Trump Order Seeks to Cut Regulations for Space Industry
President calls on officials to ease permitting rules for rocket flights as more companies want to launch them
- President Trump signed an order to accelerate rocket launches and facilitate spaceport construction.
- Space industry leaders have expressed frustration with regulators, anticipating changes from the Trump administration.
- The order aims to streamline environmental reviews for new spaceports, potentially facing opposition from local communities.
President Trump issued an executive order that aims to speed up rocket launching and opens the door to more spaceport developments.
Many space industry executives have been frustrated by the pace at which regulators have moved to permit launches and other space operations, and had anticipated that the Trump administration would try to address the issue. Those expectations were fed by the alliance between Trump and Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX who advised Trump before their high-profile split.
Musk has criticized regulators over the years, including last fall when he said they were slowing the company’s progress with Starship. Texas-based SpaceX is developing the experimental rocket for a range of future missions.
The Federal Aviation Administration oversees private rocket launches as part of its work managing U.S. airspace. Current and former FAA officials have said the agency is committed to working with space companies to coordinate launches and re-entries of private spacecraft back to Earth from orbit.
Currently, SpaceX launches more rockets more often than any other company, meaning the order to speed up the licensing of flights should help it. But other launchers, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, are also poised to begin flying their new rockets more often in the years ahead.
Trump’s order, signed on Wednesday, also seeks to make it easier to build new spaceports, where launches and other operations could take place, by streamlining environmental reviews.
Most rocket launches from the U.S. take place from the Cape Canaveral area on Florida’s east coast or from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California. Orchestrating launches is a growing challenge for rocket executives and officials, generating efforts by other spaceports to handle some of that traffic.
Many of those efforts are nascent, however, and creating new facilities would likely face pushback from neighbors to the sites and environmental advocates.
Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Space Federation, a trade group, said the order would strengthen the industry by cutting red tape while maintaining a commitment to public safety.