A California state agency was sued by a private space firm, SpaceX, for allegedly rejecting a proposal to raise the number of launches from the state's coastline from 20 per year to 50 per year.
It is at an October 10 meeting when the California Coastal Commission voted to deny the application, yet days later, on October 15, the U.S. Air Force endorsed the plan arguing that more launches of Starlink and Starshield, the defense-focused unit, are critical to national security.
In the complaint, SpaceX alleges that the commission engaged in what it terms "naked political discrimination" in citing the political activity of CEO Elon Musk by some commissioners while also attempting to unlawfully regulate federal agency activities. The CCC declined to comment for this story. SpaceX did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.
Much of the headlines have been devoted to the first part of the claim, and SpaceX will need to demonstrate at trial that the order of the commission was based in substantial part on Musk's politics. However, the second part is arguably much more critical: who has the final legal authority over launch activities on a defense base, and are those activities federal or private when conducted by a commercial entity on behalf of the DOD?
SpaceX and the USAF argue that, precisely because what Starlink capabilities are, and other national security payloads that the company launches, the launch cadence at Vandenberg Space Force base is a "federal agency activity" even though Starlink is also a commercial product.
Under this reading, the USAF would simply have to file a certification declaring that the proposed launches are in conformity with state policy.
But the commission rejected this characterization of the launches, because the company also launches payloads commercial and sells Starlink to consumers, and argued that the increased launches would require the company to submit an application for a "coastal development permit" (CDP) with the CCC.
Staff at the commission recommended that the commissioners concur with the USAF. The company contested that the Air Force agreed to implement mitigations against sonic booms and pointed to scant evidence that launching 14 more times per year, from 36 to 50, would have negative environmental impacts. The commission will be faced with launch increase decisions again soon; the expectation is that SpaceX and the USAF will bid to increase launches again, this time to 100 per year. Commissioners were far from unanimous in their rejection of SpaceX's plan—the final vote was 6-4 against—and most cited their view that the launches were primarily a private, not federal, activity and as such required a CDP. But it is true that some commissioners specifically pointed to Musk's political activity.
"We're linking the private and the public," Commissioner Mike Wilson said.
"This company is owned by the richest person in the world with direct control of what could be the most extensive communications system on the planet," Commissioner Mike Wilson said. "Just last week that person was speaking about political retribution on a national stage," he said, referring to Musk's appearance at a rally for President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. "We're talking about the promotion of this technology and a human being that has so much power over that, and I just want to acknowledge that." The same case of the SpaceX lawsuit quoted commissioner Gretchen Newsom as having stated how Musk had been "hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet."
She then praised the willingness of the USAF to embrace more environmental protective measures but said these should be borne by SpaceX: "These items should be the duty and burden of SpaceX, not the military and taxpayers undertaking these oversights to the benefit of SpaceX," she said.
The controversy highlights an important issue between government and private activities, particularly as the U.S. government across civil and defense agencies increases its purchases of services from private enterprises rather than buying or owning the equipment themselves. For instance, rather than owning and operating a satellite communications network for national security and the community of intelligence, the DOD purchases capacity from SpaceX.
Clearly, SpaceX believes that its commercial launches are "federal agency activities," at least from the legal perspective. Company filed a complaint in the Central District of California court requesting the court to make a judicial declaration that commission's denial of the plan was unlawful.