Judge narrows SpaceX lawsuit against California Coastal Commission

Though U.S. district judge Stanley Blumenfeld ruled in May that SpaceX’s lawsuit against California Coastal Commission for targeting the company because the commissioners did not like Elon Musk’s political views can proceed, in early July he also narrowed the lawsuit significantly.

Blumenfeld granted a motion to dismiss violations of the First Amendment and due process against the commission and individual members based on lack of standing, sovereign immunity and failure to state a claim, but allowed allegations of “biased attempts to regulate SpaceX’s activity” and unlawfully demanding a CDP to proceed.

“In sum, SpaceX has plausibly alleged a ripe, nonspeculative case or controversy over whether it must obtain a CDP to continue its Falcon 9 launches,” Blumenfeld said in his order. “The credible threat that defendants will bring an enforcement action and subject SpaceX to daily fines for not having a CDP — which defendants pointedly do not disavow — is sufficient to establish an actual injury under Article III [of the U.S. Constitution].”

It appears the judge acted to protect the commissioners themselves from direct liability, using the made-up concept from the 20th century that government employees are somehow wholly immune from any responsibility for their actions.

Nonetheless, SpaceX has a great case, and is very likely to win in court, a victory that could very well cause the coastal commission and the state of California serious monetary pain.

SpaceX gets approval to build oxygen plant at Boca Chica

SpaceX today received the okay from Cameron County to build a plant at Boca Chica to produce oxygen from the atmosphere for use in its Superheavy/Starship rocket.

The commissioners voted, 3-1, to give Elon Musk’s rocket company a beachfront construction certificate and dune protection permit, allowing the company to build a modern-day factory akin to an oil refinery to produce gases needed for space flight launches.

The plant will consist of 20 structures on 1.66 acres. The enclosed site will include a tower that will reach 159 feet, or about 15 stories high, much shorter than the nearby launch tower, which stretches 480 feet high. It is set to be built about 280 feet inland from the line of vegetation, which is where the dunes begin. The factory will separate air into nitrogen and oxygen. SpaceX utilizes liquid oxygen as a propellant and liquid nitrogen for testing and operations.

By having the facility on site, SpaceX hopes to make the delivery of those gases more efficient by eliminating the need to have dozens of trucks deliver them from Brownsville. The company says they need more than 200 trucks of liquid nitrogen and oxygen delivered for each launch, a SpaceX engineer told the county during a meeting last week.

As usual, the same cranks who always complain about this stuff are given space by this news outlet to whine, but the truth is that the commission’s vote well reflects the attitude of the local community. It supports what SpaceX is doing, because of the prosperity the company is bringing to this formerly depressed region.

Moreover, this facility will not only save SpaceX money and make it easier to launch more frequently, it is likely environmentally beneficial. I suspect the facility will be relatively clean compared to the truck convoys it will replace.

Hat tip Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.

SpaceX finally passes final regulatory hurdle to sell Starlink in India

You might get deja-vu from this story, since I have reported repeatedly in the past that SpaceX has finally gotten regulatory approval to sell Starlink in India.

However, India’s complex regulatory framework — leftover from the days of British rule and strengthened for decades after independence when the strongly socialist Congress Party ruled — ended up requiring SpaceX to leap multiple regulatory hurdles to get the Starlink approved. According to news reports today, that last licensing hurdle has now finally been leaped.

The final approval marks a crucial milestone that will pave the way for the Musk-led company to launch its commercial satellite operations in the country. The Elon Musk-led company has been waiting for regulatory approvals since 2022 to operate legally in India. With this approval, Starlink has become the third company to enter the satellite space in India after Reliance Jio and Eutelsat’s OneWeb, in which Bharti Airtel, led by Sunil Mittal, is a shareholder.

Does this mean SpaceX can now sell Starlink in India? Of course not:

The next step for Starlink is to secure spectrum from the government, which will likely be assigned in the coming months. It also needs to set up infrastructure on the ground. One of the most critical aspects of Starlink’s India foray will be its compliance with the country’s security rules.

Since Starlink doesn’t need a complex ground infrastructure, selling terminals directly to customers, the infrastructure mentioned in the quote likely involves partnering Starlink operations with the Indian telecommunications companies Airtell and Jio, so that they get a piece of the action.

ESA picks five rocket startups for future launch contracts

European Space Agency

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that it has chosen five rocket startups — out of twelve that applied to its “European Launcher Challenge” — now approved to bid on future ESA launch contracts.

The startups are Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg from Germany, PLD Space from Spain, MaiaSpace from France, and Orbex from Great Britain. Though none have successfully completed a first launch. all five showed the most advancement. Isar has had one attempted launch failure, while Rocket Factory lost its rocket during a static fire test just before launch. PLD meanwhile has achieved a short suborbital test, while Orbex has said it was ready to launch three years ago but was blocked by red tape in the United Kingdom.

MaiaSpace is technically the least advanced, but it is also a subdivision wholly owned by ArianeGroup, a partnership of Europe’s largest aerospace companies, Airbus and Safran. It was also established in partnership with France’s space agency CNES. Thus, it has well-established connections within Europe’s aerospace industry that makes it favored.

The goal of this ESA program is to shift from the government model it has used for decades, where ESA builds and owns the rockets, to develop a competitive rocket industry of independent companies that market their rockets to ESA for contracts. ESA has seen the success in the U.S. when NASA shifted to this capitalism model in the past decade, and wishes to emulate this.

Whether it remains uncertain. ESA is still mired by bureaucratic government thinking, as illustrated by the next phrase in this challenge:

The next phase of the proposal will see ESA open dialogue between the preselected companies and their respective Member States. This process will help formalise the proposal ahead of the agency’s Ministerial-Level Council meeting (CM25), which will take place toward the end of the year. At CM25, Member States are expected to formally commit funding to the initiative. Following the meeting, ESA will issue a Phase 2 call for proposals, which will be restricted to the preselected candidate companies. European Launcher Challenge contracts will then be awarded after a final evaluation period.

The ESA’s very nature seems to impose odious bureaucratic rules on its member nations that could hinder these private companies. For example, these rules now block any other independent rocket startups from bidding on contracts. Like the bootleggers during Prohibitioin, the ESA has essentially divided competition up by territory and given it to these favored companies. No one else is allowed in.

EPA employees who publicly signed letter opposing Trump’s agenda have now been put on leave

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump in charge

They apparently forgot who the American people elected and who is thus the boss! The 170 EPA employees who publicly signed a letter this week announcing their opposition to Trump’s policies at EPA have now all been put on leave, with the expectation that they will eventually lose their jobs as well.

Staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency who signed a letter of dissent against President Donald Trump have been placed on leave, reports The Hill. “The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” EPA spokeswoman Brigit Hirsch said in a written statement.

The letter, posted on June 30, 2025, made it very clear in its opening paragraph that these employees were willing to defy orders and sabotage the Trump administration.
» Read more

New data: the ozone hole occurs mostly because of the sunspot cycle and cosmic rays, not CFC pollution

The ozone hole linked to the solar cycle

The uncertainty of science: A science paper released yesterday suggests that the ozone hole over Antarctica that scientists have been tracking for almost a half century is caused mostly by the solar cycle and the accompanying fluctuations in cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere, not the release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that used to be used in aerosol spray cans.

The graph to the right, from figure 2 of the paper, illustrates the data. The red line is the ozone hole fluctuations predicted by the paper’s model, labeled “CRE Theory”, based on the increase of cosmic ray radiation during solar minimum. The blue, black, and green lines indicate the actual fluctuations of ozone and temperature in the lower stratosphere where the ozone layer exists. As you can see, the model and actual fluctuations match quite closely. From the paper’s abstract:
» Read more

Orbex delays first launch from Saxavord until 2026

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

The rocket startup Orbex has now announced that “infrastructure requirements and engagement with regulators” has forced it to delay the first launch of its Prime rocket from 2025 until 2026.

Orbex at the start of this decade had signed a 50-year lease to launch its Prime rocket from the proposed Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland. In February 2022 it applied for a launch license, with the hope of launching before the end of that year. For three years it waited for the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve that license, to no avail.

Finally in December 2024 it gave up on launching from Sutherland and shifted its plans to the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, apparently because that spaceport had been more successful in getting its CAA approvals (though even it had to wait years).

Though the company attributes this new delay as much to getting its launch facility ready at Saxavord, delays caused by British red tape continues to be a systemic and entrenched problem in the United Kingdom. It appears it remains so.

European Union proposes new space law to supersede national space rules

The European Union

The European Union (EU) has now released its proposed Space Act that would impose European-wide regulations on the space industries of all its partnering nations, superseding their own regulations and policies.

The press release claims, at the start, that this space act would “cut red tape, protect space assets, and create a fair, predictable playing field for businesses,” but in reading the act itself [pdf], it appears to do the exact opposite. It imposes new environmental, safety, and cybersecurity regulations on the design of satellites and spacecraft in a manner that will likely slow development and competition in Europe significantly. And it applies these regulations not only to European companies but to the rest of the world’s space industry, should it do any operations at all in Europe.

This European Union space law was initially supposed to be released last year, but was delayed because it appeared there was strong opposition to it from many of the union’s member nations.

The proposed law appears to have been reshaped to limit the areas the EU can regulate space, but my appraisal of these regulations is that they are designed to quickly expand to cover everything, while adding an unneeded layer of red tape across Europe’s space industry that will only cause it to founder.

It must also be noted once again that there is no one in the bureaucracy of the EU qualified to impose these regulations on the space industry. The EU launches nothing. Its bureaucracy knows nothing about space technology. All it can do is say no to anyone that wants to achieve anything, just because it thinks it knows better.

It will be interesting to see if this space law passes. It still must be approved by European Parliament and the European Commission. I expect there to be significant opposition from several different member states, most especially Germany, Spain, and Italy, each of which have a newly emerging space industry. We should also expect opposition from the member nations formerly part of the Soviet bloc, as their past totalitarian experience makes them very skeptical of this kind of bureaucratic power play.

At the same time, the political structure of the European Union is designed to encourage the passage of such laws, which is one reason there is a rising movement in many member nations to leave the union. If the law passes, expect it to cause more fragmentation within Europe, rather than unifying the continent as it claims it will do.

French startup Latitude to spend $9.3 million on building its French Guiana launch facility

French Guiana spaceport
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.)

The French rocket startup Latitude has announced it will spend $9.3 million to build its own launchpad at the spaceport in French Guiana, where hopes to launch its Zephyr rocket in 2026.

In a 23 June update, Latitude confirmed the Guiana Space Centre as the launch site for the inaugural flight of its 19-metre-tall, two-stage Zephyr rocket, which is designed to deliver payloads of up to 200 kilograms to low Earth orbit. The site was one of two under consideration, with the company also having committed to developing launch infrastructure at SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland. When that partnership was announced in March 2022, Latitude, then known as Venture Orbital Systems, aimed to carry out its first launch from SaxaVord in 2024.

Construction of the ELM-Diamant shared launch facility began in 2025 and is expected to be completed by 2026. According to Latitude’s 23 June update, the company will work with CNES and the European Space Agency in the coming months to implement its dedicated launch infrastructure at the site. This will be followed by the inaugural launch of its Zephyr rocket in 2026.

It is not clear exactly how that ELM-Diamant launch site will be shared. France’s space agency CNES (which operates French Guiana) had previously said it wanted all the new European rocket startups that wanted to launch from there to use a common launch infrastructure, thus requiring them to share technology as well as redesign their rockets to fit CNES’s requirements. The rocket startups objected, but it now appears two startups, Latitude and PLD, and come to an agreement of some sort.

This deal also suggests that Latitude is shifting away from using the Saxavord spaceport in the United Kingdom, possibly because it has seen the difficult regulatory hurdles required there and has decided French Guiana is a better option.

Under Trump FCC shifts from regulating satellite construction and de-orbit to streamlining red tape

FCC seal

According to a Space News article yesterday, the FCC’s regulatory focus since January and the advent of the Trump administration has shifted significantly from its focus during the Biden administration.

The article describes in detail the present focus to streamline regulations and speed license approvals.

One early result of this push is a reduction in the FCC’s licensing backlog. Schwarz said the space bureau has reduced pending applications by 35 percent since January, including those for new space stations and ground infrastructure.

Modernizing regulations for non-geostationary satellite systems is another priority. The FCC is considering revising so-called “power limit” rules aimed at preventing interference between low-orbit constellations and traditional geostationary satellites and earth stations. Schwarz said these reforms could help pave the way for higher-throughput services that rival terrestrial broadband.

This focus appears correctly centered on the FCC’s actual legal statutory authority to regulate the limited bandwidth of the electromagnetic spectrum to avoid conflicts in its use.

Under Biden, the FCC instead focused on expanding its power beyond that statutory authority, claiming it had the right to determine how satellites were built, when they would be de-orbited, and in what manner. None of those activities have anything to do with bandwidth and the FCC’s legal responsibilities.

There was some legislative push back from Congress during the Biden administration, but it was slow and relatively weak. Now that push back has become unnecessary, because the FCC under Trump is back to doing its actual job instead of trying to build empires of regulation.

The agency also appears, for the moment, to have ended its partisan abuse of red tape for political reasons. Under Biden it used its regulatory power against SpaceX in retaliation to Elon Musk’s decision to publicly support Biden’s political opponents. It appears the present effort to speed license approvals for everyone has ended this practice.

Kazakhstan moves west

Two stories today suggest that Kazakhstan is shifting its politics away from Russia and towards the west, albeit carefully and with an eye to avoid poking the bear that lives so close by.

First, the government’s tourism agency announced plans to develop tourism at its Baikonur spaceport.

Participants discussed infrastructure upgrades, the creation of new travel routes, brand strengthening, investment attraction and partnerships to support long-term development.

According to Kazakh Tourism Сhairman Kairat Sadvakasov, the concept focuses on building a sustainable tourism ecosystem during the periods between rocket launches. The goal is to integrate Baikonur into Kazakhstan’s cultural, educational and scientific agenda.

Both the Soviet and Russian governments have always treated Baikonur as a classified military installation, and forbid such visitation, including vetoing public viewing areas areas. Kazakhstan has likely seen the cash earned by India and U.S. by allowing such spaceport tourism, and wants some for itself. Evidently it now thinks the Russians no longer have the clout to stop it from doing so.

Next, Kazakhstan’s government announced it has signed a deal with SpaceX to introduce Starlink into the country.

The agreement ensures that Starlink will comply with Kazakhstan’s legal and regulatory requirements, including those related to information security and communications. Until now, Starlink operated in the country only on a pilot basis, providing internet access exclusively to schools.

The upcoming launch will allow citizens to legally purchase, register, and use Starlink terminals. The service aims to improve high-speed internet access in remote and hard-to-reach regions, supporting rural schools, healthcare centers, mobile units, and infrastructure sites – particularly in areas where laying fiber-optic networks is not feasible.

This deal also suggests a change in Kazakhstan’s relationship with Russia. Starlink is blocked from Russia due to its invasion on the Ukraine. Yet the service is now available to both Kazakhstan and the Ukraine, formerly part of the Soviet Union and directly adjacent to Russia. That Kazakhstan is publicly permitting Starlink in is a clear statement that it wants the same technology as the Ukraine to better protect it from a Russian invasion.

It also suggests a decline in Russia’s influence inside Kazakhstan. Previously if the Russians said jump, the Kazakhstan government would ask, “How high?” Now it appears it is willing to act more independently, and in ways that are not necessarily in Russia’s interests.

One wonders if this shift could go as far as Kazakhstan trying to sell Baikonur as a launch site for other commercial entities, such as from India, China, and Europe. I doubt many would buy the service (Baikonur is not well located compared to other spaceports), but the very offer would signal a major political shift in this part of the world.

Europe approves SES purchase of Intelsat

The European Commission has now approved the purchase of the long established satellite communications company Intelsat by the long established Luxembourg satellite communications company SES for about $4 billion.

This decision follows an approval by the government of the United Kingdom. It now appears the only remaining regulatory hurdle is approvals by the FCC and the Department of Justice in the U.S.

This buy-out follows similar mergers by other old established satellite companies, such as the merger of Viasat with Imarsat and OneWeb with Eutelsat. All are occurring because these older companies, which mostly launched large geosynchronous satellites, have been under heavy competitive pressure from the low orbit constellations like Starlink and OneWeb.

Whether these older companies can compete following these mergers however remains uncertain. To succeed they need to have a product customers want, and at the moment it isn’t clear they have one.

Trump eliminates restrictions against supersonic flights over the U.S.

In an executive order released on June 6, 2024, President Trump eliminated the half-century-old regulations that forbid supersonic airplanes to fly over the land mass of the United States.

The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shall take the necessary steps, including through rulemaking, to repeal the prohibition on overland supersonic flight in 14 CFR 91.817 within 180 days of the date of this order and establish an interim noise-based certification standard, making any modifications to 14 CFR 91.818 as necessary, as consistent with applicable law. The Administrator of the FAA shall also take immediate steps to repeal 14 CFR 91.819 and 91.821, which will remove additional regulatory barriers that hinder the advancement of supersonic aviation technology in the United States.

This order makes sense for several reasons. First, the restrictions were always absurd. The sonic boom concern was always over-rated. Second, the concern increasingly doesn’t exist due to improvements in technology. In a flight test in January, the commercial supersonic airplane startup Boom Aerospace confirmed that its test plane broke the sound barrier three times and each time with “no audible sonic boom.”

Though Boom isn’t the only supersonic startup, it is far ahead of the others. It already has orders from United and Japan airlines for its Overture 80-passenger supersonic jet. This new Trump order will certainly help it attract investment capital, as well as more airlines willing to buy its planes.

Starlink approved for India

After several regulatory issues that blocked the company during the past few years, SpaceX has finally gotten approval to sell Starlink to customers in India.

The company hopes to initiate service within the next year. There still remain some required license approvals:

Although the licence from the Ministry of Telecommunications clears a major hurdle, the service’s final launch in India will depend on further regulatory clearances, including the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) recommendations on spectrum allocation, which are still pending approval from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

These should be pro forma at this point, since it was the ministry of telecommunications that issued this most recent license. Why would it issue one permit but then block another?

Air Force issues impact statement for SpaceX’s proposed Cape Canaveral Starship/Superheavy launch site

Map of proposed Cape Canaveral Starship/Superheavy launch facilities
Click for higher resolution version.

The Air Force today released its environmental impact statement for SpaceX’s proposed Starship/Superheavy launch site at Cape Canaveral, generally approving a launch rate of 76 launches per year, noting that this would cause “no significant impact” on the environment while providing “beneficial impact” on the local economy.

You can read the impact statement here [pdf]. It lists 69 areas where these new operations could impact something, and found in almost all no significant impact. The beneficial impact was found in the areas where the operations would boost the local economy.

The single area where these additional launches might have an impact is the issue of noise, noting that “community annoyance may increase” due to the launches. Considering the wealth that the local community will gain from jobs, industry, and tourism due to those launches, I suspect the only whining about this noise will come from fake environmental groups opposed to anyone doing anything.

None of this is any surprise. Launches have been occurring at Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center for more than three quarters of a century, and the only significant impact to the ecology has been beneficial, reserving large areas from development where wildlife has prospered. If anything, the obviousness of this proves the utter waste of money we now spend on such reports.

The statement notes that it still will require FAA input on coordinating the closure of air space during launches, but it also appears to consider this part of normal routine actions, not a requirement the FAA can use to block operations or approval.

The number of proposed launches however is quite impressive. SpaceX’s plan would close to match the annual number of global launches by everyone for most of the space era. Nor is it impossible considering the design of the rocket and the plans the company has for getting to Mars. The site plan includes two launch mounts for Starship/Superheavy (as shown in the map above). This is in addition to the two Starship/Superheavy launch facilities the company wants to build at Kennedy.

The statement is now open to public comment through July 28, 2025. The Air Force also plans three public meetings in the Cape Canaveral area on July 8, 9, and 10. It will also make a fourth virtual public meeting available from July 15 to July 28.

Proposed commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia gets launch customer

The proposed commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia, operated by Maritime Launch Services, announced this week that it has signed a contract with a Netherlands rocket startup, T-Minus, whereby the latter will do two suborbital launches of its new Barracuda sounding rocket.

On 3 June 2023, Maritime Launch Services, a Canadian commercial launch facility operator, announced that it had signed an agreement with T-Minus Engineering for the launch of two Barracuda rockets. According to the press release, the two launches will carry various scientific and educational payloads for several customers, whose names were not disclosed. The launches are expected to take place from Spaceport Nova Scotia in October 2025.

The viability of both the rocket startup and spaceport are open to question. T-Minus was founded in 2011, and has apparently done little in that time period. It claims it is flown this rocket many times, but if so there is little solid information confirming this fact. Most of its business appears to have been flying very small sounding rockets for European defense agencies.

Maritime Launch Services first proposed this spaceport in 2017, but has seen only one student suborbital launch in that time. Its original plan was to offer both the launchpad and rocket to satellite manufacturers. The rocket however was Ukrainian-built, and when Russia invaded the Ukraine that rocket was no longer available. Furthermore, red tape in Canada stalled launch approvals for years.

Recently the spaceport has been marketing itself to multiple rocket companies, announced a number of deals with unnamed startups or named startups that haven’t flown anything yet. It has also signed a partnership deal with the space station company (Voyager), apparently to bring some real technical expertise to the operation.

Nothing real at this spaceport however has actually yet occurred. Whether this new deal is real will have to wait for something to happen.

Texas legislature gives Starbase power to close Boca Chica beaches

The Texas legislature this week approved language that now gives the new government of Starbase the power to close the road to Boca Chica’s beaches, taking that power from the local county.

House Bill 5246 revises the power and duties of the Texas Space Commission and the Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium. A conference committee report of the bill added a section that allows the Space Commission to coordinate with a city to temporarily close a highway or venue for public safety purposes.

In South Texas, that will give the Starbase city commissioners the authority to approve those closures which would affect State Highway 4, a road that runs through Starbase and leads to the beach, as well as the beach itself.

As is usual for the particular news outlet at the link, it magnifies the opposition to SpaceX, amplifying the size of the several tiny leftist activist organizations that have been trying to shut down SpaceX at Boca Chica since the day Elon Musk announced he was now voting Republican. In reality, that opposition is nil. The region is thrilled by the wealth and jobs that SpaceX is bringing to the area, and is willing do help it grow in all ways. This action by the state legislature only reflects that support.

I must also note that the opposition in the legislature came entirely from the Democratic Party, once again taking the 20% side of an 80-20 issue.

Hat tip to radio host Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.

Proposed Australian spaceport changes name

Proposed Australian spaceports
Proposed Australian spaceports.
Click for original image.

A proposed Australian spaceport company that was previously called Equatorial Launch Australia and was forced to shift its location because of red tape has apparently changed its name to Space Centre Australia and named its proposed spaceport the Atakani Space Centre.

It is also possible there was a major shake-up in management, but this is unclear from available sources.

The map to the right shows the location where Atakani is planned, on Cape York in Queensland. Previously this company hoped to build the spaceport to the west in the Northern Territory, but local bureaucracy made that impossible.

Right now the company hopes to open for launches by 2029.

Judge rules that SpaceX’s lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission can go forward

A federal judge yesterday ruled that SpaceX’s lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission for its actions attempting to block Falcon 9 launches at Vandenberg because a majority of the commissioners don’t like Elon Musk’s politics can now go forward.

U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr., a Donald Trump appointee, denied in part California’s request to dismiss the case at a hearing Friday in Los Angeles federal court. In a tentative decision, which wasn’t made publicly available, the judge rejected the state’s argument that four of SpaceX’s claims for declaratory relief weren’t “ripe” because the commission hadn’t enforced a threatened requirement for SpaceX to obtain a coastal development permit for the expanded launch schedule. “The tentative doesn’t find that the evidence is compelling, but that it is sufficient at this stage,” the judge said at the hearing.

This same judge had earlier ruled in favor of the coastal commission, noting that the commission has no real power to limit SpaceX operations at the military base and thus the company could not demonstrate harm. SpaceX amended its complaint to emphasize the harm caused to Musk’s free speech rights, and this was sufficient for the judge to change his ruling in favor of SpaceX.

This ruling doesn’t mean SpaceX and Musk have won. It means the judge considers their case sufficient for it to the lawsuit to proceed.

SpaceX’s complaint stems from an insane October 2024 hearing before the commission, where multiple commissioners came out against a SpaceX request to increase its launches at Vandenberg not because it might harm the environment but because Elon Musk now supported Donald Trump.

Their actions that day were a clear abuse of power for political reasons, and a clear violation of Elon Musk’s right to free speech.

Supreme Court unanimously rules the federal government’s regulatory overuse of environmental impact statements is wrong

In a ruling that will have wide-ranging impacts across multiple industries, including rocketry, the Supreme Court yesterday ruled 8-0 that the mission creep expansion of federal government’s regulatory use of environmental impact statements (EIS) to hinder all new construction projects is incorrect and must stop.

The case involved a planned railroad in Utah, that had gotten all its permits for construction, including approval of its environmental impact statement, but was then stymied by lawsuits by political activist groups that claimed the impact statement, issued under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), had not considered the impact of the industries the railroads would serve, including impacts far from the railroad’s location itself.

This is a perfect example of the broad expansion of NEPA that has been imposed in the last two decades by federal bureaucracy working hand-in-glove with these leftist political groups.

The Supreme Court, including all of the Democratic Party appointees, said enough!

In its majority opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court clarified that under NEPA the STB “did not need to evaluate potential environmental impacts of the separate upstream and downstream projects.” The Court concluded that the “proper judicial approach for NEPA cases is straightforward: Courts should review an agency’s EIS to check that it addresses the environmental effects of the project at hand. The EIS need not address the effects of separate projects.”

This statement “is particularly significant for infrastructure projects, such as pipelines or transmission lines, and should help reduce NEPA’s burdens (at least at the margins),” wrote Jonathan Adler, a law professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in The Volokh Conspiracy. “The opinion will also likely hamper any future efforts, perhaps by Democratic administrations, to expand or restore more fulsome (and burdensome) NEPA requirements.”

The article notes (and confirms) what I have been writing now for the past five years in connection with the FAA’s demand that rocket companies require new impact statements every time they revise their operations, even when those changes are relatively minor.

This point could reduce one of the largest delays caused by NEPA: litigation. Since its passage in 1969, NEPA has been weaponized by environmental groups to stunt disfavored projects—which has disproportionately impacted clean energy projects. On average, these challenges delay a permitted project’s start time by 4.2 years, according to The Breakthrough Institute.

The increased threat of litigation has forced federal agencies to better cover their bases, leading to longer and more expensive environmental reviews. With courts deferring more to agency decisions, litigation could be settled more quickly.

This ruling is an excellent move in the right direction, but no one should assume it will be followed honestly by the next Democrat who sits in the White House. Just as Biden expanded red tape by simple forcing the FAA to slow-walk its launch licensing process, future presidents could do the same.

Nor should be expect the lawsuits by these luddite leftists to cease. They will find other legal challenges and will push those instead.

The real solution is to reduce the bureaucracy’s size entirely, so there won’t be paper-pushers for these petty dictators to utilize for their authoritarian purposes. Eliminating or simplifying these environmental regulations would help as well, giving the activists fewer handles on which to hang their lawsuits.

Fish & Wildlife has expanded its regulatory rule to every tree in much of the U.S.

Areas now subject to regulation if you intend to cut down any trees
The blue and green areas are now subject to
Fish & Wildlife regulation if you intend to cut
down any trees

Apparently in a bid to give itself more power over every proposed building project in the United States, the Fish & Wildlife Service in October 2024 (just before the election) wildly expanded its regulatory rules for protecting endangered bats.

According to the new rules, Fish & Wildlife now considers the removal of any trees at such projects to be a risk to the endangered species, because those trees “may” have been used as roosts and would therefore threaten the species ability to survive if removed.

No matter that there may be thousands of other trees nearby, including many acres of forest. If you are building anything that involves cutting down any trees, you will be subjected to Fish & Wildlife supervision that could block construction. And the area this new rule covers includes almost the entire eastern and northern parts of the United States, as shown on the maps to the right, taken from the new regulation guidelines [pdf].

Long time reader Jack O’Leary informed me of this new power grab. He also sent me information about one particular project in Massachusetts involving the installation of a well and pump station in a forested area southeast of Boston, far from any bat hibernacula. The only impact this project might have on any bats is the removal of some trees, though the project is located in a forested area with hundreds of acres of trees all around (as shown clearly on the satellite view on Google maps).

Yet Fish & Wildlife makes it clear in its letter [pdf] to the project that its “Endangered Species Act requirements are not complete.” Fish & Wildlife admits that the project will pose no direct threat to the endangered bats, but the very act of cutting down a few trees “may affect” the bats, so therefore government regulatory supervision is required.
» Read more

FAA issues revised launch window and flight restrictions for future Starship test flights

Flight path for Starship's ninth test flight

Due to the breakup of Starship over the Atlantic during its last two test flights, the FAA today issued [pdf] revised launch window and flight plan restrictions for future flights, in an attempt to placate somewhat the concerns of the United Kingdom.

The map to the right, taken from the FAA assessment, shows in red the area where air traffic is impacted by the next Starship/Superheavy launch, now tentatively planned for next week. Note how the path threads a line avoiding almost all land masses, thus limiting the worst impact to just the Bahamas, the Turks & Caicos Islands. Though the launch will effect 175 flights and require one airport on these islands to close during the launch window, to minimize the impact the FAA has required that the launch window be scheduled outside peak travel periods.

At the same time, the FAA after discussions with the governments on these islands has approved this flight plan, noting that “no significant impacts would occur” due to the ninth flight.

The agency has not yet actually issued the launch license, but it will almost certainly do so in time for SpaceX’s planned launch date. Since the advent of the Trump administration the FAA has no longer been slow walking these approvals in order to retype the results of SpaceX’s investigation. Instead, as soon as SpaceX states it has satisfactorily completed its investigation, the FAA has accepted that declaration and issued a launch license. Expect the same this time as well.

Gilmour finally gets launch license from Australian bureaucrats

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

After several years of delays, the Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space today announced that it has finally been issued a launch license from the Australian Space Agency.

According to the company, “pending weather & final system checks, we’re on target for our launch window to open NET May 15.”

The launch will take place at Gilmour’s own Bowen spaceport on the east coast of Australia. The Eris rocket has three stages and is designed to launch smallsats similar to Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.

It is amazing this company hasn’t gone bankrupt waiting for this launch license. It applied in 2022, hoping to launch that year. Three years later it finally gets the okay. The amount of cash it had to burn unnecessarily in those years would generally destroy most startups.

Whether the red tape in Australia will clear up in the future is decidedly unknown, especially with the election victory this month of the leftist party.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

FAA approves SpaceX request to increase Starship launch rate at Boca Chica

The FAA today by email announced that it has released the final environmental reassessment that approves SpaceX’s request to increase the number of yearly Starship/Superheavy launches at Boca Chica to as many as 25.

The assessment is now available for public comment, and could still be revised. However, the FAA’s conclusions are clear, as indicated by the highlighted phrase:

The FAA is announcing the availability of the Final Tiered Environmental Assessment and Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact/Record of Decision (FONSI/ROD) for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Vehicle Increased Cadence at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas (Final Tiered EA and Mitigated FONSI/ROD).

Under the Proposed Action addressed in the Final Tiered EA, the FAA would modify SpaceX’s existing vehicle operator license to authorize:  Up to 25 annual Starship/Super Heavy orbital launches, including: Up to 25 annual landings of Starship (Second stage); Up to 25 annual landinqgs of Super Heavy (First stage). The Final Tiered EA also addressed vehicle upgrades.

You can read the executive summary of this announcement here [pdf]. The full reassessment can be read here [pdf]. Its conclusion is quite blunt:

The 2022 PEA [Preliminary Environmental Assessment] examined the potential for significant environmental impacts from Starship/Super Heavy launch operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site and defined the regulatory setting for impacts associated with Starship/Super Heavy. The areas evaluated for environmental impacts in this EA [environmental assesssment] included air quality; climate; noise and noise‐compatible land use; visual resources; cultural resources; Department of Transportation Section 4(f); water resources; biological resources (terrestrial and marine wildlife); land use; hazardous materials; natural resources and energy supply; and socioeconomics, and children’s health. In each of these areas, this EA concludes that no significant impacts would occur as a result of SpaceX’s proposed action. [emphasis mine]

As I’ve noted repeatedly, this has all been self-evident for years, as proved by the environmental circumstances at the American spaceports at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy in Florida and Vandenberg in California. Spaceports help the environment by creating large wildlife refuges where no development can occur. We have known this for decades. That the FAA and the federal bureaucracy has in the past five years suddenly begun demanded these long reassessments time after time that simply restate these obvious facts can only be because that bureaucracy wants to justify its useless existence with make-work.

Australia’s first rocket company continues to be blocked by red tape

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

The first rocket launch by Gilmour Space, Australia’s first rocket company, from its Bowen spaceport on the east coast of Australia has apparently been blocked by continuing bureaucratic regulatory red tape.

In February the company had announced a planned launch date in March, based on what appeared to be the issuance (after more than a year’s delay) of its launch licence. That launch however never happened, with no public explanation, until now. From the link above:

In an update on Sunday, the Queensland-based firm said it had received approval from CASA and is now waiting for final clearance from the Australian Space Agency.

…It had planned for an inaugural blast-off in April 2024 but faced a lengthy delay in obtaining its final permit from the Australian Space Agency.

In other words, the launch license had only been promised, but then was not issued, leaving the company stranded for several more months, with that license still buried in the government’s byzantine operations.

The article at the link says the Australian government is now moving to streamline its space regulatory system, but don’t believe it. The elections this week saw a resounding victory for the leftist coalition with the conservative party defeated handily. With the left now in firm control, expect the regulation to increase, not decrease. Leftwing governments almost never reduce regulation. It goes against their power-hungry genetics.

FAA okays increase in SpaceX launches from Vandenberg from 36 to 50 per year

The FAA today approved an environmental reassessment at Vandenberg Space Force Base that permits SpaceX to increase its annual launches there from 36 to 50.

The reassessment determined (not surprisingly) that there was “no significant impact” on the environment caused by the increased number of launches.

We already have more than seven decades of empirical data at spaceports in both Florida and California that rocket launches do no harm to the environment, and in fact act to significantly protect wildlife and natural resources because they require the creation of large regions where no development can take place.

The real question should be this: Why is the federal government wasting taxpayer money on these reports? They are utterly unnecessary, and only serve to hinder the freedom of Americans while spending their taxes on make work that accomplishes nothing.

Head of the FAA’s commercial space office takes Trump buy-out

Kelvin Coleman, the head of the FAA office that regulates and issues all launch licenses, has now decided to accept the buy-out offered by the Trump administration and retire.

Coleman has led the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, known as AST, since 2022, after being named deputy associate administrator in 2017. During that time, the amount of commercial launch activity has grown enormously, from 23 licensed launches in 2017 to 157 in 2024.

That has put a strain on the office, which the FAA has responded to by seeking additional staff and other resources, as well as streamlining the licensing process. The latter included new launch and reentry licensing regulations, called Part 450, that took effect in 2021.

Industry, though, has complained about the implementation of Part 450, leading the FAA to create a space-related Aerospace Rulemaking Committee, or SpARC, to collect industry input on ways to improve Part 450. FAA officials said at the Commercial Space Conference in February that the SpARC was expected to complete its work by July, and that it was working on other improvements, such as a new electronic system for license applications.

It was apparently under Coleman’s leadership that Part 450 was created and implemented. The FAA claimed it would streamline the licensing process. Instead, it did the exact opposite. Under Coleman and Part 450, the red tape from the FAA actually increased significantly, to the point that it apparently caused the several rocket startups to close down.

It is quite possible therefore that Coleman decided to take the buy-out because he suspected his time at the FAA was limited anyway, that the Trump administration wanted him out.

British MP proposes his government’s vast bureaucratic skills be given the power to regulate all space

“We’re here to help you!” George Freeman, a British MP who was also its minister for science, research, technology and innovation under two previous Tory governments, has now proposed that Great Britain’s great skill at bureaucracy (which has done a great job bankrupting both rocket companies and spaceports) be given the job as the world’s regulatory cop.

Freeman said as space minister he had focused on UK leadership in space regulation, insurance and finance; convening the industry partnership with the UK space sector and Lloyds of London to create the Earth∞Space Sustainability Initiative (ESSI), which aims to set global standards for the sector, and securing the backing of Canada, Japan and Switzerland through the global summit at the Royal Society. “The idea of my space debris regulation and the creation of the Earth Space Sustainability Initiative was very simple,” he said.

… But it isn’t only in the field of satellite technology where regulation will be important. From crewed missions to Mars to the prospect of lunar mining and even creating data centres on the moon, the opportunities space offers are myriad. Regulations around space debris, Freeman said, could act as a gateway to rules in other areas.

“It can gradually evolve,” the MP explained. “You could imagine, say, on space traffic control, that you wouldn’t get permission to launch from aviation authorities unless you’ve got a licence to operate. Licence to operate says you must be compliant with basic standards.

This concluding quote at the link, written by the reliably naive pro-government leftist British outlet The Guardian, says it all:

Freeman added the UK is well placed to lead on such matters. “Space needs a global regulatory alliance led by and headquartered in a trusted nation. You need a country that’s got a long and distinguished history as a trusted partner, a long, 300-year role as a regulator of choice, that believes in and is respected internationally for its legal system and is connected to financial market and international courts and jurisdiction,” he said.

“This is a huge opportunity for the UK. We should seize it.”

The UK red tape this blowhard admires so much — and likely helped create — caused Virgin Orbit to go bankrupt while it waited for months to get a launch license. It has also practically destroyed the business at two UK spaceports because the paperwork makes launching there so burdensome. Rocket companies are going elsewhere for this reason.

The worst thing we could do is give Freeman and the bankrupt regulatory culture he helped create the power to establish similar regulations for the rest of the world. The entire newly-born space industry that is bursting out everywhere would choke to death almost immediately.

Isar confirms March 20, 2025 for first launch

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace has now confirmed that it will attempt the first orbital test launch of its Spectrum rocket on March 20, 2025, lifting off from Norway’s Andoya spaceport.

Isar announced March 17 that the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) issued a launch operator license to the company for its Spectrum rocket, launching from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway. The launch, called “Going Full Spectrum” by the company, is a test flight of Spectrum with no customer payloads on board. “Our goal is to test each and every component and system of the launch vehicle,” Alexandre Dalloneau, vice president of mission and launch operations at Isar Aerospace, said in a statement about the upcoming launch.

Isar Aerospace did not announce a specific time for the launch, noting the timing would depend on weather as well as range and vehicle readiness.

This launch is also going to be the first vertical orbital rocket launch from the European continent, and will put Andoya ahead of the three other spaceports being developed in the United Kingdom and Sweden. For the two UK spaceports this launch will be especially embarrassing, as both started years before Andoya but have been endlessly hampered by red tape, government interference, and local lawsuits. Norway meanwhile has moved with alacrity in approving Andoya’s permits and Isar’s launch licenses.

As for Isar, this launch puts it in the lead over the half dozen or so new European rocket startups as the first to attempt a launch. None of the others are close to that first launch attempt, though the German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg came close last year. During its last static fire test of the first stage prior to launch the rocket was destroyed in a fire.

Norway awards the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace a two-satellite contract

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

In what appears to be a concerted effort by Norway to cement the establishment of its Andoya spaceport on its northwest coast, last week it awarded a two-satellite launch contract to the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace, launching from that spaceport.

The launch is scheduled until 2028 and will take place from Andøya Spaceport, Europe’s first operational spaceport on the mainland. The agreement between the Norwegian Space Agency and Isar Aerospace involves launching two Norwegian satellites as part of the AOS program, a national maritime surveillance system.

Isar is now gearing up for the very first orbital test launch of its Spectrum rocket, which will also be the very first from Andoya, and the very first from the four proposed spaceports in Europe. Regulatory filings from Norway suggest it will occur during a ten-day launch window beginning on March 20, 2025, but Isar has not yet confirmed this.

Unlike the two UK spaceports, which have been delayed years due to government red tape, Norway’s government has apparently worked hard to cut red tape and help Isar get off the ground quickly. It also appears that Norway’s government is acting to stymie Sweden’s Esrange spaceport, releasing a report last week that suggested it will not give permission for launches over its territory from Esrange.

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