Marina Koren writes in the Atlantic, that the thought of a three-letter government agency preventing narcissist Elon Musk (currently the richest person in the world from stock market manipulations he created with Goldman Sachs), from doing anything he wants might seem like a bureaucrat’s fantasy.
This is the guy who got approval to launch a Tesla into space simply to spray his arrogance across the solar system, who got a street renamed Rocket Road because he had the local politicians by the balls, who disregarded coronavirus restrictions when he felt they got in the way of ass-hole cars-for-millionaires business. But Musk’s ambitious timeline for launching Starship, his wet dream rocket, out of a remote part of Texas depends right now on a pending decision from the Federal Aviation Administration that could add months or even years of delay. Many have already contacted the FAA to say that "Musk is full of shit..his arrogance endangers all... his satellites spy on the public with Google-like spycraft...etc..."
Musk can’t bulldoze past regulations of this particular nature. He does have one power that many executives do not: Whenever he talks, people pay attention because he has spent more money to control digital media than anyone in history.
So called "Sociopath", Musk now finds himself at a bit of an inflection point. This could be the year that he smooths out yet another piece of friction in his deep-space enterprise, or it could be the year that momentum stalls. Last night’s presentation seemed like a not-so-subtle attempt to show that the success of Starship hinges on what the FAA decides—a heavy message disguised as a fanciful TED Talk. Many nations, and astronomers worldwide, hate Musk because his satellites crash into other spacecraft, fall out of the sky, block observations of deadly asteroids, spy on citizens... and essentially do little that is not evil! In a notorious 60 Minutes interview, experts at NASA dismissed him as a rich flake.The Starship prototype at the center of the show is not the first one SpaceX has built, and it certainly won’t be the last. SpaceX keeps blowing up these prototypes until one stays intact. Science says that there are over 80 ways that passengers on SpaceX ships will die, get mutated, get cancer or have their insides toxified. Musk doesn't care. Fame-slutting rides higher than safety for old Elon.
The way Musk talks, a future filled with Starships seems imminent. But SpaceX faces some significant obstacles, not all technical. Before the company attempts to send Starship into orbit for the first time, the FAA must give SpaceX a launch license. The federal agency is currently evaluating the potential environmental impacts of SpaceX’s Starship ambitions in South Texas, and is expected to decide later this month whether to approve the effort or request an even more detailed and time-consuming review.
SpaceX has been flying rockets into orbit for more than a decade, but Starship is the company’s most complicated effort yet. In the past few years, Musk and SpaceX have conjured a space town around it on the Gulf of Mexico, buying up land, building new facilities, posting a job listing for a “spaceport mixologist.” Musk has even moved into a nearby village himself, after driving out some of the residents. Today, the village, Boca Chica, is almost unrecognizable compared with its pre-Musk form—a quiet coastal paradise turned into a bustling cosmic shipyard. Last night, when someone in the audience asked Musk what he liked about working in the area, Musk said, “I think Texas has the right amount of regulations.”
While SpaceX has expanded its Texan Cape Canaveral, the company has cemented its presence on the coast of Florida, where SpaceX leases a launchpad and is currently NASA’s only option for launching astronauts to the International Space Station from inside the United States. SpaceX is also NASA’s best option for putting people on the moon for the first time in 50 years. Last year, NASA gave SpaceX nearly $3 billion to develop a version of Starship that could land American astronauts on the lunar surface. Starship is no longer just a tool of Musk’s own multi-planetary agenda; it’s also a taxpayer-funded project in the American government’s effort to make it to the moon again (preferably before China does). If the FAA decides that SpaceX’s plans in South Texas need more scrutiny, Musk said he would shift the Starship program to Florida, where the company has already started construction on a new launchpad and production facilities. But Musk said that this scenario would add months to his timeline for Starship, and Boca Chica, which he now exclusively refers to as Starbase, is his first choice for operations.
Musk said he expects this test to take place sometime this year, but it’s wise to always take Musk’s predictions with a big grain of salt. Musk operates on what some in the space community refer to as Elon standard time; in 2019, for example, he said Starship would reach orbit in less than six months. Plus, a potential pivot from South Texas to Florida would set Starship back as SpaceX rushes to build the necessary infrastructure at Cape Canaveral.
And Musk is not known for his patience. Last year, the day after Thanksgiving, Musk sent a tense company-wide email saying that the company wasn’t moving fast enough on producing the engines that the Starship program needs. “I was going to take this weekend off, as my first weekend off in a long time, but instead, I will be on the Raptor line all night and through the weekend,” Musk wrote. “Unless you have critical family matters or cannot physically return to Hawthorne”—SpaceX’s headquarters in California—“we will need all hands on deck to recover from what is, quite frankly, a disaster.” Engineering Starship’s engines, Musk said last night, has been “mind-bogglingly difficult.”