SpaceX Complains of Starship Licensing Delay As House Committee Questions FAA Regs

SpaceX is complaining about FAA delays in approving the license for the next Starship test flight. Their statement coincided with a House committee hearing on the FAA’s implementation of updated regulatory requirements for licensing both launches and reentries issued three years ago. Industry is chafing at the so-called Part 450 regulations and the FAA agrees they need further refinement, but the clock is ticking towards a March 2026 deadline when they come into force for everyone.

No one from SpaceX testified at yesterday’s House Science, Space and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee hearing. Instead they issued a lengthy statement complaining that the FAA informed them it will be the end of November before they can expect a decision on the license for the next Starship test flight, Integrated Flight Test-5 or IFT-5.

The Starship/Super Heavy combination has been ready to launch since the first week of August, SpaceX said, and the FAA had said a determination would be made by mid-September. Now it’ll be another two  months.

“This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis,” SpaceX asserted in “Starships are Meant to Fly.”

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recently fined SpaceX for discharging industrial wastewater from the Starship/Super Heavy flame pit at its Starbase launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX denies the charge insisting they only use potable drinking water and the problem was all about paperwork, but decided not to fight the issue so they could move on with launches.

The effects of the company’s launches on nearby protected wildlife habitats is a long standing point of contention with environmentalists and the FAA’s regulatory process requires coordinating  with federal agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service. One major difference with IFT-5 is that for the first time SpaceX not only will launch Starship/Super Heavy, but attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster on the way back down.

Like Falcon 9 first stages, SpaceX plans to reuse the much larger Super Heavy boosters. Instead of landing on a drone ship at sea or on a landing pad, the boosters will be caught in mid-air by “chopsticks” attached to the launch tower.

Returning the booster after launch is a core capability to Starship becoming rapidly and reliably reusable pic.twitter.com/j4NSdnNiKr

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 27, 2024

SpaceX agrees it is a “singularly novel operation in the history of rocketry” and it’s “understandable” that “additional time” is needed from a regulatory standpoint, but instead of focusing on analysis to protect the public and the environment, “the licensing process has been repeatedly derailed by issues ranging from the frivolous to the patently absurd,” notably environmental issues.

At the hearing, Kelvin Coleman, Associate Administrator for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST), was peppered with questions from committee members and listened to criticism from other witnesses about how the FAA’s approval process is stifling innovation because it is complicated and time consuming. He agreed the new regulations, designed to streamline the process in response to industry demands at the time, still need fine-tuning, but pointed out that the companies themselves share responsibility. Often their applications are incomplete and have to be sent back or the companies make changes that require additional reviews.

Responding to SpaceX’s complaint about the IFT-5 decision delay, the FAA issued a statement citing similar reasons. The license SpaceX had for the last test flight, IFT-4, is good for multiple launches,  but the company is making changes for IFT-5 and as recently as mid-August provided new information about the size of the area that will be impacted environmentally.

Most SpaceX launches use Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets that received regulatory approval under the old regulations. Companies are not required to shift existing licenses to the new Part 450 regulations until March 10, 2026. Licenses for new rockets come under the new regulations. Coleman said only six of 30 licenses have made the transition so far and thinks it will be “very challenging” to meet the March 2026 deadline.

Starship is a new rocket and comes under Part 450. Rep. Mike Garcia (R-TX) sharply criticized Coleman for the IFT-5 licensing delay.  “I think you’ve got the wrong paradigm right now.”

Other committee members brought up Starship as an example of where the FAA needs to focus its attention because of Starship’s importance to U.S. leadership in space.  Starship will be the Human Landing System (HLS) for NASA’s Artemis program to put American astronauts back on the Moon. Delays to Starship’s development could affect the date for the landing, currently scheduled for September 2026. Republicans and Democrats in Congress are determined that the United States get back to the Moon before China gets there. China has said it will put its astronauts, called taikonauts, on the Moon by 2030.

Subcommittee chair Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) said it bluntly:  “I fear that at this rate, the Communist Party will launch taikonauts to the Moon while U.S. industry remains tethered to Earth with red tape.”

Babin’s frustration with the Part 450 process was shared by just about all of the committee members and the other witnesses.

Part 450 was intended to be an industry-friendly streamlining of four sets of regulations that evolved over the decades after the Department of Transportation was assigned responsibility for regulating the space launch industry in the Reagan Administration. The Trump Administration directed the FAA to update the regulations in Space Policy Directive-2.  Industry successfully argued for moving from prescriptive rules to performance-based rules where instead of the government setting the rules and telling companies exactly what they must do to comply, the government sets the rules, but allows industry to propose their own methods of compliance.

Industry provided substantial input and the effort looked promising when the final rule was released in October 2020, but hasn’t worked out as expected.

Yesterday David Cavossa, President of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry trade group that includes a number of launch services companies, testified to a long list of problems and recommended solutions. His top three were for the FAA to appoint an Independent Technical Authority to oversee technical discussions instead of splitting them into various FAA/AST branches, shorten the pre-application process, and issue more Advisory Circulars that explain how the FAA is interpreting the regulations so companies know how to comply.

The pre-application process is a particular bone of contention.

The regulations give the FAA 180 days to make a license determination and Coleman insisted they met that with five of the six Part 450 licenses issued so far.

Cavossa disagreed, saying none met the deadline. The difference is that he includes the pre-application period that has no time limits and can take years. He called it a “game of bring me a rock” where companies get “stuck in an endless back and forth process as they discuss means of compliance approval without guidance on what the FAA is actually looking for.”  Many of the Advisory Circulars or ACs that are supposed to provide guidance “are still missing and are needed greatly.”

Coleman said 17 were issued last year and “we’re on pace to issue up to 10 this year.”

Mike French, founder of the Space Policy Group and Vice Chair of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) agreed with Cavossa that the pre-application process is a problem. Referring to the 180-day time limit as a shot clock, he argued what really is needed is a chess clock, which keeps track of the total time players take for a move so that it would include the pre-application phase as well.

French also agreed on the need for more Advisory Circulars, but acknowledged that part of the problem is lack of staff at FAA/AST. The people working to approve licenses are the same ones who have to write the ACs. Coleman said they are up to 158 staff now and thanked Congress for approving the funding and staffing increases they’ve requested in recent years, but French pointed out that compared to the burgeoning growth in launches, the budget is growing only at 10 percent and staff at 5 percent.

Pamela Meredith, chair of the Space Law Practice Group at KMA Zuckert LLC, praised the FAA for meeting its mandate to promote the commercial space transportation industry while maintaining public safety. “We have a thriving space transportation industry and, touch wood, have not had a major public safety event.”  But — “we have a licensing regime with lack of certainty, lack of transparency, and significant delay.”

Coleman said in February the FAA would establish an Aerospace Rulemaking Committee or SpARC to get industry input on implementation of Part 450 by the end of the summer. It hasn’t been established yet. At the hearing he pointed out that summer isn’t over and they are still working on it. The charter is drafted and in review and they hope to stand it up “in short order,” but he didn’t offer a timeline.

He sees the  SpARC as at least part of the solution to dealing with some of these issues. “When we published 450 we knew it was not a perfect rule to start with. We knew that we would find, as we went along in its implementation, … some kinks. … We’re looking very much forward to this SpARC, to its recommendations, and we look forward to implementing the recommendations and towards making Part 450 a better rule.”

Meanwhile, FAA/AST does have COMSTAC.  Its next meeting is Monday.