The Space Force is prepped to support an average of 13 launches of month from the Space Coast in 2025, but it’s a juggling act that has the world’s No. 1 spaceport running up against infrastructure roadblocks.
Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, who leads the Space Force’s Assured Access to Space program as well as heads Space Launch Delta 45 based in Brevard County and oversees the Eastern Range, spoke about the challenges at the one-day Space Mobility Conference, part of Commercial Space Week at the Orange County Convention Center on Tuesday.
“We’ve been going up pretty steadily in about a 25-30% increase per year, and I think we’ll continue to increase at that rate for at least the next couple years,” she said.
The has meant supporting a record 93 launches from either Kennedy Space Center of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in 2024, but the potential to hit as many as 156 from the Space Coast in 2025.
The pace has been demanding, she said.
“It’s forcing us to innovate, right? We’ve implemented automation, we relooked at processes and streamlined a lot of things, but it does continue to be a stress on ops tempo when it comes to manpower,” Panzenhagen said.
But it also has brought infrastructure shortcomings to the forefront causing backups for national security launches.
“The bottleneck itself is that really we just don’t have enough payload processing space,” she said. “With the launch cadence increasing, we, with our government payloads, are using the same payload processing space that the commercial payloads use.”
She noted that was a decision made years ago by the Air Force even before Space Force was created, and one made because it’s a commercial service that can be provided, usually the path the military will take to reduce costs.
She also noted bigger rockets with multiple payloads may cause logistics delays.
“Oftentimes those payloads have to be processed differently — different clean room standards, different security standards. So that’s taking up a tremendous amount of space,” she said.
In 2024, the Space Force was able to get extra congressional funds to pursue commercial solutions to a similar bottleneck on the Western Range at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. That solution could mean more square footage or new ways to process satellites. She said a similar request for the Space Coast will be made for 2025.
“So as far as funding goes, when we go to the ( Capitol) Hill, we do have a lot of conversations with the members and the staffers,” she said. “We have gotten a good acknowledgement that they understand the need for it. So we’re cautiously optimistic that we’ll get some funding in ’25.”
Already the busy schedule has another limitation for turning around launches, the use of the commodities like gaseous nitrogen and propellants that have to be flowed to the launch pads, which is mostly done now through a contract with NASA for both KSC and Cape Canaveral pads.
“As the rockets are getting larger and requiring a lot more commodities, we have identified that as a potential bottleneck for future operations,” Panzenhagen said. “So a lot of the launch service providers are looking toward being self-sufficient for commodities and not all relying on the single contract for them anymore.”
Another big hurdle to support launches, she said, is real estate.
“We’re fortunate because we are operating in a time where we do have that demand,” she said. “The commercial launch industry is extremely healthy, innovative, growing, but because of that, we don’t have enough real estate to give everybody that wants a pad for a different rocket a pad.”
Already SpaceX operates at both KSC and Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 while United Launch Alliance uses SLC 41 and Blue Origin just had its first launch from Launch Complex 36.
Smaller rocket companies Relativity Space and Astra Space have flown in recent years from other Canaveral pads while approvals for several others including Stoke Space and Firefly Aerospace have been granted as well.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is looking to build up a new Starship launch pad at the former ULA Delta IV Heavy launch site at Space Launch Complex 37.
“We do have to be very strategic in those decisions because it is a limited resource,” she said.
And while the Space Force’s primary mission is to support national security, it’s married to the need to keep commercial launch providers healthy and happy.
“The very first priority is making sure that we are able to meet the current national security needs that we’re posturing to meet the future national security needs because, you know, we’re wearing this uniform and that’s our job,” she said. “But that has to be closely coupled with the second question we always ask ourselves: are we promoting a robust and healthy and innovative, competitive commercial industry for launch.”
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