SPACEX ASKS FOR 2ND FCC PERMIT FOR STARSHIP LAUNCH

By Stacy Liberatore

Dailymail.com

Elon Musk vowed the world would see a second Starship launch "within a few months'"after its maiden flight in April –  and the billionaire is keeping his promise.

SpaceX filed a permit with the Federal Communications Commission Monday, requesting authorization for operation as soon as June 15 – but anytime until December 15.

The document states the purpose of the mission is an "experimental orbital demo and recovery test of the Starship test vehicle," suggesting the world could see the craft leave our planet.
This was the goal of the first launch, which took a turn for the worse when the 395-foot stack failed to separate four minutes after liftoff.

While April's launch is deemed a success – Musk had only hoped to get Starship off the launchpad – the massive explosion caused damages that need to be repaired before SpaceX's next epic attempt at glory.

The massive 395-foot stack, comprised of the Super Heavy booster and Starship, launched at 8:33 a.m. for its first orbital launch but burst into flames four minutes after takeoff.

While Elon Musk's company activated the flight termination system, the Super Heavy massive craft failed to separate, sending it into an uncontrolled death spin.

The outcome was not ideal, but Elon Musk, NASA and the SpaceX team are celebrating its success - the main goal was to get Starship off the launchpad.

SpaceX Principal Integration Engineer John Insprucker said during the company's live stream in April: "Now this was a development test.

"It's a first test flight of Starship. And the goal is to gather the data and as we said, clear the pad and get ready to go again.
"So you never know exactly what's going to happen. But as we promised, excitement is guaranteed. And Starship gave us a rather spectacular end to what was truly an incredible test as far."

The process of how SpaceX got from April to now is unclear, but the company had said its engineers would analyze every piece of data collected from the initial launch to improve the second.

Musk also revealed several Starship rockets are waiting in the wings for their chance to shine. The only hurdle SpaceX still has to pass is the damage done to the launchpad, which looked like a warzone after the Starship took off.

Starship 'left a large crater in the concrete under the launch mount,' Spaceflight Now said in a tweet that included several photos of the debris-strewn pad, adding that the orbital mount was 'heavily damaged.'

Max Evans, a photographer for NASASpaceflight.com, also documented some of the damage.

"Tough to imagine this site being usable again in under a 12-month timeline – would be happy to be proven wrong," Evans tweeted in a thread.

Engineer and space entrepreneur Jonathan Goff was slightly more optimistic about how long the repairs might take, although not by much.

"I think with the pad damage and need to rework the launch infrastructure, that we're probably at least 7-9 mos out from our next SS/SH (Starship and Super Heavy) flight of any kind. 1 yr to get to a fully orbital and successful flight was being very optimistic," Goff wrote on social media.

The company's leadership – including Musk – has repeatedly stressed the experimental nature of the launch and said any result that involved Starship getting off the launchpad would be a success.

The mission was always due to end with the destruction of the Starship rocket, which was supposed to orbit the Earth for about an hour before crashing into the Pacific.

But any setbacks will still be hugely expensive. Musk has said the entire program will cost anywhere from $3 billion to $10 billion.

But Musk himself was braced for a failed launch, claiming last month that there was a 50 percent chance his spacecraft could explode during the test flight.

The billionaire congratulated the SpaceX team on Twitter about 20 minutes after the craft went up in flames.

Musk tweeted: "Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months."

SpaceX then shared on Twitter that its team will review data and work toward another flight for the rocket.

"As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation," SpaceX tweeted.

"With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today's test will help us improve Starship's reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary."