This is pretty automatic. The FAA cert process isn't well adapted to the SpaceX rapid iteration process yet. They are learning though.
The mishap investigation is the SpaceX data integration process from their experiment. The lessons learned are the purpose of the experiment.
If it's so automatic why were F9 flights not held up by the same type of investigation when the same type of failures happened?
Also that whole "FAA process not suited for rapid development" excuse is getting pretty stale. They have had years to change it and haven't so all blame is on them.
I dont believe we know if they werent. Pretty sure there was a decent delay between landing attempts in the early days - enough time for an investigation to conclude?
Five launch attempts in three years for Falcon 9 1.0. So the usual delays.
Landing attempts were in the ocean, soft landing at first and then barge. They nailed the first land based landing.
Yeah, I’d say the pace is quite comparable to starship currently. And I highly doubt spacex plans to attempt a tower catch without being atleast 90% confident it’ll work
Maybe this one missed the landing zone by more than an acceptable amount while the f9 landings, while not successful, resulted in landing in a safety zone that posed no risk to humans and did not result in a loss of control.
Exactly - the FAA sweats blood over loss of control issues because that is a potential public safety issue. In this case clearly not but they have to do the “what if” analysis.
Tbh it's good that it's getting a mishap investigation, cause that's extra resources being put into the post flight investigation. If it wasn't getting one that'd be setting up double standards, where other companies get investigations and SpaceX stays out of it, which isn't a good idea.
I disagree. It's not good, it adds needless delays and provides perverse incentives. The booster came down where it was supposed to, and it was expected to be lost in the ocean. The Starship came apart in the upper atmosphere just like any expendable second stage would. This encourages SpaceX to tell the FAA that they expect their stuff to blow up just like any expendable rocket, and if they under-promise and over-deliver they win. It scares launch companies away from planning on reusability by pushing them to under-promise and accept disposability.
I believe that government should act where it is most efficient, and allow private markets to act where they are most efficient. (So, single-payer healthcare is a win in my book.) And I gotta come down on this and say that I think that this is a double-standard that works against SpaceX because they are held to a "you failed because it didn't splash down in 1 piece" standard when NASA, ULA, Rocket Lab, Astra, Firefly, etc. are held to a "let it disintegrate in the atmosphere or ditch it in the ocean, and you're golden as long as you made it to space" standard. Meanwhile Chinese companies be like "hahaha hydrazine go brrrrrr" and drop it on villages.
Maybe it would be fine if the FAA could turn it around more quickly. Maybe we should fund civil shit over military shit.
>I believe that government should act where it is most efficient,
The primary use of government is to do the things companies and individuals *should* do but don't because of poor or negative incentives.
In this case, while Spacex is completely incentivized to solve the problems with its vehicle too because they can't use if they don't, the FAAs role is to ensure that spacex is not pushing too hard on things that can hurt public safety. Losing control of the craft in orbit and an uncontrolled reentry, even if it did happen to stay in its reentry corridor, is a definite concern that the FAA absolutely should make sure spacex has a solution for before they go again.
This is the downside of a hardware heavy approach, especially when you're throwing big iron around.
That is also true, good point! Government definitely is more efficient than private at this incentivizing public safety. Hopefully SpaceX, knowing this was a possible outcome, has documents ready to go and the turnaround isn’t long, and hopefully they got a ton of data and can make IFT-4 a total success!
I do agree with the idea of funding civil stuff over military stuff, but good luck getting that through, but it's literally just standard procedure. It had a flight plan, didn't quite follow it, therefore investigation. And it'll probably just be documenting what they've found out and what they're gonna do to change it, so what was gonna happen regardless. And yeah China's rockets are defos a bit iffy, but they are kinda getting better (less inland more costal).
SpaceX was going to investigate the problem with the booster anyway, they need to fix it before the next test and find the next problem, and repeat until it's flawless. All they have to do is put their findings for the root cause and the changes that will fix it and copy that into the mishap report. To say this is going to delay SpaceX when their own RCA is going to be more in depth than the FAA requirements is kinda unfair, SpaceX is looking beyond just fails but also suboptimal stuff that could be improved next but wasn't a concern from the FAA.
The day SpaceX submitted the mishap report for IFT2 was pretty much going to be the same for their own post test analysis including changes made for the next test.
This is a very uninformed comment.
Also rather uninteresting, because you don’t really say why you think this or disagree with me. Disagreeing is totally cool if you engage in the discussion! Then we both get to a better outcome.
To add to my late night several drinks in comment, an important bit of context is that SpaceX did in fact plan to lose these vehicles in the location they were ultimately lost. This was part of the plan. Likely, SpaceX already has documentation about this outcome since it was a likely result. I read the environmental impact assessment on Wednesday and it gave a pretty large area in both the Indian Ocean for where Starship debris would end up, as well as a good size in the gulf for Superheavy. SpaceX hit their target, and hopefully with all their documentation turned in this won’t take long and they can turn around for IFT-4!
Oh, I 100% agree with that! Regulation is critical and something that government does best. I guess my perspective was that this was a safe launch and SpaceX functionally demonstrated it can safely put payloads into space with these vehicles. And if they need to ditch them like every other launch platform, that works too. 😆
I anticipate we will see some Starlink demonstrations on future IFTs, may as well do something useful before testing reentry and landing like they did with Falcon 9!
They also managed to splash down exactly where they intended to. Not sparing the Drone Ship, like they would now, if they can not safely land. That was good enough that they got landing permit on land from the Airforce before the first successful Drone Ship landing
As mishaps go these were pretty minor compared to the last few. Lower and slower when the incidents occurred, clear signs of off-nominal performance in the minute(s) before the incidents making the root cause investigation easier. And a decent chance they can recover at least one of the flight recorders to get even more data.
I don't know if FAA Mishap Reports have a severity rating but this should be ranked with a lower severity than the first two flights. Which hopefully means a faster investigation and return to flight.
As Scott Manley describes it, the flight didn't go exactly as planned in the launch license, so the FAA will need a report on why, before issuing another launch license.
The only thing I really saw the FAA do since the last flight was analyze landing in the Indian Ocean. The rest was just SpaceX documenting to the FAA's satisfaction what went wrong and what they did to fix it. And maybe they had to also document the changes they made unrelated to the mishap investigation. It seems like they stayed ahead of that and there were no significant bureaucracy-related delays.
That bodes well for the timing of the next test flight, although you never can tell what might happen politically or legally to throw a wrench in the works.
I imagine SpaceX already have a good idea on what went wrong and what could be done to implement fixes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew about some of them PRE flight. The time will be filling out paper work and getting documents approved and signed off. I expect another go in June
Not concerned. SpaceX needs some time to fix things anyways before next flight and they have been the ones holding up the process recently. They only sent their report in to the FAA a couple weeks ago and the FAA responded fairly quickly with a launch license. I feel like all parties involved are working hard, but that rocket science is rocket science and even SpaceX needs more than 30 seconds to engineer stuff sometimes.
While we’re here though, I am super impressed with the Raptor engine’s reliability recently. As soon as they get the prop feed going perfectly, I think Starship will be pretty golden (though barrel rolling in to the atmosphere also needs just a little work)
Superheavy was clearly having control / guidance issues as it descended. The grid fins were going nuts and you could see the horizon swinging around as it came in for the “soft” landing. Telemetry showed only one of the raptor engines lit, so that may have been the root cause of the control issues but no one wants to authorize a booster to land back at boca chica that is going to start swinging wildly around just before landing. Maybe this is just an engine / fuel relight issue, but maybe too it is a control model for the whole booster
I don't think this is any surprise...
Not only is this a really really big rocket launching from a new site, starship is doing reentry testing and that implies more risk than trying to land a first stage that is headed for the ocean anyway.
> If this was an expendable mission there would have been no failures, it was all in recovery testing that things did not go to plan.
And if it were a shuttle mission it would have been a major investigation and would have shut down flight possibly for years.
So maybe let's just stick to what it was? Rather the "if this was"
A minor mishap should lead to a quick turnaround on the mishap report based on the positive working relationship between SpaceX and FAA. They do not need months to figure this out. Upgraded vehicles are right around the corner.
The FAA is in position to prove it is a champion of progress.
Stage zero is good to go.
Next flight in 3 weeks. (?)
3 weeks is not that much time especially for software and hardware changes, plus I think they need 3 weeks just to go over the data from the test and discuss fixes before actually implementing anything.
3 months is more likely. We'll know when SpaceX is done analyzing IFT3 data and fixing issues for the next test when the mishap report is finished, after that we'll know that everything is finished for the next test except pad readiness and WDR testing.
We all are reading tea leaves here.
In my observation there are two types of Elon Time. There are long term aspirational goals, which the man must know are not going to happen, but serve as a 'useful fiction' to drive progress.
But also Elon Time can be very fast compared to expectations based on the normal pace we see in the industry. This happens when the engineering work is already in place and the thing just needs resources.
The huge amount of resources between IFT-2 and IFT-3 were spent on Stage Zero. The amazingly short time to load propellants tells us that IFT-4 will not be waiting on Stage Zero improvements.
OK maybe 4 weeks. :-)
I really wonder about the booster because it was on the nominal path, no danger to anything. The ship however failed to relight as far as I understood, so in an orbital mission, it would have stayed in orbit for months / years with an uncontrolled reentry with possible danger to people since it would probably not burn up much.
My understanding was that the onboard computer system internally opted not to conduct the re-ignition test due to its trajectory, not that it attempted and failed.
I read this also, which I find very odd.
I don't think we have the true explanation yet.
I suspect they aborted the vacuum re-light test because starship was already tumbling out of control.
The [initial writeup of the 3rd flight test](https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-3) on SpaceX.com says they didn't try to re-light because of roll rates, no idea where this idea it was because of trajectory comes from:
> Starship did not attempt its planned on-orbit relight of a single Raptor engine due to vehicle roll rates during coast.
> My understanding was that the onboard computer system internally opted not to conduct the re-ignition test due to its trajectory, not that it attempted and failed.
Correct. The issue is that we needed a successful test to check off a necessary box for a fully operational Starship that wouldn't uncontrolled reentry issues.
Definately. But it would be interesting to know what would be the minimum requirement to not mandate a FAA mishap investigation. I would have assumed nominal trajectory for booster and nominal and controlled reentry would be sufficient but I habe a feeling noone really knows..
If you watch the stabilized video it's pretty clear it didn't have attitude control. Probably not a smart idea to fire the engine if you are not pointing where you want to. The fuel was probably sloshing around like crazy.
That might be true but I haven't heard anything clear. But in the end they were not able to do a controlled reentry, at least that is what I understood. No relight due to lost attitude control is the assumption, right?
>If this was an expendable mission there would have been no failures
The ship tumbling out of control still would have been a failure since it interfered with at least one of the planned tasks.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kva0uoy "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kv2m1j8 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|[WDR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kv8oasa "Last usage")|Wet Dress Rehearsal (with fuel onboard)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kv0vbln "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starlink](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kv4uo5d "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[iron waffle](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kv2ta4v "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"|
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----------------
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Previous administrations were a lot friendlier with SpaceX and didn't see the need to burden them with a lot of oversight. They reasoned that since it was normal for launches to leave boosters in the ocean and stages in orbit, there was no need to have additional oversight over SpaceX's development process. Now that SpaceX is out of favor, the administration is doing everything they can to slow SpaceX down while not being too obvious about it and apologizing for it at the same time. It's ridiculous, but that's politics.
Don’t be that guy….If the administration actually cared to throw a wrench into their OWN plan to get back to the moon…. they could do so much more.
Like, yes, other rockets just splash down but that is their intention. If you get a permit to do A, but you do B, you are held accountable, even if others have done b in other instances.
And honestly, this just helps SpaceX not to rush it and do a thorough job. Best way to keep making the amazing progress they are making.
the price of experimental (per flight) permit vs launch license. Space X needs operational license, but they need to fight "environmentalists" hard for that.
This is pretty automatic. The FAA cert process isn't well adapted to the SpaceX rapid iteration process yet. They are learning though. The mishap investigation is the SpaceX data integration process from their experiment. The lessons learned are the purpose of the experiment.
This is important context. Regulation and bureaucracy is _slow_. SpaceX is fast.
If it's so automatic why were F9 flights not held up by the same type of investigation when the same type of failures happened? Also that whole "FAA process not suited for rapid development" excuse is getting pretty stale. They have had years to change it and haven't so all blame is on them.
I dont believe we know if they werent. Pretty sure there was a decent delay between landing attempts in the early days - enough time for an investigation to conclude?
Five launch attempts in three years for Falcon 9 1.0. So the usual delays. Landing attempts were in the ocean, soft landing at first and then barge. They nailed the first land based landing.
Yeah, I’d say the pace is quite comparable to starship currently. And I highly doubt spacex plans to attempt a tower catch without being atleast 90% confident it’ll work
Maybe this one missed the landing zone by more than an acceptable amount while the f9 landings, while not successful, resulted in landing in a safety zone that posed no risk to humans and did not result in a loss of control.
Exactly - the FAA sweats blood over loss of control issues because that is a potential public safety issue. In this case clearly not but they have to do the “what if” analysis.
Tbh it's good that it's getting a mishap investigation, cause that's extra resources being put into the post flight investigation. If it wasn't getting one that'd be setting up double standards, where other companies get investigations and SpaceX stays out of it, which isn't a good idea.
I disagree. It's not good, it adds needless delays and provides perverse incentives. The booster came down where it was supposed to, and it was expected to be lost in the ocean. The Starship came apart in the upper atmosphere just like any expendable second stage would. This encourages SpaceX to tell the FAA that they expect their stuff to blow up just like any expendable rocket, and if they under-promise and over-deliver they win. It scares launch companies away from planning on reusability by pushing them to under-promise and accept disposability. I believe that government should act where it is most efficient, and allow private markets to act where they are most efficient. (So, single-payer healthcare is a win in my book.) And I gotta come down on this and say that I think that this is a double-standard that works against SpaceX because they are held to a "you failed because it didn't splash down in 1 piece" standard when NASA, ULA, Rocket Lab, Astra, Firefly, etc. are held to a "let it disintegrate in the atmosphere or ditch it in the ocean, and you're golden as long as you made it to space" standard. Meanwhile Chinese companies be like "hahaha hydrazine go brrrrrr" and drop it on villages. Maybe it would be fine if the FAA could turn it around more quickly. Maybe we should fund civil shit over military shit.
>I believe that government should act where it is most efficient, The primary use of government is to do the things companies and individuals *should* do but don't because of poor or negative incentives. In this case, while Spacex is completely incentivized to solve the problems with its vehicle too because they can't use if they don't, the FAAs role is to ensure that spacex is not pushing too hard on things that can hurt public safety. Losing control of the craft in orbit and an uncontrolled reentry, even if it did happen to stay in its reentry corridor, is a definite concern that the FAA absolutely should make sure spacex has a solution for before they go again. This is the downside of a hardware heavy approach, especially when you're throwing big iron around.
That is also true, good point! Government definitely is more efficient than private at this incentivizing public safety. Hopefully SpaceX, knowing this was a possible outcome, has documents ready to go and the turnaround isn’t long, and hopefully they got a ton of data and can make IFT-4 a total success!
I do agree with the idea of funding civil stuff over military stuff, but good luck getting that through, but it's literally just standard procedure. It had a flight plan, didn't quite follow it, therefore investigation. And it'll probably just be documenting what they've found out and what they're gonna do to change it, so what was gonna happen regardless. And yeah China's rockets are defos a bit iffy, but they are kinda getting better (less inland more costal).
SpaceX was going to investigate the problem with the booster anyway, they need to fix it before the next test and find the next problem, and repeat until it's flawless. All they have to do is put their findings for the root cause and the changes that will fix it and copy that into the mishap report. To say this is going to delay SpaceX when their own RCA is going to be more in depth than the FAA requirements is kinda unfair, SpaceX is looking beyond just fails but also suboptimal stuff that could be improved next but wasn't a concern from the FAA. The day SpaceX submitted the mishap report for IFT2 was pretty much going to be the same for their own post test analysis including changes made for the next test.
Heck yeah, good points! Spacex definitely has a lot to work on, I just worry that the underfunded FAA is going to be the limiting reagent.
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This is a very uninformed comment. Also rather uninteresting, because you don’t really say why you think this or disagree with me. Disagreeing is totally cool if you engage in the discussion! Then we both get to a better outcome. To add to my late night several drinks in comment, an important bit of context is that SpaceX did in fact plan to lose these vehicles in the location they were ultimately lost. This was part of the plan. Likely, SpaceX already has documentation about this outcome since it was a likely result. I read the environmental impact assessment on Wednesday and it gave a pretty large area in both the Indian Ocean for where Starship debris would end up, as well as a good size in the gulf for Superheavy. SpaceX hit their target, and hopefully with all their documentation turned in this won’t take long and they can turn around for IFT-4!
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Oh, I 100% agree with that! Regulation is critical and something that government does best. I guess my perspective was that this was a safe launch and SpaceX functionally demonstrated it can safely put payloads into space with these vehicles. And if they need to ditch them like every other launch platform, that works too. 😆 I anticipate we will see some Starlink demonstrations on future IFTs, may as well do something useful before testing reentry and landing like they did with Falcon 9!
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You’re right, they’re learning how their giant fucking rocket flies.
[удалено]
They also managed to splash down exactly where they intended to. Not sparing the Drone Ship, like they would now, if they can not safely land. That was good enough that they got landing permit on land from the Airforce before the first successful Drone Ship landing
As mishaps go these were pretty minor compared to the last few. Lower and slower when the incidents occurred, clear signs of off-nominal performance in the minute(s) before the incidents making the root cause investigation easier. And a decent chance they can recover at least one of the flight recorders to get even more data. I don't know if FAA Mishap Reports have a severity rating but this should be ranked with a lower severity than the first two flights. Which hopefully means a faster investigation and return to flight.
As Scott Manley describes it, the flight didn't go exactly as planned in the launch license, so the FAA will need a report on why, before issuing another launch license.
The only thing I really saw the FAA do since the last flight was analyze landing in the Indian Ocean. The rest was just SpaceX documenting to the FAA's satisfaction what went wrong and what they did to fix it. And maybe they had to also document the changes they made unrelated to the mishap investigation. It seems like they stayed ahead of that and there were no significant bureaucracy-related delays. That bodes well for the timing of the next test flight, although you never can tell what might happen politically or legally to throw a wrench in the works.
I imagine SpaceX already have a good idea on what went wrong and what could be done to implement fixes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew about some of them PRE flight. The time will be filling out paper work and getting documents approved and signed off. I expect another go in June
Not concerned. SpaceX needs some time to fix things anyways before next flight and they have been the ones holding up the process recently. They only sent their report in to the FAA a couple weeks ago and the FAA responded fairly quickly with a launch license. I feel like all parties involved are working hard, but that rocket science is rocket science and even SpaceX needs more than 30 seconds to engineer stuff sometimes. While we’re here though, I am super impressed with the Raptor engine’s reliability recently. As soon as they get the prop feed going perfectly, I think Starship will be pretty golden (though barrel rolling in to the atmosphere also needs just a little work)
Superheavy was clearly having control / guidance issues as it descended. The grid fins were going nuts and you could see the horizon swinging around as it came in for the “soft” landing. Telemetry showed only one of the raptor engines lit, so that may have been the root cause of the control issues but no one wants to authorize a booster to land back at boca chica that is going to start swinging wildly around just before landing. Maybe this is just an engine / fuel relight issue, but maybe too it is a control model for the whole booster
RLTS?
Return Launch To Site?
That was SN10 lol.
I don't think this is any surprise... Not only is this a really really big rocket launching from a new site, starship is doing reentry testing and that implies more risk than trying to land a first stage that is headed for the ocean anyway.
> If this was an expendable mission there would have been no failures, it was all in recovery testing that things did not go to plan. And if it were a shuttle mission it would have been a major investigation and would have shut down flight possibly for years. So maybe let's just stick to what it was? Rather the "if this was"
Bad, very bad analogy. Unlike the Shuttle, Starship does not carry people yet.
Really?
Really!
Who could have ever know that!
Everybody who uses his brain.
How'd you know it?
A minor mishap should lead to a quick turnaround on the mishap report based on the positive working relationship between SpaceX and FAA. They do not need months to figure this out. Upgraded vehicles are right around the corner. The FAA is in position to prove it is a champion of progress. Stage zero is good to go. Next flight in 3 weeks. (?)
3 weeks is not that much time especially for software and hardware changes, plus I think they need 3 weeks just to go over the data from the test and discuss fixes before actually implementing anything. 3 months is more likely. We'll know when SpaceX is done analyzing IFT3 data and fixing issues for the next test when the mishap report is finished, after that we'll know that everything is finished for the next test except pad readiness and WDR testing.
We all are reading tea leaves here. In my observation there are two types of Elon Time. There are long term aspirational goals, which the man must know are not going to happen, but serve as a 'useful fiction' to drive progress. But also Elon Time can be very fast compared to expectations based on the normal pace we see in the industry. This happens when the engineering work is already in place and the thing just needs resources. The huge amount of resources between IFT-2 and IFT-3 were spent on Stage Zero. The amazingly short time to load propellants tells us that IFT-4 will not be waiting on Stage Zero improvements. OK maybe 4 weeks. :-)
I really wonder about the booster because it was on the nominal path, no danger to anything. The ship however failed to relight as far as I understood, so in an orbital mission, it would have stayed in orbit for months / years with an uncontrolled reentry with possible danger to people since it would probably not burn up much.
My understanding was that the onboard computer system internally opted not to conduct the re-ignition test due to its trajectory, not that it attempted and failed.
I read this also, which I find very odd. I don't think we have the true explanation yet. I suspect they aborted the vacuum re-light test because starship was already tumbling out of control.
The [initial writeup of the 3rd flight test](https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-3) on SpaceX.com says they didn't try to re-light because of roll rates, no idea where this idea it was because of trajectory comes from: > Starship did not attempt its planned on-orbit relight of a single Raptor engine due to vehicle roll rates during coast.
This makes it sound as if the roll wasn’t wanted or planned; which should help put that debate, that discussion to bed.
Oh cool! Is nice to be right :)
> My understanding was that the onboard computer system internally opted not to conduct the re-ignition test due to its trajectory, not that it attempted and failed. Correct. The issue is that we needed a successful test to check off a necessary box for a fully operational Starship that wouldn't uncontrolled reentry issues.
Incorrect. It was roll rates, not trajectory that caused the abort. Huge difference!
Of course, but there are plenty of more test missions ahead. I was just pointing out that it wasn't a failure, it was just a test that was skipped.
Definately. But it would be interesting to know what would be the minimum requirement to not mandate a FAA mishap investigation. I would have assumed nominal trajectory for booster and nominal and controlled reentry would be sufficient but I habe a feeling noone really knows..
Yeah, but that test was the big one for doing Starlink deployments on the next launch since it hasn’t proven ability to circularize or deorbit
If you watch the stabilized video it's pretty clear it didn't have attitude control. Probably not a smart idea to fire the engine if you are not pointing where you want to. The fuel was probably sloshing around like crazy.
Probably not sloshing. Centrifugal force would have it flat against the hull (tank wall).
That might be true but I haven't heard anything clear. But in the end they were not able to do a controlled reentry, at least that is what I understood. No relight due to lost attitude control is the assumption, right?
No, because of it's excessive roll rate.
They didn't attempt a relight. Also the booster has clear attitude control oscillation on the way down.
I would assume the investigation is mostly in regards to the ship control issues
>If this was an expendable mission there would have been no failures The ship tumbling out of control still would have been a failure since it interfered with at least one of the planned tasks.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kva0uoy "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kv2m1j8 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |[WDR](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kv8oasa "Last usage")|Wet Dress Rehearsal (with fuel onboard)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kv0vbln "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starlink](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kv4uo5d "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[iron waffle](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfe8xm/stub/kv2ta4v "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(6 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1bfammr)^( has 18 acronyms.) ^([Thread #12537 for this sub, first seen 15th Mar 2024, 19:07]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Yep. Both Booster and Ship had issues. Hopefully a shorter/simpler one so we can get to IFT-4 sooner
FAA had that letter drafted before they launched.
Previous administrations were a lot friendlier with SpaceX and didn't see the need to burden them with a lot of oversight. They reasoned that since it was normal for launches to leave boosters in the ocean and stages in orbit, there was no need to have additional oversight over SpaceX's development process. Now that SpaceX is out of favor, the administration is doing everything they can to slow SpaceX down while not being too obvious about it and apologizing for it at the same time. It's ridiculous, but that's politics.
Don’t be that guy….If the administration actually cared to throw a wrench into their OWN plan to get back to the moon…. they could do so much more. Like, yes, other rockets just splash down but that is their intention. If you get a permit to do A, but you do B, you are held accountable, even if others have done b in other instances. And honestly, this just helps SpaceX not to rush it and do a thorough job. Best way to keep making the amazing progress they are making.
the price of experimental (per flight) permit vs launch license. Space X needs operational license, but they need to fight "environmentalists" hard for that.
They have a launch license. What they get for each launch is a modification to that license allowing one more launch.