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SpaceX Starship eyes Tuesday launch after FAA communication breakdown causes delays
Two new sourced reports suggest that SpaceX’s fast-moving approach to Starship development and a shocking level of naivety and ineptitude on behalf of the FAA’s regulatory responsibilities combined to delay the latest Starship test flight.
As previously discussed on Teslarati, SpaceX was clearly and publicly targeting a Starship launch as early as 12pm to 5pm on Monday, March 29th after unknown issues delayed a Friday attempt. Those plans were writ large on SpaceX’s own website and via CEO Elon Musk’s tweets a full three days before launch and confirmed by road closures, notices to mariners, and the FAA’s own flight restrictions and advisories 24-48 hours prior. Around 11am CDT Monday, Musk revealed that SpaceX had been forced to call off the day’s launch attempt because an FAA-required inspector was “unable to reach” Boca Chica in time.
Now, per reports separately corroborated by The Verge reporter Joey Roulette and Washington Post reporter Christian Davenport, a clearer picture of what exactly transpired is available.
Roulette first broke the news, offering a better look at a portion of the debacle. Per “a source,” SpaceX had apparently told the FAA inspector – who had been waiting all week for Starship SN11’s launch debut – that plans for a Monday recycle had been canceled. The inspector then flew home to Florida. However, as things often do and have, the situation rapidly changed and SpaceX suddenly found itself in a position to launch on Monday.
According to the apparent FAA-side source, SpaceX dropped that change of plans on the agency’s lap late on Sunday, leading the inspector to “[scramble]” onto a Monday flight that was somehow too late to arrive before the 5pm CDT end of Starship’s test window. In a statement, the FAA chided SpaceX, stating that the company “must provide adequate notice of its launch schedule to allow for a safety inspector to travel to Boca Chica.”
Under that description of events, it would be hard not to find SpaceX clearly in the wrong. Mere hours of notice – and only offered late on Sunday evening – would make it difficult for anyone to abruptly arrange a 1300-mile, multi-stop flight. At the same time, though, someone capable of singlehandedly scrubbing an entire rocket launch attempt on a whim (or an accident) is obviously not just “anyone” and a functional regulatory apparatus probably wouldn’t leave the entirety of that substantial responsibility up to a single employee.
As it so happened, Roulette’s source only offer part of the picture. According to Christian Davenport and his sources, SpaceX (or someone) did tell the FAA inspector that it was safe to head home on Friday because the company was struggling to secure road closures from Cameron County for a Monday launch attempt. Apparently, the issue was so extreme that SpaceX wasn’t sure if a launch on any day of the next week would be possible.
However, sometime early on Sunday morning, SpaceX secured a road closure for a Monday Starship launch attempt. According to Davenport, SpaceX emailed the FAA inspector but he “didn’t see the email,” which presumably served as a notice of plans for a Starship launch attempt. Logically, SpaceX then began attempting to call the FAA (inspector?) but didn’t get an answer or call back until “late Sunday night.”
Via Cameron County’s explicitly public road closure announcement website, Monday’s road closure was granted no later than 11am CDT. Assuming SpaceX emailed the FAA inspector around then, that email effectively served as a notice of launch plans more than 24 hours before the window was scheduled to open. If SpaceX didn’t somehow forget to email until hours later, Davenport’s description implies that it took SpaceX hours of constant phone calls before the FAA finally responded.
If that series of events is accurate, as it seems to be, it’s a searing indictment of systematic ineptitude and laziness on behalf of the FAA. Having changed SpaceX’s Starship launch license to necessitate the presence of an FAA inspector mere weeks ago, thus giving a single person the power to scrub an entire launch attempt, the regulatory agency appears to have entrusted the entirety of that responsibility to a single “inspector.” Knowing full well that SpaceX works continuously with multiple shifts after almost two years of managing Starhopper and Starship tests, hops, and launches, the FAA then failed to ensure that some kind of communications infrastructure was in place to keep SpaceX appraised about the availability of a single inspector it now fully hinged on for all future Starship launches.
If, as the phrasing in both reports suggests, the FAA allotted a single government inspector to preside over all future Starship launches, that alone would bely a ridiculous level of ineptitude and naivete (or ignorance). To then trust that single person with nearly all of the responsibility of maintaining contact with SpaceX, day and night, would be akin to the FAA consciously guaranteeing that a disruptive breakdown in communications like this one would happen.
All told, SpaceX likely also needs to do some recalibration to better mesh and coexist with the FAA’s glacial reaction time and pace of work. However, the FAA is not going to be winning any favors if it continues to manage SpaceX’s Starship licensing in a manner as inept and cavalier as it has been. Far more importantly, if the FAA – one of the largest, best-funded regulatory bodies responsible for ensuring the safety of some of the most complex systems and vehicles on Earth – is unable to perform tasks as rudimentary as scheduling and contingency planning, it’s difficult to imagine how that same office could be trusted to regulate – and make safer – systems as extraordinarily complex as launch vehicles.
With any luck, the FAA will prove that the last four months have been minor bumps in the road to reliably and professionally licensing and regulating SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle. However, after two separate demonstrations of systematic mismanagement over a mere four Starship launch attempts, it’s becoming harder and harder to soundly argue that the FAA still deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Assuming the FAA inspector is on schedule, Starship SN11’s next launch attempt is now scheduled between 7am and 3pm CDT (UTC-5) on Tuesday, March 30th.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
Elon Musk says Grok Bot can manage your finances through linked bank and investment accounts.
Grok Bot now wants access to your wallet, with SpaceXAI rolling out a new Finance integration for its agent platform that lets users link bank, credit card and investment accounts thereby letting their Bots help manage spending, investments and more. Elon Musk amplified the announcement on X with a short endorsement, “Grok Bot can manage your finances.”
The feature builds on two earlier steps. In early September, Grok gained the ability to answer questions about spending, savings, investments and cash flow using accounts connected through Plaid, starting with users in the U.S. Before that, on August 28, SpaceXAI let Grok Bot buy things online through Link, with users approving every spend request and the Bot receiving a single use card for each payment.
Musk has already shown how far he wants users to push it. In late August, when Tesla investor account Teslaconomics said he was weighing whether to give Grok Bot access to his bank accounts, Musk replied, “Try it out. If Grok Bot messes up, we will make you whole.” That promise goes beyond SpaceXAI’s consumer terms, which make users responsible for what their agents do and generally cap the company’s liability at the greater of fees paid or $100. SpaceXAI’s own documentation recommends requiring approval for purchases and financial transfers.
For Tesla owners, the update lands five days after Tesla brought Grok Bot into its vehicles, letting drivers hand off errands by voice while FSD (Supervised) handles the road. Bot access inside the car is currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, though Connectors are open to anyone signed into Grok. With Finance linked, a driver could ask for a spending summary or a check on upcoming bills during the commute.
Grok’s role in the car has grown quickly since Tesla’s Summer Update let it control cabin features by voice. We have been using Grok Bot in our own Tesla for several weeks, and here’s how our latest test went.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
The FAA has cleared Starship Flight 14, setting up SpaceX’s first orbital attempt on Monday.
SpaceX has cleared the last regulatory hurdle standing between Starship and its first trip to orbit. The Federal Aviation Administration issued the launch license for Starship Flight 14 late Saturday, keeping the mission on track for liftoff Monday, September 28, from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas.
The 75 minute launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central, and Boca Chica Beach closures are also scheduled for September 29 and 30 as backup dates. This will be Starship’s first revenue generating mission.
The license was the missing piece after SpaceX completed a full wet dress rehearsal with Booster 21 and Ship 41 on September 24. At the time, the company said the flight remained on track pending regulatory approval. Because Flight 14 flies an orbital profile, the FAA had to sign off on a modified license that met its safety, payload and financial responsibility requirements.
Observers combing through the new FAA paperwork also noticed that lightning no longer appears among Starship’s listed launch hazards. If that holds, it matters more for where Starship is headed than for Monday’s attempt. Florida and Louisiana, home to LC-39A and the planned Starbase Louisiana site, see some of the most frequent lightning in the United States.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Flight 14 is the mission SpaceX has been building toward for months. Ship 41 will carry 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational V3 units to be deployed, and attempt roughly six orbits at about 275 kilometers over a flight lasting just under 10 hours. SpaceX says the ship will only perform its orbital insertion burn after flight controllers confirm enough hardware redundancy remains for the deorbit burn at the end of the mission. Ship 41 is targeting a splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile, while Super Heavy will return to the Gulf of Mexico.
The date carries some symbolism as well. A Monday launch would come 10 years and one day after Elon Musk first presented the Interplanetary Transport System, the design that became Starship, at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.
SpaceX has not announced what comes next, but air traffic planning slides reported this week, list Flight 15 no earlier than October 19 and a first Starship launch from LC-39A in Florida no earlier than October 30. Both dates depend on how Monday goes.
News
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
Elon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
