William Gerstenmaier, vice president for build and flight reliability at Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., testified during a US Senate...
The Starship vehicle being built in Texas is ready to fly on a test mission, but is still awaiting the necessary government approvalsexecutive said it’s “hard to say” when the company’s new Starship vehicle will be ready as a lunar lander for NASA, claiming regulation is holding up additional test flights.
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 thathas been ready to fly on a test mission for more than a month now, but is still awaiting the necessary government approvals.“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.
At the hearing, Gerstenmaier and executives from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic advocated for a multiyear extension of a ban on the Federal Aviation Administration imposing safety regulations on commercial human spaceflight. Gerstenmaier’s comments were first reported on Oct. 16 by Bloomberg News.The FAA did not receive an invitation to testify at the hearing, the agency said in an emailed statement.
The hearing comes as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin work to increase the number of rocket launches and people traveling to space for tourism or other pursuits. US air safety regulators and Congress are grappling with how to regulate the burgeoning industry.Other topics of discussion at the hearing included how best to streamline the FAA’s launch licensing process and providing more resources to the agency’s commercial spaceflight efforts.
“We need to test that soon, learn what’s wrong, fix it, and go fly again,” Gerstenmaier said. “And we cannot be held up by regulation.”The drones will travel to the customer’s address, descend to a height of about four meters – or 13 feet – and drop a padded package.Best Buy said it will stop selling DVDs and Blue-rays by early next year. This doesn’t include video games. Best Buy follows Netflix which in September stopped its dvd-by-mail service.
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