“Some states are very strict on the nationality and transparency of ownership, and other states less strict,” says Alla Pozdnakova, a professor of law at the University of Oslo’s Scandinavian Institute for Maritime Law, who has researched sea-based launches. “For now, it seems that it hasn’t been really that problematic because the United States, for example, would require that if you’re a US citizen or a US company, then you have to apply for a license from the US space authorities, regardless of where you want to launch.”
But if the US imposes strict oversight on launches, other nations might apply different standards to licensing agreements with launch providers. “I can imagine that some unauthorized projects may become possible simply because they are on the seas and there is no real authority—by contrast to land-based space launches—to supervise those kinds of launches,” Pozdnakova says.
Boeing, which managed Sea Launch, was fined $10 million in 1998 by the US Department of State for allegedly sharing information about American defense technology with its foreign partners in violation of the Arms Export Control Act. In addition to the legal and national security risks posed by Sea Launch, Pacific Island nations raised concerns to the United Nations in 1999 that the company’s offshore rockets could damage the environment by, for instance, creating oil slicks from unused fuel in discarded boosters.
The complex issues that offshore spaceports raise for international law, environmental protection, and launch access have never been more relevant. SpaceX, which is famous for pioneering offshore rocket landings, has also flirted with sea-based launches. The company went so far as to purchase two oil rigs for $3.5 million apiece in 2020. They were renamed Deimos and Phobos after the two moons of Mars.
“SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted on Twitter (when it was still Twitter) in 2020.
SpaceX eventually abandoned this project and sold the rigs, though Gwynne Shotwell, its president and COO, said in 2023 that sea-based launches were likely to be part of the company’s future. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
The company might need to move launch operations offshore if it wants to carry through on its aspirations for Starship, which is the most powerful rocket ever developed and the keystone of SpaceX’s future plans to send humans to the moon and Mars. “We have designed Starship to be as much like aircraft operations as we possibly can get it,” she said at a conference in 2023, according to SpaceNews. “We want to talk about dozens of launches a day, if not hundreds of launches a day.”
The environmental impact of launching hundreds of rockets a day, either from sea or land, is not known. While offshore launches pose fewer direct risks to local environments than land launches, very little is understood about the risks that rocket emissions and chemical pollution pose to the climate and human health at current levels, much less exponentially higher ones.
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