In the past fifteen years there has been a renaissance in the global rocket industry. When I started doing annual reports on that industry in 2017, the number of annual launches the entire world could complete successfully per year rarely exceeded 90 launches, and in fact hadn’t topped 100 since 1990. And the U.S. generally could only do between 13 to 23 launches per year in the 21st century.

Last year the world completed 318 launches, the U.S. 195, with both likely to top these numbers this year. All indications suggest that in the next decade these numbers will increase exponentially, as indicated by the new national space policy issued by the Trump administration last week, calling for all agencies of the federal government to do whatever they can to help the industry reach a goal of 1,000 launches per year 2030. And that’s only by the United States.

To meet this gigantic growth, rocket companies need launchpads, and places to build them. As such, in the past fifteen years there has also been a revolution in the attitudes of governments and private industry and the public to the very concept of what a spaceport should be. Rather than a risky endeavor carrying major security risks that must be tightly controlled by government, the rush has been to liberalize the rules and regulations to make it possible for more rockets, owned and built by private companies, to launch from more places. New spaceports have thus been sprouting up in the unlikeliest of places worldwide.

The track record of these new spaceports has however been very mixed. Many have either failed or been unable to attract any rocket launches. Others have been wildly successful, fueling a new space industry that has the potential to take the human race to the stars.

My goal with this essay is to review this spaceport history to try to understand what has worked and what has not. The answer to this question suggests strongly that there are certain government policies that accelerate commercial rocket development much better than others.

For the purpose of this report, note that I will not be including either Russia or China, since their spaceports are all government controlled, as are all their launches. As my goal here is to figure out what works in the context of private property, freedom, and capitalism, the Russian and Chinese spaceports are irrelevant. (China might claim it has a private sector, but that sector is at its heart fraudulent, because the communists supervise and dictate everything its pseudo-companies do, and at any time can and have confiscated their assets for the government’s benefit.)

Long established government-owned spaceports

From a historical perspective, we must begin with the big government-owned spaceports that were established at the start of the space age. In the U.S. these included the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the former run by the Space Force and latter run by NASA. In addition, the Space Force runs the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, while NASA owns the spaceport at Wallops Island in Virginia.

Both NASA and the Space Force take the same approach in dealing with the rise of the private rocket sector at their spaceports. Each leases specific launchpads to specific companies, and let those companies develop the pads and facilities for their own use, designed for their own needs and rockets. The two maps below show the pads in both Florida and California that have been leased, covering almost every major and minor American rocket company. At Wallops NASA has done the same. The agencies meanwhile handle the basic infrastructure needs, charging the companies for that service.

The relationship is not unlike that of a landlord to its renters.

For Europe the main government spaceport is owned by France and is located in French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America. Until about four years ago all European commercial and government launches as well as the spaceport were controlled and operated by Arianespace, the commercial division of the European Space Agency (ESA).

Arianespace’s inability however to compete successfully with SpaceX caused ESA to change directions. Rather than have that single government agency build and control everything, the member nations of ESA began encouraging private and competing rocket startups in each of their countries. Germany was first, with Isar, Rocket Factory, and HyImpulse. Spain followed with PLD. France now has Latitude and Maispace. Italy took back control from Arianespace of its long established Vega rockets and returned ownership to the builder, Avio. And ArianeGroup was given much greater control and ownership of its Ariane-6 rocket, which is still marketed and launched by Arianespace.

The French Guiana spaceport. The Diamant launchsite is labeled “B.”
Click for full resolution image. (Note: The Ariane-5 pad is now the
Ariane-6 pad, and the Soyuz pad is now controlled by rocket startup
MaiaSpace.)

To provide these rocket companies launch facilities, control of French Guiana was given back to France and its space agency CNES. Unlike the U.S., however, CNES did not lease specific launch sites to specific companies. It decided instead to reconfigure the long abandoned Diamant launch for almost all of these startups to share and use. The concept was it would save money using the same tank farms and launch tower, but would also allow CNES to retain all control over launches. It would also require their rockets to be standardized.

At present, only PLD is preparing to launch from Diamant. It also appears that the other startups approved by CNES to use this site have been slow or even reluctant to go there. Both Isar and Rocket Factory are first launching from new spaceports in Europe (see below), where it appears they have more control over the launchpads.

CNES made one exception to this collectivist policy. It leased the old Soyuz launch site to MaiaSpace for its use, MaiaSpace is a solely owned subsidiary of ArianeGroup, and it appears there was a bit of favorism given to this big space company with large assets in France.

India meanwhile has one operational spaceport, Sriharikota, and a second, Kulasekarapattinam, under construction. Both are government owned, with the former run by India’s space agency ISRO, while the latter will eventually be operated by a single commercial company, for the government. In both cases, the government intends to retain complete control over spaceport operations, with no company given its own real estate to build its own facilities. If a rocket company wishes to launch from these ports, it will have to let either ISRO or that commercial spaceport company run the show.

Japan in turn has one spaceport owned and operated by its space agency JAXA. At this time only JAXA’s rockets launch from this port, and its attempt to make its rockets more competitive in this new market has generally been a failure. The H3 rocket is expendable, too expensive, and launches too rarely. Its smaller Epsilon rocket has been grounded now for more than two years due to technical problems.

These are the long established government spaceports in the world’s capitalist countries. With the advent of the new private rocket industry, however, governments worldwide have aggressively moved in the past two decades to establish new spaceports to grab hold of some of this private commercial launch business.

New government spaceports

The first such attempt was Spaceport America, built and financed by the New Mexico state government based on the promises by Richard Branson that his Virgin Galactic suborbital rocket SpaceShipTwo would be flying hundreds of times per year on tourist flights before 2010. Branson’s promises were bogus, and this spaceport has produced nothing but expenses for the New Mexican taxpayer now for almost two decades.

Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe

By the mid-2010s a handful of small spaceports began appearing in northeast Europe, in Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. First were two spaceports in Scotland, Saxavord on the Shetland islands and Sutherland. After almost a decade neither has launched anything, with Sutherland now bankrupt and a launch from Saxavord by Germany’s startup Rocket Factory Augsburg tentatively scheduled sometime in the future, though no date is presently set. A third UK spaceport in North Ulst has been proposed, with no progress reported. With all these UK ports, government regulation has acted to slow development. In fact, the red tape has been so bad it bankrupted two rocket companies, and has thus driven away business.

In both Norway and Sweden the governments reconfigured their already established suborbital test sites to hopefully bring commercial rocket companies there. Norway’s Andoya spaceport has had one launch attempt (it failed) and one scheduled (repeatedly scrubbed) by German startup Isar Aerospace. In Sweden the Esrange spaceport has a deal with the American company Firefly to launch its Alpha rocket, but no launches are scheduled and Norway opposes any orbital launches that cross its territory.

In addition, Germany has two different off shore launch platform projects proposed, both comprising a public/private partnership to launch from the North Sea. Neither however has showed any evidence of any progress.

Brazil meanwhile has reactivated its long dormant Alcantera spaceport for use by the South Korean rocket startup Innospace. That company has from this port done one orbital attempt and one suborbital launch (both failures).

Even the state government in Alaska has established its own spaceport near Kodiak, and has set up a private company to run it. This launchpad has had several dozen small launches, mostly for the Pentagon but also including several by the American startup Astra. Generally however little has happened there.

Meanwhile, national and local governments from numerous other countries that do not have any viable space industries both in the first and third world have joined in. Third world examples include the Philippines, Oman, Kenya, and Indonesia. First world examples include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Portugal. None have as yet shown any real success in attracting launch business, though a few have had sounding rockets lift off from their facilities or capsules use their footprint to bring back orbital capsules.

Privately owned spaceports

The first commercial Electron launch in 2018 from Rocket Lab’s
New Zealand spaceport

Finally there are a handful of privately-owned spaceports. First came Rocket Lab with its own spaceport in New Zealand, using two launchpads to successfully launch its Electron rocket about a hundred times in the past decade. SpaceX came next with its Boca Chica facility in Texas, used to develop and test and fly its Superheavy/Starship rocket, and now with its new proposed gigantic Pecan Island Starship spaceport on the south coast of Louisiana. With both companies and all their launch sites development has been relatively fast and successful.

In Australia the private rocket startup Gilmour Space bought and developed its own spaceport, Bowen, on the country’s northeast coast. It has attempted one launch (a failure) but has faced heavy licensing regulations that has significantly slowed development.

In Japan, the rocket startup, Space One, has built its Spaceport Kii on the south coast of Japan’s main island, where it has made three launch attempts, all of which were failures. In this case ownership apparently sped development, but that development has been hampered by the simple fact that this is “rocket science” and hard.

Conclusion

What does this history tell us?

1. Spaceports that are not directly linked to specific rockets or companies appear to go nowhere. And even if a spaceport can sign up a rocket customer to use their facilities, development for such operations is often slow and tentative. Rocket companies really appear to prefer locations where they control their own sites.

2. Creating joint facilities to save money also appears disfavored by rocket startups. It seems they prefer to build their own facilities to match the designs of their rockets. Joint facilities required extensive standardization work that is not necessarily beneficial to the startup or its bottom line. There is also the question of who pays for this work, and the difficulties of coordinating operations between multiple companies appears to slow development.

3. Government regulation can be very destructive. If the government does not ease red tape the spaceports will fail. The UK is directly responsible for the bankruptcy of Virgin Orbit and Orbex, both of which ran out of money waiting for regulatory approvals. It is therefore essential that governments shape their regulations to help these companies rather than hinder them.

4. Finally, the system that appears to work best is for each rocket company to have its own facilities, controlled by it entirely, either by ownership or lease. The vibrant growth of the American private sector illustrates this clearly. Under that system, things more quick because there is no negotiation with others and self-interest fuels operations entirely.

“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

My readers will not be surprised by this conclusion. I have consistently advocated private ownership and competition for decades. The entire capitalism model requires it. And if the American government can hold to its present policy of encouraging it, the United States will in the next decade have no trouble dominating the world’s space industry, with multiple competing companies taking off from multple launch sites, all making money as they build the infrastructure that will allow the human race to explore and colonize the solar system.

This is not to say that other capitalist countries worldwide, in India, Europe, and Japan, will not achieve some successes. They will, especially because they are all now embracing the idea of capitalism and competition. Based however on this history and basic human nature, their desire to maintain more control over launch operations will likely hold back the achievements of their private rocket sector.