Somewhat expected these days that the conspiracy theory consuming, “everything is political or agenda driven” crowd shows up on articles like this and there needs to be a push back on that nonsense using stuff like science, facts and, if those aren’t sufficient, mockery.
First, facts. NASA needs SpaceX and SpaceX needs NASA. There are billions of dollars in contracts between the two and more to come. NASA also has an obligation to the public and other stakeholders who are impacted by successful launches and very dramatically by fails.
The launchpads in proximity are an issue in Florida even as Kennedy and neighboring Space Force facilities have already gone down the environmental path in ways Texas has not.
SoaceX is NOT being picked on due to politics. They have a new and VFL (very f-ing large) bomb that either explodes all at once or in a more controlled fashion. The breakthroughs in design and performance also come with a VFL risk factor given the rule of “nothing comes for free” in physics. The explosive potential of a VFL amount of liquid methane which has a much higher energy density than liquid hydrogen… that transcends whatever imagined political nonsense one might blame these delays on.
Giant tanks of liquid methane and liquid O2 next to similarly sized tanks of H+O actually present a different scale of danger.
That’s it. Now stick to science and let the science and safety experts hash everything out so we can applaud a successful launch as soon as possible.