There’s a traffic jam forming at US rocket launchpads
Live MintElon Musk’s SpaceX and other rocket companies are planning to increase flights in the years ahead as they ferry their own satellites or payloads for other customers to space. “There has to be a first mover, and we’re ready to move," said Bailey J. Siegfried, vice chair of the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority’s board of directors. “We have maybe less than 10 years to make this happen, because of where the industry is going," said Terry Shehata, executive director of the Maine Space Corp. “We don’t want to get locked out." The Space Force is carrying out projects aimed at boosting capacity at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara, Calif. That work ranges from identifying more land to develop at those facilities to reducing the effect of clear areas during major rocket operations, when other activities have to shut down, Brig. SpaceX has conducted its launch ramp-up largely from Florida, and is working to bring Starship—the name of the powerful vehicle it is developing—to the Kennedy Space Center and an open pad within the Space Force’s Cape Canaveral base.
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