Elon Musk announces Starship is ready for its second flight but there's one thing stopping it

SpaceX launched Starship back in April, and the first orbital attempt for the world's largest and most powerful rocket ended in flames, with SpaceX losing communication with the rocket due to fires and ultimately resulting in a self-detonation.

Despite what appears to be a catastrophic failure in every regard, SpaceX deemed the mission a success as much was learned about how to fly Starship, and it even reaching the altitude of 24 miles was impressive as many staff, including Elon Musk, believed there was a decent chance the rocket wouldn't even get off the launch pad. The necessary changes were implemented into the next model of Starship, and that one is now standing on the Starbase launch pad waiting to take off.

So, what is stopping the next orbital test flight? The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) needs to grant SpaceX a license for launch, which the company is currently working through right now. Musk said back on September 10 that SpaceX had completed 57 of the 63 items the FAA required for a license to be granted. Musk wrote on October 1 that "Starship is ready for flight 2!". SpaceX wrote on the same day that its "team continues to work with the FAA on a launch license."

With it being more than a month since we got an update on the items SpaceX has to complete for a license and Musk saying that Starship is ready to go, we can expect SpaceX or Musk to announce a launch date for the world's most powerful rocket sometime soon.