Elon Musk SLAMS FAA for ‘regulatory overreach,’ says SpaceX will sue agency

Earlier this week, the FAA announced that it plans to fine SpaceX $630,000 for allegedly skirting regulations on two launches in 2023. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said that his company would be "filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach."

Musk posted on X that the agency’s “leadership spends their resources attacking SpaceX for petty matters that have nothing to do with safety, while neglecting real safety issues at Boeing. This is deeply wrong and puts human lives at risk.”

Musk also referenced the two astronauts trapped aboard the International Space Station and called out NASA for deeming “the Boeing capsule unsafe for astronaut return, turning, out of necessity, to SpaceX, yet instead of fining Boeing for putting astronauts at risk, the FAA is fining SpaceX for trivia! Enough is enough.”

The FAA claimed SpaceX violated regulations during two missions to launch communications satellites into orbit last year. The FAA has alleged that SpaceX "utilized a propellant farm at SpaceX’s launch site that FAA had not yet approved," that SpaceX used an updated Communications Plan that the FAA had not yet approved of, and Space X "did not conduct a launch poll two hours prior to a launch."

SpaceX challenged the alleged violations in a letter, which it sent to the chair and ranking member of both the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, writing that the company "forcefully rejects the FAA's assertion that it violated any regulations."

The letter also slammed the FAA for allegedly holding back the commercial space industry. David Harris, SpaceX's vice president for legal, wrote in the letter, "For well over a year now, SpaceX has voiced its concerns with the FAA's inability to keep pace with the commercial space industry and the needs of US Government agencies that rely on commercial space launch capability for national security and national priorities.”