Starship SN9 has finally received clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ahead of her test flight, with launch set for Tuesday. Although the overall schedule delay is relatively short, pent-up production cadence saw SN10 jump at the opportunity to roll down Boca Chica’s Highway 4 late last week.
This event marked the first-ever dual prototype Starship pad flow, with SN9 on Pad B and SN10 on Pad A.
SN9:
From a technical standpoint, Starship SN9 was ready to make her leap into the South Texas sky last week, only to be denied by paperwork.
The requirement of FAA clearance to conduct the test scrubbed the launch into this week, leaving Starship’s army of fans on social media nonplused as to why the FAA was struggling to sign the permit.
This became the angle of media reporting, feeding off Elon’s tweet of frustration after the January 28 scrub was called.
Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure. Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars.
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