SpaceX finishes second Starship launch tower at Starbase

SpaceX finished construction of its second launch tower down at Starbase, Texas for its Starship rocket. This comes hopefully a few weeks out from the next launch of the company’s next generation rocket.

Over the last few months SpaceX has cleared land and constructed a new launch tower at its research, development, and launch facilities down at Starbase, Texas. This now gives the company three towers total for Starship, two at Starbase and one more over in Florida at LC-39A.

There is still plenty of work to be done at the pad, it still needs the launch table, chopsticks, plumbing for propellent, etc. However, the biggest and most prominent feature is now complete.

The end goal of Starship is to launch hundreds of these rockets in a matter of days to support a colony on Mars. However, it currently needs to work up to a few handful of launches in a couple of days to support NASA’s Artemis mission as the lunar lander.

Right now SpaceX is limited to single digit launches a year from the site per its current environmental review. The company requested an increase to 25, this would help the company attempt orbital refueling missions that need more than one launch in a row, then do that multiple times a year.

The FAA was planning on going through with public opinion and meetings in its plan to approval the increase, but that all came to a halt last week when it became public SpaceX might have dumped waste water into the surrounding wetlands.

The report by CNBC triggered the FAA to halt any further public meetings about the approval, awaiting on further details from SpaceX. In the report, CNBC claims both state and federal authorities cited SpaceX for illegally dumping waste water from its deluge system into surrounding wetlands, a protected wildlife refuge. SpaceX has denied the claims and states the same state authority approved the dumps.

SpaceX has entered into a second phase of operations down there at Starbase. They are moving away from temporary tents and quickly built infrastructure to a permanent factory and now a third iteration of its launch tower. However, Elon Musk is still pushing his teams to their hardest as he feels the need for humans to live on Mars is more important than local red tape.