SpaceX says that progress is being held up by an understaffed FAA-AST.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of the hearing tomorrow. I’d head over to the Capitol to listen, but unfortunately, I have to focus on preparing for the upcoming trial.
That’s one way of putting a government agency on your side: petition the government to give them more money.
If they’d said “We’re being lawfare-targeted by the administration” their troubles would only increase.
The Bureaucratic Veto in action. Unless a “honorarium for services rendered” (i.e. a bribe) is tendered nothing gets accomplished in a timely fashion …or gets accomplished at all.
How much is a legitimate bureaucratic mess and how much is intentional?
Kelvin Coleman still runs the place. I’ve known Kelvin for 26 years, and he’s a big supporter of commercial space, and the type to get things done. Their latest org chart has some unfamiliar names in it, but the key positions are held by the best people I knew, people who have been there in many cases 20 years or more. From what I’ve been hearing lately, though, they’ve had some attrition, and are having a hard time finding new people with the required skills. That’s not a surprise, for a lot of reasons.
But to answer your question, we had a hell of a time keeping up with the licensing workload when I was Chief Engineer. That was before the flight rates began to increase to their current levels. I don’t know how they are keeping up, but I can pretty much guarantee that they are working like crazy to do so. No one ever dawdled at AST.
I don’t know how to solve the problem, though the idea SpaceX put forth of paying for third party technical support for the office could make a huge difference. Typical SpaceX innovation!
Highly doubt that SpaceX would provoke FAA, they are too dependent upon them. Looks like they are on top of the issue.