“Asked for an update on the progress of this regulatory approval, an FAA spokesman said Wednesday morning that additional information may be provided soon.”
Scott Manley had comments starting with Sep 7, 2023 · 12:42 AM UTC:
Elon: we’re ready, just waiting on the license from the FAA
FAA: funny you should say that, we’re just waiting on you guys to fix the problems you had.
Sure it’s easy to think of the FAA as being a bunch of bureaucrats who should loosen up and cut SpaceX some slack, but after the rock tornado and wimpy FTS SpaceX has used up any slack it might have had.
Furthermore, the FAA is being sued alleging that it cut SpaceX too much slack on the environmental review surrounding Starbase. Any action they take could end up in court and they need to be sure it’s defensible before a jury https://www.space.com/spacex-faa-seek-dismiss-starship-lawsuit
Though someone else replied,
Setting aside that this answer is the same the FAA would give regardless of whether it was the day after IFT-1 or the day before they issued a license.
and Scott replied, “Correct”.
