NASA (labels by Ars Technica)
United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin are concerned about SpaceX’s plan to launch its massive Starship rocket from Florida.
In documents filed with the Federal Aviation Administration last month, ULA and Blue Origin raised concerns about the impact of Starship launch operations on their own operations on Florida’s Space Coast. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, has urged the federal government to consider limiting the number of Starship launches and landings, test firings and other operations, and limiting SpaceX’s operations to specific times.
Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and CEO, called Blue Origin’s complaint to the FAA “a blatantly hypocritical response. It’s not cool of them to try (for the third time) to hinder SpaceX’s progress through legal warfare.” We’ll get to that in a moment.
The FAA and SpaceX are preparing an environmental impact assessment for launches and landings of the Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), while the U.S. Space Force is working with SpaceX on a similar environmental assessment for Starship flights from Space Launch Complex 37 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS).
Those reviews likely won’t be completed until late 2025 at the earliest, and only then will SpaceX be allowed to launch Starship from Florida. SpaceX also needs to build launch infrastructure at both sites, which could take a few years. That task is already underway at Launch Complex 39A.
A big rocket with a big footprint
During the environmental assessment process, the FAA is expected to evaluate the impact of regular reusable Starship flights (up to 120 launches per year, according to TechCrunch) on other launch providers operating at Cape Canaveral, ULA and Blue Origin said. SpaceX’s final proposed launch cadence from each site will be part of draft environmental assessments released for public comment later this year.
SpaceX plans to launch Starlink satellites, customer payloads and missions to support NASA’s Artemis lunar landings from launch pads in Florida. Getting a launch pad up and running in Florida is one of several hurdles facing SpaceX’s program to develop a human-ready version of Starship’s lunar lander, along with demonstrating orbital resupply.
“I would say we’re doing everything we can to make sure the schedule is in line with expectations, and we’re working with SpaceX to make sure that their schedule, the EIS schedule, and NASA’s schedule are working in parallel as much as possible to meet our goals,” she said. “When you put it on paper as it is, it seems like there might be some rough spots, but I would say we’re working through it collectively.”
Starship-Super Heavy launches and landings are “expected to have a greater environmental impact than any other launch system currently operating at KSC or CCSFS,” Blue Origin wrote. In its current configuration, Starship is the most powerful rocket in history, and SpaceX is developing a larger version that stands 500 feet tall and packs nearly 15,000 pounds of propellant. That larger variant is the one that will fly from Cape Canaveral.
“This is a very, very big rocket, and it’s going to get bigger,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno wrote in a message on X. “That amount of propellant requires an evacuation area every time it’s fueled, which includes other people’s facilities. A (weekly) launch has harmful noise levels all the way into town. The Cape is not meant to be a monopoly.”
At SpaceX’s private Starbase launch site in South Texas, the evacuation zone is set at 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) when Starship and Super Heavy are filled with methane and liquid oxygen. During an actual launch, the checkpoint is further away, more than 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the pad.
“Cap’s total launch capacity will decrease if other providers are forced to evacuate their facilities every time a vehicle is refueled,” Bruno wrote.
We don’t yet know the radius of the Starship no-go zones in Florida, but Blue Origin has written that the impact of Starship operations in Florida “could be even greater than at Starbase,” likely due to the larger rocket SpaceX plans to launch from Cape Canaveral. If that’s the case, nearby launch pads would have to be evacuated during Starship operations.
Based on Cape Canaveral’s geography alone, ULA appears to have the most concerns. Its launch pad for Vulcan and Atlas V rockets is less than 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers) from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A). SpaceX’s proposal to conduct 44 launches from LC-39A “will result in significant airspace and ground closures, acoustic impacts felt during nearby operations, and potentially produce debris, particulate matter, and property damage,” ULA said.
ULA said those dangers could prevent it from fulfilling contracts to launch critical national security satellites for the U.S. military.
“As the largest rocket in existence, an accident would inflict severe or even catastrophic damage, while normal launch operations would have a cumulative impact on structures, launch vehicle hardware and other critical launch support equipment,” ULA said.