THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX gets US approval to test new Starfall capsules for space manufacturing.

According to the newly released documents, Starfall will provide both in-space manufacturing and point-to-point cargo delivery services. This is in line with previously announced plans for Starship to rapidly deliver military cargo for the U.S. military.

The Starfall vehicles could also serve as a “proliferated successor” to the International Space Station (ISS), as they could support “a self-sustaining manufacturing economy in space”.

In order to create a “self-sustaining commercial in-space manufacturing market”, the vehicles would offer access to “microgravity and vacuum, loiter on orbit, and safe return from orbit as a service at scale,” the documents state.

The FAA’s documents do not provide any information regarding potential launch dates for the first Starfall missions. However, the agency does clearly state that Starfall would be a large-scale project if it is eventually greenlit and officially announced by SpaceX.

According to the documents, Elon Musk’s private space company “plans to develop a mass-producible reentry vehicle that can precisely deliver cargo from space to various locations on Earth, which would be able to launch on either Falcon 9 or Starship.”

Instead of One Big Station, think of Starfall as an “Army of Davids” approach to microgravity manufacturing and experimentation, to coin an Instaphrase.