SpaceX Says It’s ‘Hard to Say’ When Starship Will Be Moon-Ready

  • SpaceX says Starship ready to fly but held up by regulators
  • Starship to take cargo, eventually humans to the moon and Mars
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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, 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 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.