SpaceX has signaled that it will one day phase out its workhorse Falcon 9 launch vehicle for the company’s much larger Starship rocket, a move that carries major implications for other users of the National Airspace System (NAS).
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote Sunday on social media that once Starship—the largest rocket ever built—is “flying reliably several times per week,” it “makes sense” to allocate resources to the gargantuan spacecraft. That, Musk said, would mean “winding down Falcon [9].”
A source also told Ars Technica last week that the U.S. government plans to end commercial Falcon 9 launches after 2028 and use the vehicle only for a limited number of contracted missions.
Starship is likely still a few years away from reaching Musk’s desired cadence. That will hinge on both Starship and its Super Heavy booster achieving full reusability, enabling quick turnarounds between missions.
But if or when Starship replaces Falcon 9, the larger rocket will carry with it larger restrictions on the NAS.
Bigger Rocket, Bigger Restrictions
Launch operators such as SpaceX coordinate with the FAA to establish aircraft hazard areas (AHAs), which are disseminated via Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) at least 24 hours before a launch either as a temporary flight restriction (TFR) or stationary altitude reservation. The AHAs are calculated based on a spacecraft’s trajectory and debris dispersion data.
That means larger or less proven spacecraft such as Starship often receive larger AHAs. The latest Version 3 (V3) Starship and its Super Heavy booster stand more than 400 feet tall, designed to deliver 100 metric tons of payload to low-Earth orbit (LEO). For comparison, Falcon 9 is about 230 feet tall and maxes out at about 25 metric tons.
In addition, while Falcon 9 has launched hundreds of times with just a handful of commercial failures, Starship has suffered anomalies on about half of its 13 suborbital test flights.
AHAs vary by mission. In 2020, NASA required a 40 nm TFR for Falcon 9’s Demo 2 mission, the first test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. TFRs for launches at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, a key Falcon 9 launch site, typically span 30-40 nm.
But they can be far larger. The AHA for Starship’s ninth test flight in 2025 covered a whopping 1,600 nm, nearly double that of the previous mission. The FAA warned the restrictions could delay more than 175 flights by an average of 40 minutes.
Future Starship AHAs could restrict even more airspace. In February, the FAA published an environmental clearance report regarding SpaceX’s request for new Starship launch trajectories from its Starbase launch pad in Texas.
The new routes would allow Starship to advance from suborbital to orbital flights by flying over portions of Florida. But they would also necessitate new AHAs. The FAA estimated that AHAs for Starship launches over Florida could impact as many as 8,800 commercial aircraft operations annually. Those covering Starship return trajectories over Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California could impact up to 4,400 operations annually. Each could require dozens of airway closures over the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX is building additional Starship launchpads and aims to expand operations beyond Texas to Florida’s Space Coast.
In an October letter to the FAA, Steve Jangelis, aviation safety chair for the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), criticized the FAA’s analysis of the new trajectories’ impact on the NAS. Jangelis wrote that the agency “continues to ignore fundamental airspace safety and operational issues.”
Caution Advised
The FAA also activates debris response areas (DRAs) in order to safely clear airspace below a rocket’s trajectory after an anomaly occurs. Starship Flight 8’s DRA, activated after the rocket exploded, delayed 171 departures and diverted 28 flights, placing another 40 in holding patterns.
However, ALPA contends that these mechanisms are ineffective. Jangelis in October estimated that out of four Starship test flights that required DRAs, the agency activated only one of them within a required 6-minute, 30-second time frame.
That may have been because the FAA lacked information. The Wall Street Journal in December reported that SpaceX waited to alert the agency after Starship exploded in January 2025, with some air traffic controllers learning of the incident from pilots who witnessed it.
Either way, the FAA has warned pilots to use “additional situational awareness” when flying through AHAs. In a January safety alert for operators (SAFO), the agency advised pilots to identify alternate landing sites in the case of a diversion and stock enough fuel to get them through a prolonged DRA. The SAFO warned that spacecraft have potential for “catastrophic failures resulting in debris fields.”
The rate of Starship anomalies is likely to decrease as SpaceX rapidly iterates the design. The company is known for accepting early failures as a tradeoff of future success. Falcon 9, for example, conducted 26 launches in 2020 but flew a record 165 missions in 2025, dwarfing competitors and accounting for the majority of FAA-licensed space activities. Falcon 9 anomalies are incredibly rare.
Starship, meanwhile, completed just five suborbital test flights in 2025 and has flown two so far in 2026.
SpaceX won’t be able to ramp up Starship’s cadence until it begins reusing the rocket and minimizing anomalies. But even if its record improves, pilots would face broader airspace restrictions and the potential for more severe consequences if something does go wrong.
