SpaceX disputes $633K FAA fine, citing ‘systematic challenges’ with agency

SpaceX sent a letter to top congressional leaders on Wednesday denying allegations that it violated its launch licenses on two separate occasions last year, which has resulted in regulators seeking $633,009 in penalties from the company.

Instead, the company asserts that the inability of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) to process “relatively minor” license updates is further proof that the agency is unable to keep pace with the space industry’s — but chiefly SpaceX’s — rapid growth. 

The FAA announced that it was proposing the fines against SpaceX after the company allegedly failed to follow requirements set out in its launch license on two separate occasions in 2023. In the first instance, the FAA said that SpaceX executed a launch using a new control room and without conducting a launch readiness poll two hours before liftoff; in the second instance, during a Falcon Heavy launch, the FAA alleges that the company used an unapproved rocket propellant farm to fuel the launch vehicle. 

These changes require amendments to the company’s launch licenses, which the FAA did not approve prior to the launches taking place, the agency says. The combined fines are the largest civil penalty yet levied by the agency against a commercial launch provider. 

But SpaceX said in its letter that it had separate approval from a U.S. government range safety authority to use the new rocket propellant farm, and that the other changes, like removing the T-2 hour readiness poll or changing the location of the launch control center from one location at Kennedy Space Center to another, are unrelated to public safety and thus not under the regulatory authority of AST. 

When sent specific questions related to SpaceX’s response letter, an FAA representative directed TechCrunch to the two enforcement letters the agency issued to the company, which site the specific FAA regulations that state that a launch operator must follow the launch plan to the letter. 

In response to follow-up questions sent by TechCrunch, the representative said, “The FAA does not comment on active enforcement issues.” 

It is unclear why the FAA is only seeking the fines now, over a year after the alleged violations took place, but SpaceX says in its letter that it’s “notable” that they were announced in the midst of increased scrutiny from Congress over AST’s licensing processes. That includes a meeting earlier this month of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which questioned industry leaders, including the FAA head, on the speed and burden of regulations to commercial companies. 

The FAA’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation, Kelvin Coleman, told the committee that AST currently employed 158 people, the largest ever headcount, after bringing on 35 people in the last year alone. In the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2025, the division is seeking money for additional staffing, Coleman said. 

This latest quarrel has only intensified SpaceX’s increasingly public campaign against what it sees as ineffectual and untimely regulatory processes. The company has taken to its blog to call out the “superfluous” regulatory delays holding up its next Starship flight, while CEO Elon Musk uses his platform on X to put his perspective more plain: “The fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA.” 

But regardless of timing, Billy Nolen, the former acting administrator of the FAA until 2023, pushed back against Musk’s assertion that the regulatory scrutiny was related to “politically-motivated behavior.”

As an agency, the FAA “is about as apolitical as it gets,” Nolen said.