Comments on the Potential Use of the Outer Continental Shelf for Offshore Space Launch and Re-Entry Activities

The comment starts from a practical problem: American launch activity is growing faster than the coastal infrastructure that supports it. The Eastern Range handled 109 launches in 2025, while the Federal Aviation Administration authorized 204 commercial space operations nationwide in fiscal year 2025. The Society argues that the real shortage is not simply launch pads or coastline. It is deconflicted capacity: launch opportunities that also have workable trajectories, available airspace and shipping corridors, safe hazard areas, range support, ports, utilities, environmental compatibility, and durable legal permission. Offshore facilities could relieve that pressure, but only if they add usable capacity instead of competing for the same windows, corridors, ports, and government resources.

No single federal permit covers an offshore spaceflight project. A proposal may need an Outer Continental Shelf property right from the Department of the Interior, launch or reentry approval from the FAA, maritime coordination with the Coast Guard, environmental review, and range or national-security coordination with the Department of Defense. The comment therefore calls for a White House-convened agreement among the responsible agencies within 120 days. That agreement would create one common preapplication submission, one federal point of contact, a public review schedule, a shared factual record, and a way to resolve jurisdictional or scheduling disputes. Each agency would keep the legal authority Congress assigned to it.

The next recommendation is an Offshore Spaceflight Regulatory Pathfinder. Within 180 days after the interagency agreement takes effect, the agencies would work through a realistic example based on converting a qualifying existing offshore facility. The result would be a public classification guide, a table showing which agency has authority over each major facility model, common preapplication requirements, and an ordered sequence of federal decisions. A real applicant could then understand the likely legal path before spending heavily on engineering and permitting.

The comment also takes a specific position on section 8(p) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. In the Society's view, subsection (1)(D) may allow the alternate use of a qualifying existing offshore facility for spaceflight. Subsection (1)(C), however, is about energy activities and does not appear to authorize a new, standalone, non-energy spaceflight facility on previously unoccupied seabed. The Society asks the Interior Solicitor to publish a formal interpretation and BOEM to follow it with practical guidance on facility types, decommissioning, bonding, and competitive issuance. If an important project model falls outside existing law, the comment recommends a narrow statutory amendment rather than stretching uncertain authority.

Finally, the proposed process would combine environmental, range, airspace, and maritime facts into one shared record. Agencies would still make their own legal findings, but they would begin from the same project description, operating schedule, data, and assumptions. Early review would test trajectories, hazard areas, shipping and fishing conflicts, recovery zones, port needs, military activity, and the United States' international space-law obligations. The goal is not simply a faster permit; it is a legal pathway that produces offshore capacity that can actually operate safely and endure.