Here’s why SpaceX’s competitors are crying foul over Starship launch plans

United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin are worried about SpaceX's plans to launch its enormous Starship rocket from Florida.

In documents submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration last month, ULA and Blue Origin raised concerns about the impact of Starship launch operations on their own activities on Florida's Space Coast. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, urged the federal government to consider capping the number of Starship launches and landings, test-firings, and other operations, and limiting SpaceX's activities to particular times.

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, called Blue Origin's filing with the FAA "an obviously disingenuous response. Not cool of them to try (for the third time) to impede SpaceX’s progress by lawfare." We'll get to that in a moment.

The FAA and SpaceX are preparing an environmental impact statement 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 US Space Force is working with SpaceX on a similar environmental review for Starship flights from Space Launch Complex 37 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS).

These reviews likely won't be complete until late 2025, at the earliest, and only then will SpaceX be cleared to launch Starship from Florida. SpaceX also must construct launch infrastructure at both sites, which could take a couple of years. This is already underway at Launch Complex 39A.

Big rocket with a big footprint

During the environmental review process, the FAA should weigh how regular flights of the reusable Starship—as many as 120 launches per year, according to TechCrunch—will affect 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 as soon as the end of this year.

SpaceX plans to launch Starlink satellites, customer payloads, and missions to support NASA's Artemis lunar landings from the launch pads in Florida. Getting a launch pad up and running in Florida is one of several schedule hurdles facing SpaceX's program to develop a human-rated lunar lander version of Starship, alongside demonstrating orbital refueling.

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 standing 492 feet (150 meters) tall with nearly 15 million pounds (6,700 metric tons) of propellant. This larger variant is the one that will fly from Cape Canaveral.

"It’s a very, very large rocket, and getting bigger," wrote Tory Bruno, ULA's CEO, in a post on X. "That quantity of propellant requires an evacuation zone whenever fueled that includes other people’s facilities. A (weekly) launch has injurious sound levels all the way into town. The Cape isn’t meant for a monopoly."

SpaceX's Starship rocket launches from Starbase during its second test flight in Boca Chica, Texas, on November 18, 2023.

Credit: Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

At SpaceX's privately owned Starbase launch site in South Texas, the evacuation zone is set at 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) when Starship and Super Heavy are filled with methane and liquid oxygen propellants. During an actual launch, the checkpoint is farther back at more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the pad.

"The total launch capacity of the Cape will go down if other providers are forced to evacuate their facilities whenever a vehicle is fueled," Bruno wrote.

We don't yet know the radius of the keep-out zones for Starship operations in Florida, but Blue Origin wrote that the impact of Starship activities in Florida "may be even greater than at Starbase," presumably due to the larger rocket SpaceX plans to launch from Cape Canaveral. If this is the case, neighboring launch pads would need to be evacuated during Starship operations.

Purely based on the geography of Cape Canaveral, ULA seems to have the bigger worry. Its launch pad for the Vulcan and Atlas V rocket is located less than 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers) from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A). SpaceX's proposal for up to 44 launches from LC-39A "will result in significant airspace and ground closures, result in acoustic impacts felt at nearby operations, and potentially produce debris, particulates, and property damage," ULA said.

ULA said these hazards could prevent it from fulfilling its contracts to launch critical national security satellites for the US military.

"As the largest rocket in existence, an accident would inflict serious 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.

A pattern of protest

It's understandable that ULA and Blue Origin wouldn't want to halt work at their launch pads for several Starship launches every week. But this isn't the first time SpaceX's top two rivals in the US launch industry have tried to block Elon Musk's space company from establishing a new launch site.

In 2013, Blue Origin and SpaceX fought for rights to lease LC-39A from NASA after the retirement of the space shuttle. SpaceX won, signed a lease with NASA the next year, and began launching Falcon 9 rockets from the launch pad in 2017.

But not before a spat between SpaceX and Blue Origin about whether the launch pad should be available for exclusive use by a single company or available for multiple users. Blue Origin proposed making LC-39A open for all launch companies, while SpaceX initially proposed taking over the pad for its own purposes, although the company later signaled it would be open to sharing it with other users.

At the time, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was already operational, and Falcon Heavy was well into development. NASA selected SpaceX to develop the human-rated Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2014, and it began launching astronauts from LC-39A to the International Space Station in 2020. Blue Origin had not yet launched its orbital-class New Glenn rocket, and still hasn't, although it could finally fly before the end of this year.

During the squabble over LC-39A more than a decade ago, Musk presciently told Space News that if Blue Origin showed up with a crew spacecraft that could dock with the space station within five years, SpaceX would gladly accommodate them. "Frankly, I think we are more likely to discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct," Musk said.

A full-scale test model of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket finally reached a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station earlier this year.

Credit: Jeff Bezos via Instagram

ULA backed Blue Origin's effort to block SpaceX from taking over LC-39A. Musk accused ULA of acting maliciously to prevent a competitor from expanding its launch capacity at the Florida spaceport.

In the end, Blue Origin decided to build its New Glenn launch pad on military property a few miles to the south of LC-39A at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Blue Origin again protested a decision that favored SpaceX in 2021, when Bezos' company objected to the award of a NASA contract to SpaceX for a crewed lunar lander for the agency's Artemis program. A government watchdog agency upheld NASA's decision, but NASA last year awarded Blue Origin a similar deal for a second human-rated Moon lander design.

At capacity

There were 72 orbital-class rockets that launched from Florida's Space Coast last year, up from 57 in 2022. This year, the spaceport is on pace for around 100 launches, and maybe more if the launch rate picks up over the next few months, as SpaceX hopes it will. By 2030, NASA projects 225 launches per year combined at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

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."