Private space flight enters the Far West while Trump reduces regulations

President Donald Trump calls for ease of regulation for commercial space flights and to rationalize licenses for launches and rejection of rockets. This decision promotes companies like SpaceX very, but could have negative impact on environmental habitats surrounding launch cobblestones.

On Wednesday, August 13, Trump signed a decree intended to strengthen the space flight industry and increase the overall commercial launch rate. In this document, Trump calls the Secretary of Transport Sean Duffy, who is also currently an acting administrator of NASA, to “eliminate or accelerate … environmental examinations and other obstacles to the granting of licenses and allowed to launch and reintegrate”. The order also orders Duffy to “reassess, modify or cancel” the requirements and security conditions for the launch and reintegration licenses which were written during Trump’s first mandate as president in 2020.

“By reducing administrative formalities linked to the construction of Spaceport, by rationalizing launch licenses so that they can occur on a large scale and by creating high -level space positions in the government, we can trigger the next wave of innovation,” Duffy said in a press release. “I can’t wait to take advantage of my double role in Dot and NASA to make this dream a reality.”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is responsible for granting licenses for launches and space networks while guaranteeing public security and the protection of goods. For years, the CEO and founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, expressed his dismay at regulatory organizations such as FAA, complaining that bureaucratic administrative formalities hold his rocket company.

“The vessels must fly. The more safely we fly, the faster we learn; the earlier we learn, the sooner we make the reuse of complete and faster rockets,” SpaceX wrote in a blog last year while waiting for a launch license for the fifth starship starship test. “Unfortunately, we continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes more time to make government documents to link a rocket launch than to design and build real equipment.”

On the other hand, local environmental groups in Boca Chica, Texas, the site of the launch installation of the base of the base of SpaceX, criticized the FAA for regulatory surveillance. The inaugural takeoff of Starship in April 2023 sent pieces of concrete and metal to thousands of meters from the launch, causing an examination of environmental impacts and potential threats to endangered species in the Boca Chica region. Shortly after, the conservation groups filed a complaint against the FAA for its approval of the extended launch operations from SpaceX to Boca Chica, Texas, without adequate environmental examination. The trial claims that the FAA did not require a declaration of in -depth impact of the environment before approving SpaceX sports plans.

FAA officials claim that the new order will serve the space economy. “The FAA strongly supports President Trump’s executive order to ensure that the United States leads the growing space economy and continue to lead the world in space transport and innovation,” said FAA administrator Bryan Bedford in a statement. “This order securely removes regulatory obstacles so that US companies can dominate commercial space activities.”

Environmental experts, on the other hand, do not agree. “This reckless order puts people and fauna in danger on the part of private societies launching giant rockets that explode and often devastation in the surrounding regions,” wrote Jared Margolis, principal lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, in a press release. “Diving the knee to powerful societies by allowing federal agencies to ignore the environmental laws of the rocky substratum is incredibly dangerous and puts us in danger.”