As a former government guy I must concur. If someone sufficiently senior
in government decides to stop a launch it will most likely be stopped...and
the gods help anyone who successfully opposes such intention....
That said, I must also agree with Rand's contention that the current
leadership of FAA/AST is unlikely to do such a thing w/o a very serious
reason.
Bill
On Friday, September 9, 2016, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 9 Sep 2016, Rand Simberg wrote:
And no one has legal authority to "ground" them. It's up to them and
... Unless there is some clear reason that the launch will endanger thetheir customers.
general public, or harm the national interest, FAA has no reason to deny a
license. They don't do mission assurance.
That still leaves wiggle room to be difficult :-) if they want to be.
Notably, I could see it being "in the national interest" for SpaceX not to
fuel a Falcon 9 on pad 39A unless/until they're pretty sure this won't
happen again, since the LC-39 pads are unique resources.
In practice, whether or not the government has formal authority to ground
Falcon 9 on mission-assurance grounds, the US-government-business slice of
SpaceX's income is so large that SpaceX is going to be very sensitive to
the government's wishes.
Henry