FAA approves SpaceX Starship launch and explains why they held it up

I’m guessing Elon said “launch”, so they did.

Would be interesting to see the details of why the FAA didn’t give the earlier approval, and second, if SpaceX actually went beyond some previously agreed upon limit in their flight.

It seems to me that the nuances are very important here, and if SpaceX applied for something like a higher altitude and were denied it, and then flew to within the previously proscribed altitude, then there shouldn’t be an issue.

I guess it’s Elon the gunslinger vs FAA the paperwork monster in a showdown.

Normally I'd choose the "simplest possible explanation" which is the government is slow, wasteful, and terrible at everything.

But I'm not actually sure Elon yelling "YOLO LEEROY" and hitting the big red button isn't that much more out of the range of possibilities. One would think there would be some internal noise inside SpaceX though, like somewhere an engineer is like "yeah, I'm not sure we should disobey a direct government order".