There are physical limitations on growing launch capacity at Cape Canaveral. Last year, the military allocated three historic launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to small launch startup companies. NASA and the Space Force want to keep a buffer between different launch pads and between launch pads and public areas surrounding the spaceport.
Some companies, like Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace, have decided to base their rockets elsewhere. Rocket Lab cited the already-busy launch cadence at Cape Canaveral as one of the reasons it opted to build a launch site in Virginia in 2018. Last month, Firefly Aerospace announced it would place its first East Coast launch pad for its Alpha rocket in Virginia, too, rather than at Cape Canaveral as previously planned.
Combined, the military and NASA portions of the spaceport cover more than 150,000 acres of swamp, beaches, and forests on Florida’s east coast. Most of the land is unsuitable for constructing new launch pads or hangars. “There’s not a lot of land that is open for development over what we have already done,” said Burt Summerfield, associate director for management at the Kennedy Space Center, last year.
“Largely, at the Cape, we’re at capacity, pretty much,” said Col. James Horne, deputy director for the Space Force’s assured access to space directorate, in an interview with Ars last year. “There are a couple of additional pads that we haven’t allocated yet, but we’re working through that process now.”
In its letter to the FAA, Blue Origin advocated for “government investment in additional launch infrastructure” to make more launch pads available, which could reduce conflicts between Starship launch operations and those of other companies.
At the end of its filing with the FAA, ULA went a step further, suggesting that regulators consider standing in the way of any Starship launches from Florida’s Space Coast. That’s not likely to happen, but such a decision would run counter to NASA’s interests in the Starship program, and perhaps those of the military, too.
“SpaceX has developed Starbase in Boca Chica (Texas) for the purpose of launching Starship, and it currently conducts all tests and launches from that location,” ULA wrote. “The FAA must consider Boca Chica as another reasonable alternative to the proposed action.”
