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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base. (NASA/Bill Ingalls) For copyright and restrictions refer to – http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines/index.html America is struggling to keep up with a booming space industry. A particular space challenge is looming in the Pacific, where investments to bolster U.S. space launch infrastructure lag behind Florida’s highly-integrated East Coast launch complexes. This East Coast overweighting is a mistake. Too much big-booster production and other key space manufacturing infrastructure is consolidating eastward. But America’s Western launch sites are growing in importance, and the lack of space industry investment may strangle opportunities for future growth. The problem is an economic one. The space industry loves the short-term economic stimulus provided by the Southeastern states, but the operational consequences from the over-consolidation of this industry in the Southeast is, for certain space products, quite dire. Take boosters. The wide, tall and heavy rocket boosters of tomorrow are outgrowing America’s old-school roads and rail systems. They don’t travel well, and that forces America’s next-generation orbital rockets into a crippling dependence upon America’s fragile, underdeveloped and easily-disrupted maritime transportation network. This, coupled with America’s unfortunate defenestration of the West Coast’s limited supply of industrial waterfront, means that America’s space launch industry is on the verge of trapping itself on the wrong side of the increasingly unreliable Panama Canal. For the U.S. space economy, overbuilding East Coast space launch support infrastructure provides short term gains in exchange for long-term risks. Cape Canaveral is a wonderful facility. But the Pacific offers America and the Space Industry massive and overlooked opportunities. Outside of SpaceX, America’s big-booster community has been slow to invest in the West Coast. To grow—and to challenge SpaceX’s virtual lock on the West Coast’s big-rocket opportunities, California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base, Alaska’s Pacific Spaceport Complex and other…

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Filed under: News - @ July 17, 2025 7:29 pm