What’s Standing in Elon Musk’s Way?
The thought of a three-letter government agency preventing Elon Musk, currently the richest person in the world, from doing anything he wants might seem like a bureaucrat’s fantasy. This is the guy who got approval to launch a Tesla into space, who got a street renamed Rocket Road, who disregarded coronavirus restrictions when he felt they got in the way of business. But Musk’s ambitious timeline for launching Starship, his dream rocket, out of a remote part of Texas depends right now on a pending decision from the Federal Aviation Administration that could add months or even years of delay.
Musk can’t bulldoze past regulations of this particular nature. He does have one power that many executives do not: Whenever he talks, people pay attention. Last, his proposed fix: building a city on Mars “as soon as possible.” Behind him stood a behemoth structure, a charcoal-black spaceship on a giant steel rocket, glowing in the floodlights—a prototype for Starship, the reusable rocket system that Musk wants to use to someday transport passengers from continent to continent, to the moon, and, of course, to Mars.
