Why Elon Musk’s Starship Rocket Could Be Launched More Often Under Trump: NPR

SpaceX’s Starship sits at its Boca Chica launch pad. The launch is set for November 19.

SpaceX

hide caption

change caption

SpaceX

Later today, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX will conduct another test of the largest rocket ever built.

If all goes as planned, sometime after 17 ET, the giant rocket known as Starship will lift off from its launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas. Starship is set to fly a short distance around the world before landing in the southern Indian Ocean. Meanwhile, its superheavy booster will try to return to the Texas launch site, where two robotic arms attached to the launch tower will try to grab it mid-air.

It will be the sixth test launch of the giant rocket, and its second in as many months. The tests are the latest sign that SpaceX intends to rapidly accelerate Starship development. Next year, the company has said it would like to complete as many as 25 launches.

Until now, environmental requirements have held SpaceX back. Under the current environmental assessment, the Federal Aviation Administration limits SpaceX to five launches per year. And earlier this year, the FAA delayed permitting a flight after the Environmental Protection Agency fined SpaceX for violating the Clean Water Act.

But with the election of President Trump, those kinds of regulatory delays may become a thing of the past. At a rally in Tempe, Arizona last month, Trump boasted that American astronauts would soon be on their way to Mars: “Get that spaceship going, Elon,” he said.

Trump did not explicitly refer to the Starship program, but many expect SpaceX to get the green light to speed up testing of the rocket.

“I think the biggest difference in the next year is on the regulatory side,” said Lori Garver, a former deputy administrator for NASA under Barack Obama. “The FAA and EPA will not be raising flags like they have been for the past few years.”

Big rocket, big plans

SpaceX is already a major contractor for the US government. It has been paid billions to launch satellites and for other services such as construction a network of spy satellites. NASA has allocated about $4 billion explicitly for Starship’s development. The space agency would like to use as a lunar lander.

Starship is also at the heart of Elon Musk’s dreams of turning humanity into a multiplanetary species. He hopes the giant rocket will radically lower the cost of sending people and equipment into space. Musk has said he wants to see Starships travel to Mars with the goal of creating a self-sustaining colony.

Starship’s development has cost SpaceX billions and is “probably absorbing cash rather than generating it at this point,” said Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates, which analyzes the satellite industry.

Nevertheless, he says, Starship is central to SpaceX’s plans for the future.

“The promise of Starship is something that’s pretty important to SpaceX in terms of convincing investors to keep pouring in money at ever-increasing valuations,” he says.

Fulfilling the promise of Starship comes with environmental costs. The Boca Chica launch site is located in the middle of state and federally protected wetlands. Biologists have documented that the sound and heat from launches damage the eggs of nesting birds. Documents from the EPA and a filing with Texas regulators indicate that each launch also discharges tens of thousands of gallons of water contaminated with chemicals from the launch into the local environment.

SpaceX denies that the water poses any serious harm, and it maintains that it is a good environmental steward: “The narrative that we operate free of, or in spite of, environmental regulation is demonstrably false,” the company said in a statement in September. “SpaceX is committed to minimizing impact and improving the surrounding environment wherever possible.”

But environmental groups disagree. The FAA is currently being sued by the Center for Biological Diversity and local environmental groups for failing to conduct an adequate environmental impact statement before allowing SpaceX to launch Starship itself once from space.

Jared Margolis, a senior attorney leading the case, says if regulators do less in a new Trump administration, the courts could end up playing a bigger role.

“We’re not afraid to confront the Trump administration,” Margolis says. “We are not afraid to ensure that environmental legislation is complied with. That is what we do.”