Spaceport Industry: Time to Elevate Space Launch Authority at DOT

Nield: There's a very strong consensus among economists and finance experts that the global space economy … is expected to exceed a trillion dollars per year in just the next few years. UBS, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch -- they're all saying the same things. It's our perspective that much of that growth could take place at or near spaceports. They can serve as focal points and technology hubs to enable the creation of an overarching economic ecosystem for space-related activities.

CD: The idea that next to the spaceport is the space industrial park.

Nield: Exactly. So what can you do at a spaceport? You can launch satellites. Space tourism -- that's going to continue to grow. Aerospace manufacturing. The Blue Origin factory is right outside the gate at the Kennedy Space Center [in Florida]. But there are many other places that exist, or that can exist, that are going to focus on building launch and reentry vehicles and landers and satellites and systems, subsystems, components, final assembly, integration. ...

Having it at or near a spaceport gives you some synergies. Education and training. Workforce development. And I'm really excited about point-to-point transportation through space -- the idea is to be able to start from one place on the Earth and deliver cargo or eventually people to the opposite side of the planet in just an hour or two. We’re just about there now, and so it’s time to start talking about that and planning for it.

Everything we do in space starts at a spaceport, and yet we have a handful of launch sites that are struggling to keep up with demand, and they are not robust or resilient. We don't have any federal programs today that can provide funding to develop or maintain or upgrade space-related infrastructure, like we do for roads and bridges and highways and airports and seaports and all the railways. There is no space-related infrastructure program, which is amazing, and the government doesn't even really provide any encouragement or incentives for companies or communities or states or our allies to develop some alternate launch sites.

Most launches today from the U.S. are at Cape Canaveral [Florida] or the Kennedy Space Center or Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Very great facilities. They've done some wonderful things over the years. Have they ever had a hurricane in Florida? How about a wildfire or an earthquake in California? It could be many months or even years before you get it back operating. So, we do not have guaranteed access to space.

[Nield points to a slide on his laptop screen showing 67 launches from Cape Canaveral in 2024; 47 from Vandenberg; 26 from Kennedy; and just a handful each from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas and Spaceport America in New Mexico.]

Many spaceports don't have any launches these days. That's why [the GSA] is advocating the development of a global network of spaceports consisting of commercial, government and privately owned and operated launch and reentry sites that will allow us to have assured access to space as well as facilitating the continued growth of the global space economy. What we’ve got are 14 FAA-licensed spaceports. There's another 13 waiting in the wings that haven't received their licenses, but they've either applied or they have announced their intention to apply at some point in the future. There are some government sites as well, and there are some privately owned sites. And it's not just the U.S. that’s interested [with close to 100 spaceports worldwide]. Lots of folks would like to get into the business of doing space stuff these days.

However, we don't have any national spaceport policy. You will frequently hear senior officials, including ones that should know better, saying, "Why do we need any more spaceports? We have Cape Canaveral." They don't understand both the need for assured access to space and the potential benefits. We don't have any space-related infrastructure funding in the U.S. these days. There's nobody that I can see that's focusing on and talking about point-to-point transportation through space. What do we need to change in terms of laws, policies, regulations and safety, so that when the vehicles roll out of a hangar and are ready to go, they're allowed to operate and start doing business? I think it may be time for a change in terms of our organizational structure for how we oversee and regulate the [space launch] industry.

As space becomes more active and more important, [the Office of] Commercial Space Transportation is not getting the time and attention from senior FAA leadership. It's not because they don't like it, or it's not important, or whatever. Think of all the things that are on the FAA's plate these days -- space is not even on the top 10 list when the administrator ... goes to the White House or to Congress to testify. He's focused on all these other things that are important.

You have to go up the chain several levels before you get somebody that's going to allow you to talk to [the] Commerce [Department] or to NASA or to the military. [While launch cadence is rising rapidly,] the funding and the staffing have been basically flat. They are struggling to keep pace with what's happening, and they're not able to pay attention to some of these areas, like research and new technologies and point-to-point transportation and training and all those kinds of things.

So how can we fix that? One way would be ... moving the Office of Commercial Space Transportation back to the Department of Transportation, which is where it was originally established back in 1984. This doesn't even necessarily need congressional action to do it. You could do it just by delegation of responsibility, which is what happened in 1995, when it was moved from DOD to the FAA. You could reverse that. That doesn't even necessarily mean that it's going to take more money, more people, more bureaucracy. You could just change some lines on an org chart, and that will at least give you a seat at the table for the commercial space arena, so you can have visibility. You can have access through a cabinet secretary to the White House. You can have a way to more expeditiously address problems, provide feedback, alert folks when industry has a concern, streamline the operations and all that, just by being at that level.

Space and aviation are different. The vehicles are different. The environment is different. The regulatory framework is different. So the Global Spaceport Alliance put together a proposal on those lines, and we've been shopping it around.

CD: Does GSA see a "magic number" of spaceports needed to meet U.S. demand?

Nield: We don't necessarily need 12 places to launch Falcon 9 [rockets]. But there's no demand signal, because the military and NASA have always assumed, "Oh, you're going to launch at my Cape Canaveral, right? You're going to launch at the Kennedy Space Center." And so that's how they write their contracts. That's how they assume, if there's a need for more [capacity], can we build another launchpad there? They're running out of space in Florida. So how many spaceports do we need? I think as many as we can get, because they're beneficial, and it doesn't have to be paid for by the taxpayers.