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I reckon theyll playing Starship crane jenga with them for a while yet, but these are supposed to be the orbital test flight ready components.
but they cant go anywhere till they get a launch license from the FAA.
Indeed. It just seems a very long hiatus after the furious testing activity on Starship. They have, after all, only done one successful landing to date. Might be wise to make sure they can repeat it.
Perhaps a metaphor for post-Brexit Britain, given the following from Wikipedia on a related issue concerning satellites.
"In November 2018, the British government announced that the UK Space Agency would abandon ties to the European Space Agency's Galileo navigation system following Brexit in favour of developing its own system of navigation satellites. The total cost of the United Kingdom Global Navigation Satellite System project was estimated at £5 billion.
In July 2020, the UK government and Indian conglomerate Bharti Enterprises jointly purchased the bankrupt OneWeb satellite company. The UKSA had advised the government that OneWeb was not suitable as a basis for a satellite navigation system. On 25 September 2020, The Daily Telegraph reported that the United Kingdom Global Navigation Satellite System project had been scrapped. The project, deemed unnecessary and too expensive, will be replaced with a new project that will explore alternative ways to provide satellite navigation services."
No, Virgin have done three in USA. This is not only the first satellite launch from the UK, but also the first starting in Western Europe. Fairly big deal for Britain - who is also a major satellite manufacturer.
The following, from Wikipedia, relating to the European Space Agency suggests there may be reasons for not launching in Europe.
"Because many communication satellites have equatorial orbits, launches from French Guiana are able to take larger payloads into space than from spaceports at higher latitudes. In addition, equatorial launches give spacecraft an extra 'push' of nearly 500 m/s due to the higher rotational velocity of the Earth at the equator compared to near the Earth's poles where rotational velocity approaches zero."
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