‘Hard to say’ when new Starship vehicle will be moon-ready, says SpaceX
A SpaceX executive said it’s “hard to say” when company’s new Starship vehicle will be ready as a lunar lander arguing that more testing was needed.
A SpaceX executive said it’s “hard to say” when the company’s new Starship vehicle will be ready as a lunar lander for NASA, arguing that more testing is needed that is being held up by regulation.
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William Gerstenmaier, vice president for build and flight reliability at Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., testified during a US Senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday that the next Starship vehicle has been ready to fly on a test mission for more than a month now, but is still awaiting the necessary government approvals to fly again.
“It’s hard for me to give a specific date of where we are,” Gerstenmaier said, noting that lagging regulation should not hold up the company’s launch schedule.