SpaceX faces NASA obstacle for Starship launch pad

The US special agency (NASA) wants assurances from Elon Musk’s SpaceX that its Starship rocket launch plan will not jeopardize critical launch infrastructure in the vicinity of the International Space Station in Florida, a senior NASA official said. space agency to Reuters.

SpaceX’s proposals to address NASA’s concerns, which include a plan to send US astronauts from a different launch pad in Florida, could take months to gain agency approval.

Last year, SpaceX accelerated construction of an orbital launch pad for Starship at its Cape Canaveral, Florida facility as an alternative to the main launch and test development site for the rocket in Boca Chica, Texas, which underwent to a lengthy regulatory review expected to be completed next week.

But one of SpaceX’s existing Florida facilities, called Launch Complex 39A, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center off the coast of Cape Canaveral, is the only approved platform to launch the company’s Crew Dragon capsule. NASA relies on this spacecraft to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station.

NASA officials in recent months have told SpaceX that a spacecraft explosion at Launch Complex 39A could effectively cripple the space agency’s only means of launching US astronauts to the International Space Station.

“We all recognize that if you had an early failure like we had on one of SpaceX’s first flights, it would be pretty devastating for 39A,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s head of space operations, said in an interview about the agency’s discussions with SpaceX. who did not comment on the matter.

SpaceX has already invested heavily in the construction of the Starship platform a few hundred meters from the launch tower of platform 39A. The company is also looking at ways to make the launch pad more resistant to accidents and the immense forces generated by a successful takeoff, Lueders said.

Part of SpaceX’s challenge is to show that the 39A will not be damaged by Starship’s new liquid oxygen and methane fuel — a combination of thrusters that NASA and US regulators are unfamiliar with.

“The problem is that the explosive potential of this combination is not well known,” said Randy Repcheck, deputy manager of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transport, which oversees launch pad security.