Congress, industry criticize FAA launch licensing regulations
spacenews.com
spacenews.com
An interesting comment from the relevant Reddit thread [0]:
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"You can always make things safer. Always.
The trick isn't about making things safer, its about balancing the safety needs with actually being able to get shit done.
I've been a safety professional in the past, I could easily make legitimate safety arguments that would make something as simple as mowing your lawn so unbearably frustrating you throw up your hands and quit doing it.
Lets see, I'll need your lawn mower training certificate and operators license, your flammable storage cabinet for fuel storage if you plan to keep fuel on site, I'll need you to set up a 50ft mowing perimeter to ensure nobody gets hit with debris, you'll need to wear your mowing PPE, your fuel filling PPE(including an inspected fire extinguisher), your lockout procedures for sharpening the blades, your noise permit from the city, a yearly inspection certificate of your mower showing that none of the mower safety devices have been disabled, and I'll need documented proof you've done all of this on file for five years ready for inspection.
Its only sensible, after all, to be focused on safety over everything else."
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1fe2fty/comment/lmml...
1) SpaceX invested a lot of money into its American launch sites. Abandoning them altogether would be a huge waste of money.
2) Good launch sites are surprisingly rare, especially because you need at least some infrastructure there. French Guyana is probably the only real competitor right now.
3) Given that SpaceX is bound by ITAR, I don't believe the US government would let them launch from outside US territory at all.
2) South Texas isn't all that close to the equator. Vs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensland and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories and ... And eager-for-high-tech-growth governments have a history of footing the bill for expensive infrastructure improvements.
3) ITAR is neither air-tight, nor carved in stone - for example, https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-united-... And note that Rocket Lab is regularly launching its commercial payloads from New Zealand.
No, nothing here is any sort of sure thing. But when has "it ain't for sure yet" stopped Elon from spouting off on a subject that pushed his buttons? Especially if he might be able to stampede Congress into passing legislation on his behalf.
Being in the continental US, South Texas has some major advantages that offset this relatively small loss of efficiency during launch. Various factory sites, such as McGregor, are within reasonable trucking distance. Most of SpaceX employees are Americans and Americans are more willing to move around America than to move to the other side of the world.
Queensland could work, even though the moving costs would be high. Small atolls in the middle of the ocean would be very impractical, though. Even Kwajalein has weather that rusts everything in its path.
At the end of the day, the US government and Congress knows that it is caught in a new Space Race with China and that it is in American interests to make the launch licensing process more streamlined. Not just for SpaceX, but for all its future competitors.