SpaceX wants to launch up to 120 satellites a year from Florida – and its competitors aren’t happy about it

SpaceX’s ambitious plans to launch its Starship megarocket up to 44 times a year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are stirring up concern among some of its competitors. In late May, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance submitted comments calling on regulators to ensure minimal disruption to other launch providers in the region, with Blue Origin even suggesting limiting Starship operations to specific hours — and giving other launch providers a right of first refusal for conflicting launches.

But SpaceX may have even bigger plans for a second launch pad right next door: Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). During a series of town hall meetings in March, the public was asked to weigh in on plans to launch Starship from SLC-37 up to 76 times a year. That would mean SpaceX aims to launch its next-generation rocket up to 120 times a year from a six-mile range on the Florida coast.

The U.S. Space Force is currently preparing the draft environmental assessment that will be released this winter, and that document will contain SpaceX’s final planned launch cadence. A Space Force representative told TechCrunch that the launch cadence numbers could change between now and then. Those numbers could be influenced by the pace of Starship development in the coming months or even the number of scrub jay nests discovered during the environmental assessment process. Scrub jays, a bird native to Florida, are listed as threatened on the endangered species list.

Until a few weeks ago, SpaceX’s competitors were still using the number 76 as a benchmark for the company’s plans, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Scaling up in Florida and Texas

SLC-37 is a historic launch pad at CCSFS, home to NASA’s Saturn rocket in the 1960s and, more recently, United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV series rockets. The pad is now inactive after ULA flew its Delta IV Heavy for the last time in April. The Space Force announced in February that it was preparing to issue what’s known as an environmental impact statement, a sweeping regulatory document that examines the environmental impacts of proposed activities, regarding Starship launches from the pad.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is preparing a separate impact study for SpaceX’s plans to launch its Starship from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Both studies are designed to examine the environmental impacts of Starship launches and landing operations, which will involve returning Super Heavy boosters to the launch site, similar to how SpaceX’s Falcon rockets operate.

The Space Force’s environmental impact study for SLC-37 also considers another option: having SpaceX build an entirely new launch pad, currently designated SLC-50. Either way, there would likely be significant construction, including flood basins, fuel tanks, a capture tower, and then more than 120 launches per year from the two sites combined.

The two Florida launch pads would join an existing Starship launch tower at SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in southeast Texas, as well as a second tower currently under construction at the same location. In the near future, SpaceX could have four operational Starship launch sites.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has incredibly ambitious plans for Starship, which he sees as a vital tool for colonizing Mars and “expanding the light of consciousness” across the cosmos. He eventually wants to launch Starship multiple times a day, with each launch delivering hundreds of tons of cargo to low-Earth orbit or beyond. The company also aims to ramp up its Starship manufacturing facilities to be able to produce one Starship second stage per day.

Blue Origin and ULA fight back

As part of the preparation process, the public is being invited to comment on the scope of the plans before a draft environmental impact statement is released. While public comments on SLC-37 have not yet been released, those on Kennedy’s Pad 39A have been released, and they included strong statements from Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance on the plans for that pad. Both companies expressed particular concern about the effects that such a high flight rate could have on other launch providers with infrastructure at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral.

“A single Starship launch site has the potential to disrupt other launch operations in the region and have significant environmental impacts, as detailed below. The impacts will certainly be magnified if they come from two launch sites in such close proximity,” ULA said in its commentary.

“For example, SpaceX plans to conduct up to 44 launches per year from LC-39A. If SpaceX targets a comparable number from SLC-37, that would lead to nearly 100 launches per year, or about one every three days,” the commentary continued.

Blue Origin, which wants to launch its New Glenn rocket from LC-36 at Cape Canaveral, has proposed a number of mitigating factors that make clear it views launch operations at both sites as a zero-sum game. Among those factors is the suggestion that it require SpaceX (or the government) to compensate third parties for losses caused by Starship operations, including business disruptions.