https://spacenews.com/spacex-plannin...arship-flight/
SpaceX planning rapid turnaround for next Starship flight
WASHINGTON — SpaceX hopes to conduct the next launch of its Starship vehicle as soon as early May, a schedule that will depend on how quickly it can get an amended launch license…..
That schedule will depend on completing a mishap investigation that must be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, which would then have to modify the existing launch license for Starship before the next launch.
Speaking at the Space Capitol III event by Payload March 18, Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, said he did not anticipate that investigation to turn up any major issues that could significantly delay the next launch.
“It ended in what we call a mishap, but at the end of the day we deem it a successful launch attempt,” he said, because it resulted in no injuries or property damage. “SpaceX was able to collect a great deal of data from that launch.”
He said he expected SpaceX to quickly provide a mishap investigation report, noting that after the second Starship flight the company completed that report in several weeks. “We expect the same to be the case here. We didn’t see anything major. We don’t think there’s any critical systems for safety that were implicated.”
The FAA has updated SpaceX’s Starship launch license after every flight to date to reflect changes in the mission, such as the different suborbital trajectory used on the most recent flight. However, Coleman said the agency wants to move to a process where the license is valid for “portfolio of launches” rather than individual ones. That is particularly important, he added, because SpaceX is planning six to nine more Starship launches this year.
That is part of a broader effort to streamline the launch licensing process to address criticism from industry and Congress that the FAA is moving too slowly on approving launch licenses under a new set of regulations known as Part 450. Coleman announced at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference Feb. 21 that the agency would establish an aerospace rulemaking committee, or SpARC, to formally collect industry input on ways to improve Part 450.…