How glorious that we have such regulators to guide us!
The United States on Friday grounded SpaceX’s Starship and ordered Elon Musk’s company to investigate why the spaceship spectacularly disintegrated in a fiery cascade over the Caribbean during its latest test mission.
Authorities in the Turks and Caicos Islands confirmed they diverted all flights from their airspace during the incident and urged residents not to touch fallen debris, warning it could be hazardous.
“The Federal Aviation Administration is requiring SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation into the loss of the Starship vehicle during launch operations on Jan 16,” the agency said.
We are so lucky. Lucky that civilisation has reached such a peak of administrative excellence that the FAA is able to issue such a command.
For of course a man - even, an organisation - that has just watched $90 million of rocket turn into a pretty shooting star shower, thus risking the entirety of a $5 billion investment plan, would not think of doing that without regulatory prompting and insistence.
This is instructing an entire room full of matriarchs on the correct gumming technique for shelled zygotes of Gallus gallus domesticus. With the added joy that not only will the FAA be congratulating themselves on their both perspicacity and firmness, we’ve got to pay for them to do so as well.
Tim Worstall