Scientific Asia: Regulators are requesting $633,009 in penalties from SpaceX for allegedly violating its launch licenses twice last year. SpaceX responded to these charges in a letter to key congressional officials on Wednesday.
Rather, the business claims that the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) is incapable of handling “relatively minor” license updates, which is additional evidence that the agency cannot keep up with the rapid expansion of the space industry, particularly SpaceX’s.
The FAA declared its intention to propose fines against SpaceX after the firm was accused of violating the terms of its launch authorization twice in 2023. Two hours before liftoff, the FAA claimed that SpaceX had carried out a launch using a new control room and without first conducting a launch readiness poll; in the second instance, the FAA claimed that SpaceX had fuelled the launch vehicle during a Falcon Heavy launch using an unapproved rocket propellant farm.
According to the FAA, these modifications necessitate alterations to the company’s launch licenses, which it did not authorize before the launches occurred. The agency’s total fines against a commercial launch provider are the highest civil penalty to date.
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However, SpaceX stated in its letter that it was authorized to use the new rocket propellant farm by a separate U.S. government range safety authority and that the other modifications, such as relocating the launch control center from one location at Kennedy Space Center to another or doing away with the T-2 hour readiness poll, are not related to public safety and are therefore outside of AST’s regulatory purview.
An FAA spokesman pointed TechCrunch to the two enforcement letters the agency wrote to SpaceX in response to specific inquiries about the company’s response letter. These letters include the precise FAA laws that stipulate that a launch operator must adhere strictly to the launch plan.
“The FAA does not comment on active enforcement issues,” the spokesman said in response to questioning from TechCrunch.
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Though SpaceX notes in its letter that it’s “notable” that the fines were disclosed while growing attention from Congress over AST’s licensing procedures, it is unclear why the FAA is just seeking the fines now, more than a year after the alleged infractions occurred.
This includes a conference held earlier this month by the House Committee on Technology, Space and Science, which asked executives from the industry—including the chairman of the FAA—about the pace and cost of rules for businesses.
Kelvin Coleman, the associate administrator of the FAA for commercial space transportation, informed the committee that AST now employs 158 people, the highest number ever, having hired 35 new employees in the last year alone. The division is requesting funding for more employees in the president’s budget request for the fiscal year 2025, according to Coleman.
This most recent dispute has only heightened SpaceX’s increasingly vocal opposition to what it perceives to be hurried and ineffective regulatory procedures. The company has been criticizing the “superfluous” regulatory delays that are delaying its next Starship flight on its blog, and Elon Musk, the CEO, has made his point more clear by using his platform on X: “The fundamental problem is that humanity will be confined to Earth forever unless there is radical reform at the FAA.”
Billy Nolen, the former acting administrator of the FAA until 2023, refuted Musk’s claim that the regulatory scrutiny was a result of “politically motivated behavior,” regardless of the date.
The FAA, according to Nolen, “is about as apolitical as it gets” as an organization.
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