Space Ops: Pondering The Potential Of Sea-Based Launch

The U.S. federal spaceport infrastructure is wobbling under the weight of ever-mounting numbers of commercial orbital rocket launches.

While the Space Force invests billions of dollars into modernizing its sites, providers are intrigued by an alternate model: mobile launchpads at sea.

Hearkening back to the days of the company Sea Launch deploying DirecTV satellites from its Odyssey Launch platform on the equator to take advantage of the Earth’s rotation to reduce propellant usage, launching payloads from oil-rig-style bases in the middle of the ocean could provide much-needed relief to Vandenberg SFB in California and Cape Canaveral SFB in Florida.

Offshore launch is far from a new vision. But the opportunities may be opening up.

ULA CEO Tory Bruno sees a business case for U.S. sea-based launch in the next five to 10 years to free providers from the constraints of trying to operate simultaneously on evermore cramped pieces of land.

“It’s been tried before. It was a little ahead of its time,” he said in a March 3 panel discussion at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado. “I think that time is swinging around.”

The prospect could help with the uptick in noise complaints regarding the sonic boom that occurs as larger rockets return from space, Jon Edwards, SpaceX vice president of Falcon and Dragon programs, said during the panel discussion. But it would require a sizable amount of infrastructure, he noted, suggesting that islands would be worth investigating as alternate options.

The Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands has hosted small research rocket launches and served as SpaceX’s Falcon 1 test launch site. The U.S. military is assessing the potential of using the remote Johnston Island atoll in the Pacific Ocean as a reentry site for a proposed point-to-point delivery program known as Rocket Cargo.

Sea-based sites may indeed prove more viable for landing rockets, rather than launching them. Executives from Relativity Space and Stoke expressed interest in using ocean platforms for landing in a March 10 panel discussion at the annual SATELLITE Conference & Exhibition in Washington.

Relativity also has looked at using ocean platforms for launching rockets in the past, but determined that the operating and maintenance costs made it prohibitive, Josh Brost, company vice president of business development, said during the panel discussion.

Sea-based launch may prove more viable for smaller rockets and rapid mission deployments. Firefly Aerospace is in discussions with an undisclosed vendor to perform a rapid launch of its Alpha small lift launch vehicle from a sea-based platform, Israel Figueroa, company director of national security programs, told Aviation Week on March 5.

While Firefly has only launched its Alpha rocket from Vandenberg to date, its manifest includes deployments from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and the Esrange Space Center in Sweden. “The smaller launchers are in the sweet spot” to launch from the sea from an operational and cost standpoint, Figueroa said.

The Defense Department is studying the concept. The Spaceport Company in 2024 won contracts from the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Innovation Unit to explore mobile sea-based launch platforms. The company is working to build offshore launch sites, and supported the launch of a subscale hypersonic test rocket built by Evolution Space on its proprietary launchpad vessel in August 2024.

But the Space Force is not putting any significant money toward such a capability at the moment, Space Systems Command chief Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant told Aviation Week on March 5.

“It would certainly be something that we would look for industry to take the lead on,” he said on the sidelines of the Warfare Symposium. The Space Force is investing $1.3 billion into its “Spaceport of the Future” initiative to modernize aging infrastructure at its two coastal sites.

Garrant said he was both interested and surprised at the level of discussion around sea-based launch during the panel discussion. In his view, the advantages in terms of orbital access by launching from the equator may be canceled out by the logistical challenges, he noted.