The US Federal Aviation Administration has released a draft decision that will give SpaceX permission to conduct 25 launches of the giant Starship rocket in 2025. Each launch should end with a soft landing of both stages.
Starship launch permission
On Wednesday, November 20, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration released a draft environmental assessment for the Starship rocket. This is a very solid document that consists of 160 pages of text. The most important conclusion it contains: this giant carrier can be launched much more often than it is now.
SpaceX has launched Starship five times in 2024. In total, the launch on November 19 was the sixth for it. However, the draft decision states that in 2025 the number of launches can be increased 5 times. That is, up to 25 launches may take place in total.
This number coincides with the goal stated by the company itself. In addition, the document states that it can not only launch giant carriers, but also perform soft landings of both of their stages. The upper one will just land as usual, but the lower one will again try to be caught with a giant mechanical grapple.
Will there really be so many launches?
SpaceX is developing Starship primarily to take humans to the Moon and Mars. However, so far the spacecraft has only reached Earth orbit and in unmanned mode. It is quite possible that in 2025 there will be a breakthrough.
SpaceX head Elon Musk has repeatedly accused the agency of being slow and thus preventing him from executing plans on time. However, he is now one of newly elected President Donald Trump’s closest advisers, and it looks like he will now be favored.
However, it should be noted that the publicized document is a draft, not a final decision. Several more public discussions are due to be held in January, four offline and one online, and only then will the number of Starship launches be finalized.
It is expected that in the future Musk may become one of the heads of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” and there he will deal with the problems of “unnecessary bureaucracy”. So it’s quite possible that things will change in the future, not just for SpaceX, but for other space companies as well.
Provided by www.space.com
