> But the FAA really does take much more time than they should

What does that mean? Don't they take the amount of time they need in order to ensure safety, so that's the perfect amount of time? Or are you saying they're purposefully dragging their feet behind them just to make it slower for no good reason?

> Don't they take the amount of time they need in order to ensure safety

I think the perception is that they spend all their time calling the meeting to order, identifying participants, itemizing the agenda, breaking for lunch, slowly reading a checklist of procedures, reconvening after a formal proposal for investigation takes place, etc. etc., eventually followed by about 48 hours of actual review activities. The typical bureaucratic process.

Then the perception is wrong, but only because it's not even close to the reality. Regulatory work is not your typical bureaucratic process.

Endless review cycles, approvals, re-approvals, wordsmithing, legal, compliance, risk, re-re-re approvals. It really does take a lot of time.

It sounds like you're arguing that the regulatory work is indeed very bureaucratic?

Define bureaucratic.

If by bureaucratic you mean the same typical tropes about lazy government employees sucking off the taxpayers tit that's probably not what the person you're referring to meant.

If by bureaucratic you mean laborious and involving a lot of people thoroughly dotting i's and crossing t's then yeah, that's probably what the person you're replying to meant.

The thoroughness and attention to the i's and t's was indeed what I meant :)

Along with some measure of frustration, even though most of it is actually necessary.

> Don't they take the amount of time they need in order to ensure safety

According to SpaceX no safety concerns have been raised in quite some time.

It's also odd how much slower this approval process is compared to the previous and much more complex ones.

> What does that mean? Don't they take the amount of time they need in order to ensure safety, so that's the perfect amount of time?

As the article makes clear, they do not. And this is not the first time this has happened.

The delay here isn't about safety, it's about new environmental assessments. (For a site that's already been in use for years.)

Dropping the ring in the middle of the ocean is new though right

Rockets from every other organization on Earth drop whole stages into the ocean (except China, who drop them on villages instead). But EDS sufferers act like SpaceX dropping a fraction as much hardware in the ocean is a great crime against humanity.

Also very harmless (consider how many meteorites hit the Earth every year and consider how reactive the steel is compared to the random rocks) and very normal for rockets.