Musk Says SpaceX Plans to Launch Starship Again in Six to Eight Weeks Written 15 June 2023

SPACE reports that Elon Musk announced Tuesday on Twitter that the SpaceX is shooting for another liftoff of Starship six to eight weeks from now. That timeline “may be ambitious, however, given the amount of prep work required ahead of the second flight.” For example, the liftoff “damaged Starbase’s orbital launch mount, blasting out a big crater beneath it and sending chunks of concrete flying, along with a huge cloud of dust and other debris.” SpaceX has been “developing and testing a water-cooled steel plate that will sit beneath the mount and prevent a recurrence of this problem, Musk said recently.” The company could also face some regulatory hurdles in a “coalition of environmental groups [that] is currently suing the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the body that issued Starship’s launch license, saying the agency didn’t properly assess the potential damage that the giant vehicle could inflict on the South Texas ecosystem and the human communities around Starbase.”
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