Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical Crossroads, The Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, and I'm your host, Will Walden. If you want uninterrupted episodes of the Elon Musk podcast, please go to clubelon.supercast.com to find out how there's a link in the show notes SpaceX is setting its sights on a robust launch schedule for the Starship rocket in 2024.
Aiming for at least nine missions is stated by a Federal Aviation Administration FAA official in the Starship, which is immense, has power and size, which we haven't seen before in a rocket, and it's central for Spacex's aspirations of taking people to Mars. Now, despite the goals, SpaceX acknowledges the challenges ahead and making the Starship Mars ready Company is under significant pressure to advance its test flight program to meet its targets for the year.
And Kevin Coleman, the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Administrator, highlighted Spacex's intention launch agenda for 24. He said that the workload involved preparing in these numerous launches said that there's continuous dialogue between SpaceX and the FAA to facilitate this brand new and aggressive schedule for this monstrous rocket. Now, the FAA previously mandated a cap of Starship launches about 5 attempts annually following an in depth environmental assessment.
This restriction is something SpaceX is keen to modify to accommodate its expanding launch itinerary. And if they need to go to the moon, they need to launch hundreds of these rockets to make sure that everything works perfectly. Now SpaceX is inaugural integrated flight test before the Starship occurred in April of 2023, marking a moment in history that the Rockets eventual failure happened during the first stage separation. Now the event underscored the risks and the complexities of
the Starship program. And then they did a follow up test IFT 2 conducted in November. So they only did two tests that year. But this laid the groundwork for future launches. SpaceX is now gearing up for the third test flight anticipated around mid March. Ish, which could set the pace for monthly launches until the year's end.
The Department of Defense is exploring a potential new launch site for Starship in Florida too, and this would be of strategic importance for the rocket and also for the DoD. This moves involves an extensive environmental impact study to assess the feasibility of such launches for the Space Coast of Florida. And as SpaceX prepares for its first Starship launch of 2024 from the Starbase facility in South Texas, regulatory hurdles remain a significant focus.
The FAA is actively working with SpaceX to streamline the licensing process for new Starship launches going forward. Now the environmental ramifications of Starship launches have come under scrutiny, and especially after the first launch in April 2023, which caused considerable damage to the launch site and caught a few things on fire and raised
environmental concerns. And these incidents highlight the challenges of balancing Spacex's Starship program, but also their own environmental stewardship. Now the second Starship launch proved more successful, though with a super heavy first stage booster performing very well. However, the upper stage encountered issues leading to its loss, though without ground damage, reflecting iterative improvements in Spacex's launch protocol.
Now, mind you, the first stage did blow up as well, so it was better than the first trip, but that second one was better. Now, Spacex's founder Elon Musk has indicated a target window and early to mid March for the third Starship launch attempt, and this launch is viewed as having a reasonable chance of reaching orbit. The FAA's Commercial Space Transportation division has grown significantly in response to the increasing number of US launches and the emergence of
new spaceflight companies. This expansion is part of a broader effort to enhance the FAA's regulatory capacity in the rapidly growing space industry and the private space industry. Now the Space Force and the Air Force, alongside other federal agencies is conducting an environmental impact statement EIS for potential Starship launches from Florida. Like we discussed before now, this is a very stringent level
environmental review. There's high stakes here, and we know that if SpaceX passes the environmental review, we're going to see a few launch towers happen as soon as possible from this launch site because the Department of Defense is involved. SpaceX has conducted 2 notable launches from Starship facility in 2023 at Starbase, with both missions ending in explosions shortly after takeoff.
The potential for Starship to support NASA's missions and the Department of Defense's interest in its capabilities shows that Starship is very important. It's a strategic rocket. It's not just a rocket that will get people to the Moon and Mars, It'll be a rocket that sends cargo to orbit for the Department of Defense. Numerous armed forces as well, and the ongoing EIS process is exploring various options for accommodating Starship launches from Florida going forward.
Hopefully that can be done within the next six months, but we're expecting it to be 8 months to 12 months before this all happens. And the EIS is just another set of red tape that SpaceX has to go through in order to launch from the Space Coast. It's not the primary mission, So this is a secondary mission that SpaceX would do.
Public meetings are scheduled to discuss the environmental impact of potential new Starship launch sites, and this is great for community engagement and transparency for Starship, SpaceX and the Department of Defense and the state of Florida. Now Starship, with its giant capabilities, is poised to revolutionize space travel, with plans to replace the Falcon rocket family eventually and support missions like Mars colonization for Starlink and
more satellite operations. It's payload capacity makes it a key asset for both commercial space activities and defense applications and the drive to overcome regulatory and environmental hurdles. It's a huge challenge for SpaceX. They've had to do it at Starbase a few Times Now, and they've always come up.
The winner of stakeholders, including military officials, emphasize the need for national support and investment to realize the potential of transformative space technologies like Starship on the Space Coast of Florida. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your support. If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
It helps out the show tremendously, and you'll never miss an episode, And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up quickly. And please, if you want to support the show even more to Atreoncom, Stage Zero, and please take care of yourselves and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.