Last week, the California Coastal Commission rejected SpaceX’s plan to launch up to 50 rockets at Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County this year. The company responded with a lawsuit yesterday, arguing that the state agency’s denial was overreaching and discriminatory against its CEO.
The commission’s mission is to protect California’s coasts and beaches, as well as the animals that live there. The agency oversees requests from private companies to use state shorelines, but cannot deny federal agencies action. The denied launch request was actually made by the US Space Force on behalf of SpaceX, asking the company to be allowed to launch 36 of 50 Falcon 9 rockets.
While the commissioners raised As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s political cabinet and flawed safety records review his company’s launch request, the assessment has focused on the relationship between SpaceX and the Space Force. The Space Force’s case is that “because it is a customer of and depends on SpaceX’s launches and satellite network, SpaceX’s launches are a federal agency activity.” reported. “However, this is inconsistent with how federal agency action is defined in the Coastal Zone Management Act regulations or with how the Commission has historically implemented those regulations.” The California Coastal Commission has claimed that at least 80 percent of SpaceX rockets carry payloads for Musk’s Starlink company, not payloads for government customers.
SpaceX’s lawsuit, filed in California’s Central District Court, seeks an order to designate the launches as a federal activity, which would cut off the Commission’s oversight of future launch plans.
