This is a

This is CBS in the world. I'm John Bachelor. Behind the Black

kept by Bob Zimmerman. We have a story that is a tangle of regulation and rocketry.

SpaceX, Boca Chica, Starship, the next test, the weight of the moon and to Mars. And yet and yet Bob a very good evening to you it looks like a food fight on one side of the table is SpaceX and the dreams of the 21st century to land on other planets. On the other side is the FAA. What?

What is the story? Good evening to you.

Good evening, John. Well, this week we really got a lot of information that maybe has

explained why the FAA has become a bottleneck and a serious

blockage to the development of this rocket.

So they say, I've not been reporting this the last three years increasingly it looked to me like the FAA was there were higher political appointees either in the FAA or the White House that was putting hindrances on the regulatory situation against SpaceX.

So during this week, the war of words became worse.

Last two, awards became

obvious that SpaceX was not going to be given launch license for the next

super heavy Starship test launched until late November.

And at the same time, the FAA also fined it, something like $600,000

for extremely petty issues, very petty issues, and they did that a year after the

launches occurred when nothing had gone wrong.

So it was very clear that there was settled, the harassment was going on because of that.

SpaceX finally went public, criticizing the FAA in great detail in public letters to House

of Senate committee members describing how this regulatory harassment was interfering

with the company and was not justified.

Well this week the war of Wards accelerated because the administrator of the FAA, Mike Whitaker, a political appointee, testified in front of the House Transportation Committee.

And during his talk, he accused SpaceX of doing wrong things

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