The FAA on Thursday published in the Federal Register a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that would boost space launch providers such as SpaceX and Blue Origin by neutralizing environmental laws.
The agency’s proposed 14 CFR 400.3 would reduce the time and cost required for commercial providers to obtain launch licenses, effectively facilitating an explosion in commercial space activity. It would do so by waiving their requirements to comply with 13 laws including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which is in line with actions the White House directed in a 2025 executive order.
An FAA news release noted that regulators will take aim at requirements they deem “unnecessary” or that are “slowing American innovation.” In 2024, agency officials reported that it takes them on average 151 days to issue a commercial space license.
The proposed rule has a 30-day public comment period that closes August 31.
“America won the first Space Race, and we can do it again—but only if we get government red tape out of the way,” said Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy in a statement Tuesday.
Not everybody agrees.
Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), told FLYING in a statement that the White House “wants to gut even the most basic environmental safeguards to enrich some of the world’s wealthiest people.”
SpaceX is owned by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, and has engaged in public spats with the FAA regarding its licensing process.
“We’ve seen real environmental damage from the exploding rocket toys of the super-rich,” Hartl said. “You can be damn sure we’ll fight this obscene giveaway to special interests.”
Concerns With Growing Space Activity
The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) issues licenses and permits for launches and reentries under Part 450, which took full effect earlier this year, as well as for the use of launch and reentry sites. That constitutes a major federal action under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), requiring the license applicant to show the FAA that its operations would comply with it and other environmental laws.
The agency can issue a categorical exclusion for missions that align with those it has previously assessed. But new missions typically require the applicant to complete a lengthier environmental assessment (EA) or environmental impact statement (EIS) to determine the effect on the surrounding area.
Proposed 14 CFR 400.3 would waive these requirements for certain activities.
Following the debut test flight of SpaceX’s behemoth Starship rocket in 2023, the CBD and four other environmental groups sued the FAA for requiring SpaceX to produce an EA rather than the more robust EIS. They alleged that the latter would have mitigated damage from the rocket’s launch and subsequent explosion. The test flight sent chunks of concrete flying six miles away and started a 3.5-acre brush fire on protected state land.
But a federal judge in 2025 dismissed the suit, which Jared Margolis, a senior attorney with CBD, called a “disappointing decision.” The judge ruled that the EA’s findings were “well-reasoned and supported by the record.”
The CBD in June sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to block a land swap between it and SpaceX, which would see the company trade 683 acres of its own land for 715 acres of federal land in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, near its Starship launch site in south Texas. In July, the group filed for an emergency injunction to freeze the deal, which it said would be “one of the largest exchanges of land in the refuge system’s history outside the state of Alaska.”
The group cited a 2024 study, which it said “found that after one [SpaceX] launch, every single monitored shorebird nest near the launch site suffered egg damage or loss.”
The concerns with rising commercial space activity are more than environmental.
The FAA in 2025 warned pilots to be vigilant to “catastrophic” spaceflight mishaps that could produce falling debris as activity increases. SpaceX has reportedly failed to alert the agency to mishaps—including Starship explosions that forced disruptions—in a timely fashion. The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) has criticized the reporting mechanism as ineffective.
Steve Jangelis, aviation safety chair for ALPA, wrote in October that there is “high potential for debris striking an aircraft resulting in devastating loss of the aircraft, flight crew, and passengers” and said the agency “continues to ignore fundamental airspace safety and operational issues essential to a safe and efficient [National Airspace System [NAS].”
Those worries are likely to persist as more rockets lift off.
In fiscal year 2025 (FY25), the FAA authorized a record 204 commercial space operations. It expects to oversee 214 in FY26. The agency on Tuesday said it authorized more operations in the past five years than it did in the previous three decades. However, its most recent commercial space forecast projects up to 4,288 operations over the next decade, rising to more than 500 per year in 2036.
In March, the FAA began full enforcement of Part 450, which replaced separate, legacy commercial licensing rules with performance-based standards that apply to all launch vehicles. Doing so simplified the licensing process and will allow companies to fly more often. The Commerce Department’s Office of Space Commerce has proposed a voluntary mission authorization system that would further streamline novel space activities.
The FAA last year also approved SpaceX to conduct 25 Starship launches annually, a fivefold increase to its previous cap. The agency this year greenlit Starship trajectories that will see the rocket fly over wider stretches of the mainland U.S. and force larger aircraft hazard areas, with the potential to disrupt thousands of commercial flights annually.
In addition to simplifying licensing, proposed 14 CFR 400.3 would further streamline the FAA’s ability to close airspace.
FAA’s Legal Basis
Per the FAA’s news release, the new proposal is intended to make it easier and faster for launch operators to secure approvals and argues that certain laws are unnecessary. It contends that applicants face “needless delays” due to “pointless, time-consuming requirements and expenses preparing environmental studies and providing information for overlapping reviews from multiple federal agencies.”
The issue has drawn ire from some powerful industry players. In 2024, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X that the company “will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach.”
“The bottom line is clear: we will not keep pace with this rapid growth unless we streamline, modernize, and strengthen our regulatory approach,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said in a statement Tuesday.
The NPRM cites a few legal bases for the change.
It contends that the DOT secretary can waive requirements for a launch license upon determining that they are “not necessary to protect the public health and safety, safety of property, and national security and foreign policy interests of the United States,” under 51 U.S.C. 50905(b)(2)(C). The White House’s executive order explicitly directs the DOT to leverage its authority under the decades-old rule.
National security is one argument agencies could use to determine that an environmental requirement is not necessary. The executive order directs the DOT to increase “commercial space launch cadence and novel space activities by 2030”—the same year China aims to land its first humans on the moon. Officials and lawmakers have framed beating China to the moon as a national security priority.
The DOT is required under 51 U.S.C. 50905(b)(2)(C) to consult with the head of the appropriate agency before waiving environmental requirements, which the FAA plans to do, per the NPRM. The Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and other laws proposed to be waived fall under Environmental Protection Agency oversight. However, NEPA is implemented by the Council on Environmental Quality within the Executive Office of the President, which has less independence from the White House.
The NPRM also cites a 2025 Supreme Court ruling. In Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that “NEPA has transformed from a modest procedural requirement into a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents (who may not always be entirely motivated by concern for the environment) to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure and construction projects.”
The court ruled unanimously that federal agencies do not have to evaluate downstream effects of their activities under NEPA, which limits the ability of outside groups such as CBD to slow projects using environmental arguments.
The FAA said it is inviting comments on other requirements not included in the proposal that “are not necessary,” including the Safe Drinking Water Act and Ocean Dumping Act.
