>On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed a set of fines that total $633,009 over what it says were two instances of SpaceX launching missions with unapproved changes in violation of its license, as well as skipping a required step for launch. In response, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk threatened to sue the agency on a claim of “regulatory overreach.”
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>The FAA says one set of fines totaling $350,000 is related to a June 18th, 2023 launch in which SpaceX used an “unapproved launch control room for the PSN SATRIA mission,” and skipped a required “T-2 hour readiness poll.” The company had requested approval for the changes in May, the FAA says, but never got it.
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>Similarly, the company sought clearance for a new rocket propellant farm in July, but didn’t wait for approval before launching an EchoStar Jupiter communications satellite on July 28th, 2023, the agency alleges. The FAA proposes a $283,009 penalty for that.
The company’s response is pretty much expected by now. Regulation especially around public safety and environmental damage is more important than ever, and hopefully this company can begin to take their responsibilities seriously.
Deep-Friend-2284 on
Elon thinks he is above the law. Hopefully his text history with P Diddy will show hes a criminal pedo guy
Error_404_403 on
FAA is known for overreaching in its regulations. It also gets a large credit for making flying safer today. However, for the aviation industry, it has established a multi-tiered approval system which leaves a lot of compliance monitoring and assurance in the hands of the industry.
Does it treat the space industry differently? Why, if so?..
die-microcrap-die on
Yet, they blindly believed all the false safety reports provided by Boeing.
But since its one of Elon’s companies, lets go wild against it.
Edit boy, you guys really have it against Elon…lol
teddittsch on
space faux owned by elon faux
travistravis on
I feel like consistently suing the government may not be a winning plan. It’s a lot like trying to sue your advertisers if you were to run a social media platform.
R3luctant on
Listen, I really like what SpaceX is doing in the field, but the regulations weren’t hidden or vague. SpaceX just got impatient and launched prior to receiving approval. The onus isn’t on the regulator to predict what the company is going to do, it is for the company to abide by the regulations and not change their plans after they have submitted their proposal.
Like it or not, the FAA has been the regulator for commercial space flight for over 30 years, if you don’t think that is right, write your Congressional representatives to rewrite the law on it, or to increase funding to the FAA.
ACCount82 on
FAA was recently put on blast in Congress for being too slow with its approval progress and impairing commercial spaceflight R&D. This seems to be exactly what happened there: SpaceX filed to get all the changes approved, and *got* all the changes approved – but the approval only happened *after* the launch.
Ironically, SpaceX were the ones to suggest to double FAA’s staff and budget to avoid this happening in the future.
8 Comments
Highlights:
>On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed a set of fines that total $633,009 over what it says were two instances of SpaceX launching missions with unapproved changes in violation of its license, as well as skipping a required step for launch. In response, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk threatened to sue the agency on a claim of “regulatory overreach.”
>
>The FAA says one set of fines totaling $350,000 is related to a June 18th, 2023 launch in which SpaceX used an “unapproved launch control room for the PSN SATRIA mission,” and skipped a required “T-2 hour readiness poll.” The company had requested approval for the changes in May, the FAA says, but never got it.
>
>Similarly, the company sought clearance for a new rocket propellant farm in July, but didn’t wait for approval before launching an EchoStar Jupiter communications satellite on July 28th, 2023, the agency alleges. The FAA proposes a $283,009 penalty for that.
The company’s response is pretty much expected by now. Regulation especially around public safety and environmental damage is more important than ever, and hopefully this company can begin to take their responsibilities seriously.
Elon thinks he is above the law. Hopefully his text history with P Diddy will show hes a criminal pedo guy
FAA is known for overreaching in its regulations. It also gets a large credit for making flying safer today. However, for the aviation industry, it has established a multi-tiered approval system which leaves a lot of compliance monitoring and assurance in the hands of the industry.
Does it treat the space industry differently? Why, if so?..
Yet, they blindly believed all the false safety reports provided by Boeing.
But since its one of Elon’s companies, lets go wild against it.
Edit boy, you guys really have it against Elon…lol
space faux owned by elon faux
I feel like consistently suing the government may not be a winning plan. It’s a lot like trying to sue your advertisers if you were to run a social media platform.
Listen, I really like what SpaceX is doing in the field, but the regulations weren’t hidden or vague. SpaceX just got impatient and launched prior to receiving approval. The onus isn’t on the regulator to predict what the company is going to do, it is for the company to abide by the regulations and not change their plans after they have submitted their proposal.
Like it or not, the FAA has been the regulator for commercial space flight for over 30 years, if you don’t think that is right, write your Congressional representatives to rewrite the law on it, or to increase funding to the FAA.
FAA was recently put on blast in Congress for being too slow with its approval progress and impairing commercial spaceflight R&D. This seems to be exactly what happened there: SpaceX filed to get all the changes approved, and *got* all the changes approved – but the approval only happened *after* the launch.
Ironically, SpaceX were the ones to suggest to double FAA’s staff and budget to avoid this happening in the future.