Trump orders easing of economic spaceflight laws, in boon to Musk’s SpaceX

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an government order on Wednesday to streamline federal regulation governing business rocket launches, a transfer that will profit Elon Musk’s SpaceX and different non-public area ventures.

Trump’s order, amongst different issues, directs the U.S. transportation secretary to eradicate or expedite environmental evaluations for launch licenses administered by the Federal Aviation Administration, the White Home stated in an announcement.

The declaration additionally calls on the secretary to put off “outdated, redundant or overly restrictive guidelines for launch and reentry automobiles.”

“Inefficient allowing processes discourage funding and innovation, limiting the flexibility of U.S. firms to steer in world area markets,” the chief order states.

It added: “Overly advanced environmental and different licensing and allowing laws decelerate business area launches and infrastructure growth, and profit entrenched incumbents (who can afford to bear the expense of regulatory compliance) over new market entrants (who can not).”

Though Musk and Trump have remained embroiled in a high-profile feud for months, the billionaire entrepreneur’s SpaceX rocket and satellite tv for pc enterprise doubtlessly stands to be the one largest fast beneficiary of Trump’s order on Wednesday.

SpaceX, though not talked about by identify within the government order, simply leads all different U.S. area trade entities, together with NASA, within the sheer variety of launches it routinely conducts.

Musk has complained that environmental influence evaluations and post-flight mishap investigations have repeatedly slowed down testing of SpaceX’s bold new Starship rocket automobile, underneath growth on the firm’s South Texas launch facility.