In my last report about SpaceX, I noted that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was tethering the highly innovative and successful firm with needless rules and senseless fines.
It is clear that the FAA bureaucracy cannot keep up with the speed of innovation within a company that values merit and excellence over diversity and inclusion.
Now CEO Elon Musk said SpaceX plans to sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach” after the agency planned to fine his defense contractor for issues with two launches last year.
Musk’s threat of litigation, in a post on social media platform X on Tuesday, came after the FAA announced it would levy fines amounting to $633,000 against SpaceX because the company had purportedly failed to comply with a variety of licensing and safety-related regulations during those launches.The FAA said SpaceX used an “unapproved rocket propellant farm” for its EchoStar XXIV Jupiter mission in July 2023. For its launch a month earlier from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, SpaceX had modified its communication plans and used a new and unapproved launch control room, the FAA said.According to a “notice of proposed civil penalty,” the FAA clearly informed SpaceX on June 16, 2023, two days before the launch, that the agency “would not issue a modification” to the SpaceX license. SpaceX went ahead anyway.
Lawfare: In this country, both sides can wage legal battles (at least, so far).
One point in this development that is beginning to be highlighted is the impact on this nation’s ability to innovate because of heavy bureaucratic burdens.
The importance of innovation in the Space Race cannot be stressed highly enough. For example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has rock samples collected by its remote vehicle Perseverance, sitting on the red planet and awaiting transport to Earth for further study.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is grappling with escalating costs and a postponed timeline (as late as 2040), which promoted a search for more efficient methods from the private sector to ensure its execution.
SpaceX is one of the seven firms the agency selected to develop ” out-of-the-box” plans to get the samples back faster and cheaper than current plans. The FAA is constraining SpaceX’s Starship development with its regulatory tethers, which is a critical component in its plans for the Mars mission.
NASA announced late June 7 it selected proposals from Aerojet Rocketdyne, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Quantum Space, SpaceX and Whittinghill Aerospace for 90-day studies of alternative MSR concepts. Each award is worth up to $1.5 million…..“Mars Sample Return will be one of the most complex missions NASA has undertaken, and it is critical that we carry it out more quickly, with less risk, and at a lower cost,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement about the new studies.NASA did not disclose details about the studies beyond the titles of the industry proposals. At least three of the proposals, from Aerojet, Northrop and Whittinghill, appear focused on the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), the rocket that will launch the sample cache from the surface of Mars into orbit around the planet. The request for mission study proposals highlighted the MAV as one element of particular interest to NASA for studies.“The Mars Ascent Vehicle is one of the key constraining factors in terms of driving complexity and cost,” said Sandra Connelly, NASA deputy associate administrator for science, at a June 5 meeting of the National Academies’ Space Studies Board that included a discussion of MSR.SpaceX, not surprisingly, is offering its Starship vehicle for MSR. Blue Origin is apparently looking at leveraging parts of the Artemis lunar exploration campaign; the request for proposals allowed companies to make use of elements of Artemis, like the Space Launch System and lunar Gateway, as government furnished equipment for MSR.
As I noted in a previous report, China has its own Mars sample return plans…with a goal of 2030.
When an agency no longer serves this country’s best interests and is hindering its progress and acting in ways detrimental to national security, it is time to consider its future.
For example, taking the Javier Milei approach.
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