Will SpaceX Launch Starship Next Week?

It looks like Elon Musk could very possibly get one step closer to his goal of colonizing Mars now that the gargantuan Starship launch vehicle is ready for launch sometime in the coming days and only “awaiting regulatory approval,” as Musk has relayed via Twitter.

If the Federal Aviation Administration officials opt to give SpaceX the license it needs for the launch, the 394-foot-tall rocket could lift off for an around-the-world flight as soon as 7 a.m. next Monday, providing there aren’t any weather flare-ups, according to the FAA’s Operational Plans Advisory. (Should weather become an issue, the FAA has already indicated that it has slated from April 18 to April 22 as a back-up launch window.)

From there, we’ll witness the largest launch vehicle system go airborne from down on the South Texas Coast just outside of Brownsville, exceeding the size and thrust of both NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket from back in the Apollo days and the federal space agency’s latest creation, the Space Launch System, most recently used to launch Artemis I test flight around the moon last November.

To make this happen, the Super Heavy rocket booster will use 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines burning chilled methane and liquid oxygen to drive the rocket off the Starbase launchpad, creating more than 16.5 million pounds of thrust if all engines are firing. (That’s another crucial caveat—SpaceX performed its first static test of the Super Heavy’s engine system back in February and only 31 of the 33 Raptors fired up. Musk noted this was “still enough to reach orbit” but it wasn’t a flawless test.)

Barring any mishaps during the launch, Starship will then shoot through space for the next hour moving around the globe at about five seconds per mile before re-entering the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean and splashing down near Hawaii.

If the commercial space company manages to pull off this test it will be another crucial development in SpaceX’s plan to ultimately use Starship to tote astronauts and cargo into deep space, with goals to get to the moon and then Mars.

But first the FAA, which is charged with signing off on any commercial space launches, must formally issue the license that will allow the show to get started—and that is by no means a given.

In fact, Starship has already been delayed, repeatedly. Musk first tweeted Starship would soon be ready for launch “pending only regulatory approval” back in August 2021, when the FAA was already investigating how the more modest launch site the federal agency had signed off on back in 2014 had morphed into a massive launchpad that would shoot the world’s most powerful rocket system into orbit, without much apparent accounting for the people who used the beach, the endangered animals that lived around it or the wildlife refuges the site was sandwiched between.

So, the launch didn’t happen in 2021. And it didn’t happen in 2022 either. Instead, last June the FAA came out with 75 actions SpaceX needed to complete to mitigate damage to the area before the FAA would even consider a launch license.

So how are things looking, this time around?

Starship is fully stacked on the launchpad, jutting roughly 40 stories into the air on the lip of Boca Chica Beach, just east of Brownsville.

Even so, it’s worth noting the FAA has already cautioned that the fact that the launch is on its Operation Plans Advisory report from April 17 to April 22 “should not be interpreted as an indicator that a determination to issue a license has been made or is forthcoming.” If SpaceX hasn’t satisfied FAA concerns over safety and regulatory requirements—including those environmental mitigations—then agency officials can and will wait until SpaceX makes that happen.

On top of that, Musk has already stated that there now won’t be a dress rehearsal for Starship and has described the launch date as now “trending towards near the end of third week of April.”

But that tweet offering a tinge of doubt is intriguing. Although it could just be Musk sensibly hedging his bets before the public, the fact that Musk seems to be making an effort not to come off as overconfident this time around might also be one of the clearest indicators that the launch is tantalizingly close to being approved.

Whenever the FAA does give the all clear to launch the largest rocket on the planet, the one thing we know for sure is that it’s going to be one hell of a show.