Restricting Space Travel

For John, BLUF:  This is over a month old, but the story has not gotten better with time and now SpaceX has sued the California Coastal Commission over obstruction based on Mr Musk's political views.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Biden Admin to SpaceX:  Drop Dead!

From Vodka Pundit, by Stephen Green, September 11, 2024, 10:00 AM.

Here is the lede plus three:

It isn't a joke whenever I say that the new space race is Elon Musk versus the rest of the world, and I'm not joking now when I tell you that his company's biggest competitor isn't China — and it certainly isn't Russia — but the Biden-Harris FAA.

SpaceX's Starship promises to revolutionize spaceflight by reducing launch costs by two orders of magnitude — that's a 99% savings — and vastly expanding current limits on the size and mass of what can be lifted into orbit and deep space.

If SpaceX can get permission to perform the necessary flight tests, that is — and the FAA is dragging its feet.

"Starships are meant to fly," the company reminded the Biden administration in a lengthy statement released on Tuesday. "We recently received a launch license date estimate of late November from the FAA, the government agency responsible for licensing Starship flight tests. This is a more than two-month delay to the previously communicated date of mid-September. This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis."

"Starships are meant to fly."  That is correct.  There is, however, an apparent tension between our free enterpise approach of exploring space and the desire of progressives to protect the environment by constraining free lance exploration that damages our enviroment and could damage enviornments on other worlds.

My sense is that a cheap trick now will cost us later.  We need to let ingenuity roam free and count on self interest to ensure we do not act, in the long run, in stupid ways.  Early constraints on such exploration is reminiscent of China in 1405 to 1433, which had conducted seven voages by its treasure fleet, only to back away from it all and eventually fall into a period of decline, finally pulling out recently.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff