SpaceX wants to launch 9 Starship vehicles this year

SpaceX has requested the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to launch at least 9 Starship integrated vehicles this year.

Kelvin Colman, Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation at FAA told Arstechnica that the agency is working with SpaceX to pace up the Starship licensing process.

SpaceX is aggressively looking to increase the number of Starship launches through this year including “at least nine launches”. FAA has permitted SpaceX to launch 5 Starships a year but the company wants to increase to 9.

Unlike Falcon 9, there are more complications to handle in Starship, at least until it achieves stable launch operations.

Starship is a super heavy and the largest space launch vehicle on the planet. Its first test flight happened in April 2023 and revealed the issues in the launch site and the vehicle’s design.

FAA said it took about 6 months to conduct a post-launch investigation before allowing the license for the second launch in November 2023.

During the first launch, SpaceX damaged the launch pad and the vehicle failed to perform hot-staging. That changed in the second attempt as the vehicle successfully cleared the launch pad and also conducted hot staging.

Still, an orbit was not achieved during the second test flight.

Third Attempt:

SpaceX is now preparing for a third Starship test flight, the company is actively conducting pre-flight tests on both Super Heavy Booster and Starship spacecraft at Starbase.

CEO, Elon Musk previously anticipated the third flight test to take place around March and Coleman also suggested that the launch window is also possible.

Getting permission to launch more Starships would require internal discussion in the FAA and it may take some time. A past report reveals that SpaceX already has 4 production Starships in its inventory and it’s building extra launch sites at the Boca Chica facility to support more than one launch at a time.