The head of SpaceX, Elon Musk, has taken public discussions of government regulation of private space flights to a new level. Yesterday, in his feed on the social network X (formerly Twitter), Musk openly called on the head of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Mike Whitaker, to resign.
Image source: SpaceX
Two days ago, at a congressional hearing on Boeing’s manufacturing failures, FAA Chairman Mike Whitaker raised the issue of SpaceX’s popularity amid Boeing’s problems. He admitted that the regulator’s increased attention to SpaceX’s violations and newly issued fines in the amount of $633 thousand could cause a sharp public reaction against the backdrop of failures with the Boeing Starliner ship. In response, he said: “So I think safety is in the public interest and that is our primary concern. Fines are the only tool we have to enforce safety requirements.”
Previously, the FAA fined SpaceX for two launches of the Falcon 9 rocket in the summer of 2023, declaring them carried out without agency permission. In early September, Elon Musk sent an open letter to Congress, calling the FAA’s decision unlawful and accusing the organization of almost sabotaging American space programs (SpaceX is responsible to NASA for delivering the lunar landing module into satellite orbit). Therefore, at hearings in Congress on the prohibitive accident rate of Boeing aircraft, questions to the head of the FAA smoothly flowed into the field of astronautics and the agency’s relationship with SpaceX.
The head of the FAA listed the main complaints against Elon Musk’s space company, the risk of injury at its production facilities, by the way, was identified during previous NASA audits. In particular, Whitaker again recalled that SpaceX violates a number of environmental laws in the state of Texas and, in general, pays very little attention to environmental assessments. For example, the delay in issuing a license for the fifth test flight of Starship is due to the fact that SpaceX provided data on the examination of acoustic pollution at the very last moment. The agency simply will not have time to process the data in the shortest possible time – everything takes its time.
«SpaceX did not violate state law—SpaceX had a permit for its flooding operations from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The company is deeply concerned that the [FAA] Administrator does not appear to have accurate information directly available to him regarding SpaceX licensing matters,” the company responded to a number of allegations from the head of the Agency.
«He should resign,” Elon Musk shared his opinion on Network X.