FAA Issues License to SpaceX to Launch Starship

The FAA completed its long-awaited review of SpaceX’s application to launch its enormous Starship/Super Heavy rocket from Boca Chica, TX today. SpaceX now can launch whenever it is ready and plans to make the first attempt as early as Monday, April 17. Starship will not quite make it all the way around Earth, splashing down in the ocean near Hawaii, but it nonetheless is being referred to as the first orbital launch.

The FAA issued the license at 5:50 pm ET this afternoon.

The FAA issues Notices to Air Missions (NOTAMs) to direct aircraft away from launch areas. Two NOTAMs for Boca Chica were issued today for April 17 and April 18 from 1200-1505 UTC (8:00 am-11:05 am EDT).

SpaceX tweeted immediately after the license was issued that it will try “as soon as” Monday.

Targeting as soon as Monday, April 17 for the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket from Starbase in Texas → https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK pic.twitter.com/Ry25Uuvknh

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 14, 2023

The company later sent an email saying the launch window opens at 7:00 am Central Time (8:00 am Eastern) and lasts for 150 minutes, which would be 10:30 am Eastern. The launch will be webcast on SpaceX’s website beginning 45 minutes before launch.

The 120-meter (394-foot) tall rocket, 9 meters (29.5 feet) in diameter, has two stages. The first stage is called Super Heavy and the second stage is Starship, although the name Starship can also refer to the combination of the two. SpaceX calls its test and launch site at Boca Chica “Starbase.” It is just a few miles from the Mexico border near Brownsville, TX.

The countdown timeline, flight timeline, and flight path are posted on SpaceX’s website.  The countdown timeline amusingly notes “excitement guaranteed” at the moment when liftoff should occur. Success is far from guaranteed. This is a test flight of a new rocket with 33 methalox Raptor engines on the first stage. Methalox — methane and liquid oxygen — is a new propellant mix and the two attempts to launch much smaller methalox rockets so far (one by China, one by the U.S. company Relativity Space) did not reach orbit.

As can be seen in the flight profile, Starship launches east out of Boca Chica and travels around the globe with splashdown near Hawaii 90 minutes later.  It does not quite make an orbit of the Earth, so technically this is a suborbital flight even though it is often referred to as orbital.

Both stages are designed to be reusable, but these test articles are not. Super Heavy and Starship will separate 2 minutes 52 seconds after launch. Super Heavy will turn around and fire its thrusters as though it was landing the way SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stages land either on an autonomous drone ship at sea or back on land, but in this case it will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico near Boca Chica as Starship continues on its flight.

As part of the approval process, SpaceX had to go through environmental reviews by the FAA and other entities. Last summer, the FAA gave SpaceX a qualified thumbs up in its Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA), but identified 75 mitigation actions. Today the FAA published a 122-page “written re-evaluation” of that PEA, concluding that a new or supplemental environmental assessment is not needed.

SpaceX must “evacuate areas that have the potential to expose the public to unacceptable risk” and is distributing this map of the Keep Out Zone around Starbase for this launch.

The government indemnifies commercial space launches for certain amounts of damages to third parties — basically the public — sharing liability with the company pursuant to the 1984 Commercial Space Launch Act as amended in 1988. The FAA determines the “maximum probable loss” if there is an accident and the company must demonstrate it has sufficient insurance or escrow to cover its share. The Starship license requires SpaceX to obtain $500 million of liability insurance.

The license is not only for this launch, but is good for five years.

SpaceX has expansive plans for Starship not only to launch its next-generation Starlink satellites into Earth orbit, but is the key to achieving Elon Musk’s goal of making humanity a multiplanet species. NASA has already contracted with SpaceX to use Starship as a Human Landing System to put astronauts back on the Moon, but Musk’s vision is sending millions of people to Mars to ensure humanity survives if a catastrophe destroys Earth.

 

This article has been updated.