SpaceX Asks to Launch Starship Up to 456 Times a Year From South Texas as FAA Begins Environmental Review

SpaceX wants to fly its Starship megarocket far more often, and the US Federal Aviation Administration has started the formal review.

The company has requested permission to launch Starship from its Starbase site in South Texas up to 456 times per year, a large jump from the currently allowed cadence of 25.

On October 14 the FAA announced its intent to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, open a public scoping period and hold public scoping meetings for the proposal. The agency is in the early stages of its review.

Why it matters

Starship stands more than 400 feet (122 meters) tall and is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. It is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. It has flown 14 times, all of them test flights from Starbase near Brownsville. On the most recent flight, on September 28, it reached orbit for the first time and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first members of a new constellation that could eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft.