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for the past several years spacex has
been developing starship a giant new
deep space rocket at the company's test
facility in south texas
starship heading back to the landers
testing of starship prototypes has
resulted in fiery failures
but last year starship completed its
first successful suborbital flight and
landing
now spacex ceo elon musk says 2022 is
the year starship will face its biggest
test yet orbital flight i feel at this
point highly confident that we'll get to
orbit this year however it's possible
that starship's historic first orbital
flight test might take place at the
kennedy space center in florida rather
than at starbase in boca chica texas
that's because flight safety regulators
could end up determining more
environmental reviews are needed for the
texas site an orbital test flight is a
really big milestone you know for
starship or really for any you know
rocket that's going to space
so
why after years of development in texas
could spacex's starship make its most
important flight to date in florida
and what could that switch mean for
spacex's operations going forward
on thursday february 10th spacex ceo
elon musk gave his first update on the
company's starship program in about two
years
towering behind him at the company's
south texas starbase was starship the
essential technology the the holy grail
breakthrough that's needed is a
rapid and completely reusable rocket
system
when stacked on top of its massive
booster called super heavy starship
stands at 120 meters or 400 feet
making it the tallest rocket ever
constructed
starship according to elon musk is meant
to go to mars the starship rocket system
is meant to be a fully reusable
multi-planetary
rocket system
nasa selected starship as the vehicle to
get astronauts to land on the surface of
the moon by 2025
and the pentagon said it wants to use
starship to transport military cargo but
before all that can happen starship
needs to be tested in orbit
spacex has been able to
conduct these shorter
shorter flights no more than 18 miles up
but this year you know elon musk says
he's he's pretty sure that that star
ship is going to go to orbit the orbital
test mission still needs sign off from
the faa which has been conducting an
environmental assessment of the
company's proposal to operate starship
in texas the faa of course is is even
looking at this in the first place
because
the agency monitors and regulates space
launch facilities
launches themselves and then re-entries
last year the faa held hearings about
the starship proposal for the texas
location and received around 19 000
comments on the initiative one of the
questions with the fda's current review
for the proposal for starship in texas
is
are they going to have to do additional
review on environmental grounds you know
beyond that
in 2021 the journal reported the boko
chika residents said the starship
project is damaging to the local
wetlands and wildlife
they move in
and change the whole tone and tenor of
the place but but they began to do 24 7
construction which meant
you know wall-to-wall people cars
traffic noise lighting
uh you name it the agency is considering
you know the potential impact of using
the vehicles at the site
everything from noise to what it would
mean for surrounding
wildlife and wetlands musk said that if
in addition to its current environmental
assessment or ea the faa requires spacex
to conduct a more in-depth eis or
environmental impact statement of the
starbase site spacex would consider
moving its orbital test to the kennedy
space center
in a statement the faa wrote completing
the environmental review does not
guarantee that a vehicle operator
license will be issued to spacex the
environmental review is just one part of
the faa commercial space licensing
process
spacex must also meet faa safety risk
and financial responsibility
requirements it would obviously set us
back
for quite some time because uh
an eis takes a lot longer than
an ea
so we would have to shift our priorities
to cape kennedy spacex already has
permission to use a launch site at the
kennedy space center for starship
in december musk said in a tweet that
spacex had started building an orbital
launch pad for starship at the florida
location the short answer to
if you know is spacex abandoning texas
you know to shift this program to
florida is no it's possible that the
starbase site
could end up as spacex's kind of
long-term
sort of research site r d
whereas the operational
sort of launch pad would be in florida
they know that they're they're good to
go there you know and in terms of like
all environmental reviews and analysis
it's sort of more plug and play whereas
texas you still have this this question
of what the result of the current review
is going to be
and at least the possibility that
there's going to be another
environmental review
you know beyond that the faa said it
planned to release its environmental
review on march 28th we don't have a ton
of insight into
the
where things stand with the faa um
we have gotten sort of a rough
indication that there may be an approval
uh in march
but that's all we know
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will culminate with landing on the
landing pad in boca chica
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