Trump's space policy puts military launch resilience on the agenda
President Donald Trump’s new space transportation policy is drawing praise from the industry for laying out a government-wide framework to expand launch capacity and make greater use of commercial providers. For the U.S. Space Force, meanwhile, some of the most consequential provisions are about what happens when access to space becomes a military readiness problem.
The National Space Transportation Policy, signed Aug. 20, sets a goal of having U.S. ranges support more than 1,000 launches and reentries annually by 2030, a dramatic increase from today’s pace. Getting there will require more infrastructure, more automation and a less cumbersome system for allocating already crowded federal ranges.
The policy gives agencies a series of deadlines to start addressing those bottlenecks.
Within 180 days, the Pentagon, working with NASA and other agencies, must establish federal range scheduling criteria intended to make more efficient use of range resources while protecting government launch requirements.
The Pentagon and NASA also are directed to regularly publish range schedules, while the Transportation Department must identify potential locations for additional launch facilities and infrastructure improvements.
These measures track with what the Space Force is already trying to do at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg, where commercial and national security launch demand is putting growing pressure on infrastructure and personnel.
Beyond launch cadence
One provision requires the Pentagon to evaluate what stands in the way of “prompt, responsive and resilient access to space,” specifically including the ability to launch within 48 hours of need and operate from expeditionary locations. The department also must examine how to better protect launch infrastructure on federal property.
That gives White House backing to a direction the Space Force has already laid out in its Objective Force plan. The service wants to move away from depending on a small number of fixed launch nodes and toward a more distributed network of federal, commercial and eventually allied spaceports. Its “Spaceport of the Future” concept calls for launch sites and providers to function as interchangeable nodes.
The White House policy also takes a broader view of what “space transportation” means for the military. It directs the Pentagon to pursue commercial in-space transportation services, including on-orbit servicing and logistics, and to consider those capabilities when designing military architectures and force structures. The department is also told to explore responsive launch concepts using relocatable equipment and infrastructure capable of supporting different transportation systems, including spaceplanes.
How payloads get to orbit
Agencies are directed to maintain multiple ways of launching government spacecraft, make certification requirements for new launch providers more consistent and develop standardized spacecraft interfaces that would make it easier to move a payload from one rocket to another.
Industry groups have welcomed the commercial emphasis. The Satellite Industry Association said Aug. 21 it supports the administration’s plans. The Commercial Space Federation also praised the policy Aug. 24, saying it provides a clearer framework for how the government can support an industry that will need infrastructure capable of handling hundreds and eventually thousands of launches a year.
For the Space Force, these ideas are not new. Higher launch cadence, commercial range services, distributed spaceports, responsive launch and on-orbit logistics already appear in the service’s long-term plans. What the new memorandum does is elevate them into government-wide policy, assign agencies responsibility for carrying them out and set deadlines.
|
