The licence has been approved, the NOTAM and marine warnings published, closure announced.

Fish and Wildlife’s comments were published yesterday. I gather that the document was deleted from the original location, but as I recall, it was pretty much copied and pasted into the body of the final FAA determination WRITTEN RE-EVALUATION OF THE 2022 FINAL PROGRAMMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT FOR THE SPACEX STARSHIP/SUPER HEAVY LAUNCH VEHICLE PROGRAM AT THE BOCA CHICA LAUNCH SITE IN CAMERON COUNTY, TEXAS. I remember the bit about “Per the table above, an average summertime thunderstorm at Boca Chica would deposit more water over the landscape than any single or all combined activations of the deluge system”.

The FAA has repeated multiple times: there is no launch licence yet for a second launch. Since the FAA asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to look into the matter, I think it’s highly unlikely that the FAA would issue the licence before FWS says it’s O.K.

I don’t know that there has been a definitive statement of the exact ending date. The Xeet summary provided included “The FWS has up to 135 days to submit the final biological opinion to the FAA (Started in August).” If it’s 4 months including weekends and holidays, it could be up to December 1 to December 31ish. But it could be handled before then, or if the FAA agrees, the deadline could be extended, or maybe it’s working days only. Also, the FAA would likely need time to digest it and issue its own ruling.

But there have been other reports that the FAA hopes to be done with it by October. So maybe they have inside knowledge.

I posted here about the FWS environmental re-assessment due to the booster bidet.

I’m sorry, but I don’t follow what you’re referring to. I think the new render is near the top, showing Starship and Super Heavy stacked. I didn’t look at the page before, so I don’t know what else might have changed.

Just wanted to point out a glamor video of Starlink deployment.

Eric Berger quoted a tweet from the FAA here, but it was in the form of an image. A text transcript was kindly provided by World Spills @WorldSpills here:

SpaceX conducted a test flight of the Starship/Super Heavy at Boca Chica, TX on April 20, 2023. As a result of that launch, SpaceX completed a mishap investigation with FAA oversight; this investigation analyzed the launch, mishap events, and corrective actions. Before it is authorized to conduct a second Starship/ Super Heavy launch, SpaceX must obtain a modified license from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental, and other regulatory requirements. As part of that license application determination process, the FAA will review new environmental information, including changes related to the launch pad, as well as other proposed vehicle and flight modifications. The FAA will complete a Written Reevaluation (WR) to the 2022 Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) evaluating the new environmental information, including Endangered Species Act consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If the FAA determines through the WR process that the contents of the PEA do not remain valid in light of the changes proposed for Flight 2, additional environmental review will be required. Accordingly, the FAA has not authorized SpaceX’s proposed Flight 2.

It was followed by untranscribed

The FAA will provide updates with notification of any license determination or results of additional environmental review.

When the major problems from your first test can be illustrated by Heath Ledger in 2008 – debris zoom but boom no boom – it’s not surprising.

I got the impression from reading the few posts about it that it’s going to start as a backup for the existing crew Dragon tower. Whether it could ever become Son of Mechazilla in the long run I don’t know, and I doubt it. I suspect, though on no evidence other than prior practice and the 5-step algorithm, that SpaceX would rather debug the first model some before building a second.

This is a link to my separate story post: “(Reuters) US could advance SpaceX license as soon as October after rocket exploded in April”, including a bit of interpretation.

Thank you for the pointer. Fixed.

I copied and pasted it here. Thanks to @[email protected] for pointing me back at the RES extension so I could get the source.

Each item is on its own line. C## is the ID#. If there’s text before it on its line, that’s its Observation / Description section name; if it’s at the start of the line, the Observation / Description string is the next one above.

List of Actions:

A readable text version of the 63-item list can be see on Reddit here and a reply.

Tesla Owners Silicon Valley @teslaownersSV Sep 9, 2023 · 12:17 AM UTC

Starship is the biggest rocket ever built 🤯

Elon Musk @elonmusk / Replying to @teslaownersSV Sep 9, 2023 · 6:20 AM UTC

Likely to be 10% to 20% longer in later versions

Musk noted Sep 9, 2023 · 12:20 AM UTC

In fairness to the FAA, it is rare for them to cause significant delays in launch.

Overwhelmingly, the responsibility is ours.

Oddly, he replied Sep 9, 2023 · 12:20 AM UTC

In fairness to the FAA, it is rare for them to cause significant delays in launch.

Overwhelmingly, the responsibility is ours.

Top-level posts just added:

[SpaceX] September 8, 2023: Upgrades Ahead Of Starship’s Second Flight Test That is, it’s a statement from SpaceX itself about the major problems it saw on Starship test 1, and several changes it has made.

[Chris Bergin, Abhi Tripathi @SpaceAbhi] SpaceX LEADS the investigation It’s not appreciated that SpaceX did the investigation, decided on corrections, and wrote the report. The FAA provides feedback, but we don’t know how much.

Scott Manley had comments starting with Sep 7, 2023 · 12:42 AM UTC:

Elon: we’re ready, just waiting on the license from the FAA

FAA: funny you should say that, we’re just waiting on you guys to fix the problems you had.

Sure it’s easy to think of the FAA as being a bunch of bureaucrats who should loosen up and cut SpaceX some slack, but after the rock tornado and wimpy FTS SpaceX has used up any slack it might have had.

Furthermore, the FAA is being sued alleging that it cut SpaceX too much slack on the environmental review surrounding Starbase. Any action they take could end up in court and they need to be sure it’s defensible before a jury https://www.space.com/spacex-faa-seek-dismiss-starship-lawsuit

Though someone else replied,

Setting aside that this answer is the same the FAA would give regardless of whether it was the day after IFT-1 or the day before they issued a license.

and Scott replied, “Correct”.

From Ars Technica:

(Note: at 6 pm ET on Wednesday, the FAA issued the following statement).

“The SpaceX Starship mishap investigation remains open,” the agency stated. “The FAA will not authorize another Starship launch until SpaceX implements the corrective actions identified during the mishap investigation and demonstrates compliance with all the regulatory requirements of the license modification process.”

The Ars Technica story was edited based on an FAA … tweet.

(Note: at 6 pm ET on Wednesday, the FAA issued the following statement).

“The SpaceX Starship mishap investigation remains open,” the agency stated. “The FAA will not authorize another Starship launch until SpaceX implements the corrective actions identified during the mishap investigation and demonstrates compliance with all the regulatory requirements of the license modification process.”