Draft Trump EO would loosen commercial space regs, citing national security links

WASHINGTON — A draft White House executive order (EO) would lift licensing rules deemed by the commercial space industry to be onerous, as well as ease the advent of new types of space activities — many of which are of interest to the Pentagon.

Noting the criticality of commercial space to national defense, the order, obtained by Breaking Defense, explains that the goal is to eliminate “unnecessary regulatory barriers” and increase the number of launches and “novel” on-orbit activities “by an order of magnitude by 2030.”

The expected order comes after the Space Force for several years has been working to expand its pool of commercial launch providers, in part to reduce its reliance on SpaceX for national security missions. To that end, the service in March added Rocket Lab and Stoke Space to its approved list of potential carriers for small and medium payloads for missions not considered critical or high risk.

Also in March, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket was finally certified to carry heavy payloads and those for critical missions — with the head of Space Systems Command, Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, telling reporters at the ASCEND conference in Las Vegas on July 23 that he expects the Vulcan’s first such mission to lift off in a couple of weeks.

While happy with what they have been hearing about the draft EO, several space industry sources told Breaking Defense they are a bit disappointed that the administration has not shared it with industry or asked for input. President Donald Trump is expected to sign off on the EO sometime within the next couple of weeks, these sources said.

A version of the draft order appears to have been circulating among affected agencies for several weeks, according to a July 22 report by Pro Publica. The White House did not respond to Breaking Defense’s request for comment on the order’s status on Thursday.

In particular, the draft EO takes aim at the Federal Aviation Authority’s (FAA) Part 450 launch and re-entry rules. The FAA has jurisdiction over all commercial space launch and re-entry.

Part 450 is primarily focused on ensuring public safety, such as making sure that companies have proper containment measures in case of a launch pad explosion. Those rules — somewhat ironically put in place in 2020 by the first Trump administration as a streamlining initiative — have been widely criticized by commercial space firms as confusing and unwieldy.

“Everyone universally struggles with 450 and has been looking for ways to amend or reform it,” David Cavosa, president of the Commercial Space Foundation, told Breaking Defense.

Indeed, FAA under the Biden administration last November initiated a review of how Part 450 implementation could be made more transparent and timely. FAA officials at the time hoped to finish the review by late this summer. It is unclear whether work up to now will be incorporated into any new top-level review.

Diane Howard, who worked on commercial space policy for both the first Trump and the Biden administrations, cautioned that moving too quickly to overturn current practice could backfire.

“Throwing it all out could create more delay and even more confusion,” she told Breaking Defense. “I haven’t seen any evidence that the FAA or industry have devised a better approach.”

Loosening Environmental Review

The draft EO also instructs the Transportation secretary to pull out the stops “to eliminate or expedite” environmental reviews for launch license applications. This includes labeling certain Transportation Department “functions” as not governed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and establishing “categorical exclusions” to it.

The NEPA reviews “are the one item that causes the most delay for a launch license to be approved,” Cavossa said.

Further, the Defense and Transportation departments, along with NASA, are mandated to “use all available authorities” to quickly push through environmental reviews for approving new spaceport infrastructure development. This includes seeking waivers of the Endangered Species Act.

The ever-increasing pace of both national security and commercial space launches is threatening to overwhelm capacity at the nation’s two primary ranges operated by the Space Force, Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, according to an annex to the Space Force April Commercial Space Strategy released on July16.

According to a June 30 report by the Government Accountability Office, commercial launches from those ranges have more than quadrupled since 2021.

Indeed, the Pentagon already has moved to “streamline” its NEPA reviews to allow it to expedite needed military construction projects. “DoD coordinated with the White House Council on Environmental Quality to achieve this interagency effort to simplify NEPA compliance,” according to a June 30 announcement.

In the same vein, the draft instructs NASA to lead an interagency review — including the Commerce, Defense and Transportation departments — of state and local authorities under the Coastal Zone Management Act to speed new spaceports. This includes exhorting agencies to refer any state or local restrictions to development on federal lands that “may be inconsistent” with federal law to the Justice Department for possible litigation.

The question of state rights under the act is a key element in the lawsuit launched by SpaceX last October against the State of California for its refusal to allow the company to increase Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg. A draft bill introduced in January by Sen. Kevin Kiley, R.-Calif., would limit state authorities citing California’s alleged “abuse” in the SpaceX case.

Novel Space Capabilities

The draft EO also weighs into the long-running debate about how the US should regulate new types of space activities that exist outside current regulatory regimes. These include a number of missions of interest being pursued by commercial firms that are also of interest to DoD, such as cargo delivery via rocket and on-orbit repair of satellites.

The draft would hand authority for what is called “mission authorization and supervision” from the Department of Transportation to the Department of Commerce — a move commercial industry and supporters in Congress have been championing for years. One reason is that Commerce has an overarching mission to support the domestic space industry and help it compete on the international marketplace; whereas the Transportation is focused on safety.

The Biden administration proposed to split that regulatory authority between Commerce and Transportation in a draft bill introduced to Congress in November 2023. Lawmakers, who split along party lines on the choice of agencies, did not act on the draft legislation.

The draft EO gives Commerce 150 days to come up with a new process.

How the White House intends to implement any new process is unclear, however, given that legally only Congress can confer regulatory power to an agency.

“The EO can assign what it wants, but without legislative authority [the Commerce Department] will not be able to enforce,” Howard said. “The EO does not circumvent the need for legislative action.”

Organizational Restructuring

The final section of the draft EO focuses on reorganizing the Commerce and Transportation personnel responsible for commercial space oversight.

The Transportation Department would have 60 days to appoint a new adviser to the secretary focused on “fostering innovation and deregulation” of the commercial space industry — in effect giving space issues a much bigger political footprint, as currently space launch is just one of the FAA’s many mission areas.

“That’s a major, major elevation, and a really exciting move for the commercial space industry,” Cavossa said.

The draft would also require Transportation to create a new political associate administration position for the head of the FAA Commercial Space Transportation office, which up to now has been run by a career civil servant as a deputy associate administrator.

On the Commerce Department side, the draft EO would take the Office of Space Commerce (OSC) that regulates remote sensing firms out from under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and put it directly under the secretary. This is a move that has been championed by industry and congressional Republicans and Democrats alike for a number of years.

OSC is working to create a civil space tracking system designed to free DoD’s space monitoring resources to focus on keeping eyes on adversary threats. The fate of that effort is in limbo, however. While the White House has proposed to kill funds for the program, appropriators on both sides of Capitol Hill are pushing back.