SpaceX will launch the mammoth Starship on Sunday in a launch window that opens at 5 AM PST (7 AM local time) from the company’s Starbase site in southeast Texas. This flight, which will be the fifth in the Starship development program, is coming a little sooner than expected: the Federal Aviation Administration had previously said that it did not anticipate issuing a modified launch license for this test before late November.
The US government moreso than NASA as funding for them as been an easy punching bag for both political parties lately.
The other thing is optics. NASA isn’t allowed to blow up 20 rockets on their designs. They only get one chance to get it right. That’s why the SLS has only 1 launch and is 1/1 as opposed to the SpaceX Dragon and Starship can just throw money at them until they work.
Not saying one way is better than the other, just that NASA has to fight not to make the front page because 9/10 it means they made a mistake which costs them more funding. IMO all of this is going to come up to a very slow pace akin to NASA when we start with crewed missions (SpaceX Starship will be mission controlled by NASA as well). They super don’t fuck around with crewed launches, especially after the botched Boeing Space launch. And a crew launch failure affects everyone SpaceX and NASA alike.