Public, private or both?
However, there is still no exact plan as to when the military could actually start building a new launch base. “It will require a strong partnership with local and state governments,” Garrant said. “As far as decision deadlines are concerned, we don’t have anything yet.”
Last year there were 175 orbital launch attempts from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Space Force officials estimate that the country’s established spaceports will need to support 700 launches per year by 2036.
A third launch site would relieve some of the launch demand from limited real estate at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg. It would also provide what Space Force leaders call “geographic resiliency” to reduce the risk that a natural disaster or military attack will disable the Cape or Vandenberg.
The federal government already has a third spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, which is used for suborbital rocket testing and small- and medium-sized satellite launches. Small rockets can also be launched from the Pacific Spaceport Complex, owned by the state of Alaska.
There are also commercial options that could be available for a new military spaceport. Ars asked Garrant whether the Space Force might consider leasing property from a private launch base, such as the sprawling spaceport that SpaceX plans to build in southern Louisiana.
“We’ve discussed that we need to consider all of these options: public-private partnership, new federal facility, state land, use of commercial land – all of those are possibilities. They all have pros and cons. We haven’t made that decision yet, but we’re not ruling out any of those options.”
