you could claim within reason, hideously rich, who have literally everything going for their owners and officers, which getting down to brass tacks, have gotten wealthy off the sweat of our backs, IOW's, where, the only source of true wealth is created, simply thru the creation of something of true tangible value, by one's elbow grease and sweat if their brow, (and who might those"one's" and "their" be, may somebody ask?), if for not the incredible largess of our government, and we the people, (whom if ever, rarely have groused about how much of our hard earned wealth is gone to these corporations, (Amazon even who receive billions in various federal "assistance and bennies" to their corporate model), are here bitching and crying, which is in my personal opinion really disgusting, unbecoming, pitiful in its own unique sense.
If there is any one outstanding feature of SpaceX, its dignity, all around from my perspective, they in a word got their shit together, put their heads down, and git er done, in spades. The contrast with the others is very distenct.
One of those "little things" I learned about SpaceX that had a profound impact on me is that on some recent contracts they were offered a "cost plus" or "firm, fixed price" contract and they refused the cost plus approach. In my mind, a cost plus contract is only reasonable when you're doing things no one has ever done before and the chances of getting things wrong are much higher.
DeleteIn general, it seems that cost-plus just turns into the congressional payback schemes that screw the average tax payer. Boeing's SLS is a cost plus contract and they've perverted that form of contract far beyond reasonable. When they're literally using ABF (already been flown) space shuttle engines, there's no need for cost plus. There is nothing about SLS that has never been done before; although virtually all of it has never been done correctly - as an SLS, that is. I'll grant that they may have redesigned areas that they thought needed improvement, but that is so outweighed by things like the bad heat shield, which is 1960s technology made worse, that I think they shouldn't have been given cost-plus contracts.
The thing that mrffs my mrffles about the SLS is that... nothing about it is new. And it's worse than most people think.
DeleteFrom Day 1 of the Shuttle Program, there were designs and studies about using an enlarged main tank with... SSME/RS25s or a version dumbed down for throwaway use, with either regular or extended 2, 3 and 4 solid rocket boosters strapped to it and an upper stage utilizing the J2/Centaur modified.
The late 1990's look at new stuff from shuttle stuff did that again, in order to make a Mars-capable system.
The whole Ares in the 2000s was a version of that. Ares1 was an... extended booster with an Orion capsule, a service module and a... Centaurish 2nd stage. While Ares4 was an extended main tank with disposable versions of the RS25s and 2 or 3 or 4 regular or extended boosters and an expanded super-Centaurish 2nd stage for, well, you know, the thing.
All the studies and projects dealing with next-gen shuttle stuff all said it was gonna be an easy and cheap (in comparison to a completely new system) way to create more better larger lift systems.
So why was SLS basically priced out as a completely new system rather than a continuation of existing hardware and manufacturing capability?
It's not like after the Shuttle Program ended all the tooling and design information was destroyed (like in the F-22 program for the USAF.)
Corruption, graft, sheer negligence and stupidity are the only things I can think of for doing a Cost-Plus pricing system.
I know, "You keep saying the same thing, Beans." Yes. Yes, I am. Because I'm howling into the wind because all of this has been so unworthy of the legacy of Mercury/Gemini/Apollo and of all the people who did so much so quickly and were willing to trash everything in order to achieve success. And so unworthy of the American Taxpayers and a complete betrayal of every citizen who believed in the greatness of NASA and America's Space Program.
And this is nothing new. My dad did the space program on Gemini and Apollo for the USAF (range tracking and instrumentation ships and ground stations.) He knew a lot of the biggies involved. He was personally thanked by the NASA administrator for his help in the success of the instrumentation and tracking systems that allowed Apollo to succeed. Fortunately he was retired before the stupid Shuttle system got going too far, but he firmly believed that NASA was totally screwing up said Shuttle system and firmly believed that the Shuttle was going to destroy the space program and kill people. He was right.
We could have done everything Shuttle did with post-moon Apollo/Saturn programs including returning large payloads. And making space stations like Skylab but bigger and better. Newer versions of the J2 and the F1, recoverable engines, recoverable stages, add-on boosters to extend range and/or payload, all of what SLS is now supposedly doing.
Damn, I'm angry over SLS. Pissed beyond belief.