The governments options to address strained spaceports
The May 28 explosion of a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket at Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 36 did more than destroy a rocket and severely damage a launch pad. The event highlighted the fragility of launch in the United States today. The sharp increase in launches has strained existing spaceports to their breaking points, yet it seems harder than ever to get a launch as new vehicles suffer development delays or, like New Glenn, explosive setbacks.
Those concerns are not new. Both industry and government officials have warned for the last few years about the growing mismatch between spaceport capacity and launch demand, and between launch capacity and customer demand. That's prompted a discussion of what more NASA, the U.S. Space Force and other federal agencies can do to solve those issues through some combination of funding and policies.
Here are four possible answers.
The most straightforward solution is to provide more money, particularly for launch infrastructure. Officials have long said that Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, along with Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, need as much as several billion dollars in upgrades. Those improvements go beyond the launch sites themselves to roads, power systems and other basic infrastructure.
The latest evidence for those funding needs came in a June 22 report from NASA's Office of Inspector General. Its study of NASA launch infrastructure at KSC and at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia found both sites were in danger of reaching launch capacity as soon as 2028 as the number of launches grows.
The situation is particularly acute at KSC. The report highlighted aging infrastructure there unable to meet growing launch demands. One example is the power distribution system at Launch Complex 39, whose elements date back to the 1960s and lacks the capacity to support planned launches of SpaceX's Starship at LC-39A. Gaseous nitrogen pipelines that extend across Cape Canaveral are unable to support simultaneous launches by New Glenn and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur. Blue Origin added it was concerned future Space Launch System flights would create "blackout periods" of one to two months on the pipeline.
"NASA officials have estimated that Kennedy will need at least $1 billion to completely upgrade its launch infrastructure," the report concluded. It did not provide an itemized list, but noted repairs to the electric system will cost $136 million while repairs to bridges and roads at the center will cost at least $200 million. So far, KSC has obtained only $250 million, through last year's budget reconciliation bill.
In early June, reports said NASA was in discussions with Congress about supplemental funding for its exploration programs. That could include funding for spaceport improvements, given the importance of both New Glenn and Starship to the Artemis lunar exploration program and the need to rebuild Launch Complex 36.
"We have all the resources needed to return to the moon, build the moon base and do all the other things that we talked about," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said when asked about supplemental funding during the Artemis 3 crew announcement event June 9. However, he said NASA had been approached by unnamed members of Congress who "asked what resources they can make available to be helpful."
Those resources have yet to emerge, and the administration has made neither Artemis nor spaceports a clear priority. The Office of Management and Budget published June 24 a request for $87.6 billion in supplemental funding, primarily to cover costs of the conflict with Iran. The request included nothing for NASA, and the funding requested for the Pentagon did not include anything related to launch.
The Space Force received $500 million in last year's budget reconciliation bill for "national security space launch infrastructure," prompting speculation some of that funding could be used for rebuilding Launch Complex 36.
"I would hate to see well laid out plans, like bridges that need to be repaired, replaced to pay for recovery," said Mike French, founder of the Space Policy Group and a former NASA chief of staff, during a Capitol Hill event in early June.
However, he praised NASA for working with the Space Force and with Blue Origin on recovering from the launch pad explosion. A day after the explosion, Isaacman was at Cape Canaveral to tour the pad and meet with Blue Origin, and the agency has supported the company's recovery efforts.
"That is a 180 from where NASA was" in previous incidents, he said. He cited the example of the 2014 Antares launch accident where the rocket, carrying a NASA commercial cargo spacecraft, crashed seconds after liftoff, damaging its launch pad at Wallops. NASA left it up to Orbital Sciences and the state of Virginia, which owned the launch pad, to manage repairs, although Congress ultimately provided some funding to rebuild the pad.
Opportunities for interagency collaboration extend beyond spaceports. French said NASA, the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office are having more regular meetings about the state of the launch market, including how they can work together on launch procurements.
"That's important because, when it comes to the government, these are the three buyers," he said. "To have all three of them not just think about individual launch buys but think collectively how, as a whole, they ensure a better market, that to me is really smart."
The New Glenn explosion, taking the vehicle out of service at least until the end of the year, exacerbated the constrained launch supply today. ULA's Vulcan has been grounded since a February launch when one of its solid rocket boosters suffered an anomaly. Several medium-class vehicles in development, like Rocket Lab's Neutron and Eclipse, jointly developed by Northrop Grumman and Firefly Aerospace, have had their first launches slip into late 2026 and 2027.
"Right now, one company launches the vast majority of spacecraft," said Mary Guenther, head of space policy at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), referring to SpaceX and its Falcon 9. That's a problem if that vehicle is grounded. "If you're relying too much on any one launch operator, you risk not being able to deliver missions."
That happened in July 2024, when a Falcon 9 suffered an upper stage failure on a Starlink launch. However, the company was able to quickly identify and correct the problem, getting the vehicle flying again within a couple of weeks and avoiding problems for commercial and government customers.
"It's critical that we have a diversified base of launch operators," she said. "In my mind, that means looking at U.S. acquisition policies and ensuring that the government agencies that procure launch are thinking critically about their role in competition."
Among the recommendations she made in a PPI report published last year included having NASA set limits on the percentage of launches any one company could win contracts for each year, or a minimum threshold for each qualified provider.
The New Glenn explosion "draws attention to the importance of having a resilient and diverse base of launch operators," she said. "We need to be shouting that from the rooftops."
The heavy reliance on Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg have led to new discussions about additional spaceports. Nearly all U.S. orbital launches take place at those sites, with Wallops a distant third - and the NASA inspector general report said even Wallops was in danger of reaching capacity as soon as 2028.
At a May 20 House Armed Services Committee hearing, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said a recent Space Force study, not yet made public, recommended developing a third launch site capable of hosting large launch vehicles. He did not say where that site might be located or how long it would take to develop.
Meanwhile, there are about a dozen FAA-licensed spaceports in the country, most of which have hosted few, if any, launches. Many of them are inland facilities, such as airports, that aren't suited for hosting traditional orbital launches.
Some think it's time to reconsider that. "I think technology's advanced such that the ways you can do the analysis, the specific safety trajectories, have gotten so much more precise," said Mike Moses, president of spaceline at Virgin Galactic, which performs suborbital launches from Spaceport America in New Mexico. "The ability to operate off of an inland range is a natural evolution, and I'm fully supportive of everybody doing that."
Speaking at the ASCEND conference in May, Moses said he welcomed efforts by Spaceport America and other inland sites to try to host orbital launches. "We're going to have to find alternate, non-traditional launch sites."
Not everyone is convinced. "It's a little interesting to me to get excited about inland spaceports when we've got spaceports like Wallops and Alaska and other places," French said. "Have we done everything we can there to make them capable of an operational cadence that we see at Vandenberg and KSC?"
Those alternative sites will need infrastructure for hosting orbital launches or increasing their capacity. In a report earlier this year, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) recommended funding the Space Transportation Infrastructure Matching Grants program, which provides grants like those for airport improvements.
Congress established the program more than 30 years ago but only $1.5 million in grants have been awarded by the FAA, most recently in 2012. CCIA recommended providing $100 million a year for spaceport improvements.
"We need to start investing in this infrastructure," said Karina Perez, director of CCIA's Space & Spectrum Policy Center. "Compared to the GDP space brings to the U.S. economy - $142 billion - the lack of investment in spaceports just does not add up."
So far, there have been few public sign of support for increased spaceport grants or many of the other proposals put forth to address launch and spaceport issues, but industry officials are closely watching appropriations and authorization bills as well as a commercial space bill being drafted by the House Science Committee.
Still, "we're seeing a mindset change," said French, one that returns to an era when the government was a bigger player, and funder, of launch systems and launch sites. That shift started before the New Glenn explosion but may be accelerated by it. "The government is going to have a more active role."
This article originally appeared in the July 2026 issue of SpaceNews Magazine with the title "A bigger government role in launch."
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