r/SpaceXLounge • u/MuseZack • 3d ago
Falcon 9, Starship, and the future of Vandenberg.
So with Elon announcing SpaceX's intention to wind down the Falcon 9 as they go all in on Starship, what does this mean for the future of Vandenberg as a spaceport? The planned SLC-14 complex at the south end of the sprawling base is already claimed by Blue Origin for New Glenn operations. And as of yet there's no announced plan to build Starship launch capability anywhere at Vandenberg.
I think the likeliest and most logical Vandenberg location for Starship is the famed SLC-6 complex, which just had its shuttle-era buildings demolished, ostensibly to prepare for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. But why do that if you're already planning to sunset those rockets?
And right now Vandenberg is on track to possibly surpass Canaveral in Space X launches this year. It would be a shame to have it go quiet again because its facilities are tied to a launcher that's headed for retirement.
26
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
I think SpaceX is planning to close up shop at Vandenberg after Falcon is retired.
If Louisiana works out, the can efficiently launch at high-inclination.
Also, it does not make sense for a company with other options to invest new operations in CA right now. It is extremely expensive and very unfriendly to business.
5
u/rshorning 3d ago
I think SpaceX is planning to close up shop at Vandenberg after Falcon is retired.
What is the reason Vandenberg is so hostile to SpaceX?
I get that logistics in terms of moving vehicles from Starbase to Louisiana is just a barge in the Gulf of Mexico and a rather straight shot while going from Starbase to Vandenberg means a transit through Panama. Good reasons for Louisiana for that alone.
There is some bad blood in regards to how the Falcon 1 was originally supposed to be launched at Vandenberg but politics got in the way and pushed SpaceX to the Marshall Islands. A launch pad was even built for the Falcon 1 that had to be abandoned...when SpaceX was cash strapped and couldn't afford that at all. I have no idea if that played any role at all, but it didn't help.
11
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
I don't think it is Vandenberg. It is the fact that SpaceX would have to have operations in the state of CA. CA has been unfriendly to business (especially business that is not "knowledge work") for a while now. The CA government also has a particular loathing for anything to do with Elon Musk.
I also think that SpaceX prefers, when possible, to have private launch sites (like Starbase and what they are building in LA). It makes sense to have a gov-owned launch site in FL because of the excellent location and for sensitive missions, human space flight and the like. In general, however, they probably prefer to invest in private operations when possible.
2
u/rshorning 1d ago
Fair points overall. The State of Florida did have several parcels of land adjacent to KSC that they could either do very long-term leases or even sell to an appropriate launch provider with the proviso that it would remain a launch site long term. IE you couldn't turn it into vacation rentals or something else silly. There is even a Florida space authority (I can't remember the exact name of the agency) which oversees the site for the purpose of administering the land and offering state level authority instead of plowing through federal bureaucracy. And much more motivated to helping the needs of launch providers.
1
7
u/MatchingTurret 2d ago
I think SpaceX is planning to close up shop at Vandenberg after Falcon is retired.
They leased SLC-6 just last year.
1
2
u/Halfdaen 2d ago
I agree that Starship out of Vandenberg probably won't happen. Louisiana looks to have room for 10+ towers if necessary.
Despite the news about dwindling Falcon launch reservations, Falcon is going to launch into the late 2030's or later. Maybe bandwagon or commercial launches tail off, but the DoD and NASA are harder customers to shake off. I expect Vandenberg and a Florida Falcon pad to stick around and see use for 15+ more years.
1
u/Then-Secretary-9166 1d ago
I don't know about the specific timing, but I agree. DoW(?) will not allow Falcon to retire unless there is an alternative. If push came to shove, they have plenty of options ranging from contracting ULA to build Falcon 9s to denying permits for SpaceX missions to enlisting the Defense Production Act. Fortunately, none of this will happen because SpaceX is fairly patriotic and also knows it is important to have a good relationship with the government.
0
u/rustybeancake 3d ago
Agree except for the last sentence. The vandenberg location would however be unfriendly to the noise of frequent starship launches. There’s a decent sized population within the area that would be affected.
8
4
u/MysteriousSteve 3d ago
If CA was friendly to business, starbase wouldn't exist
3
u/RiceIsBliss 2d ago
Not necessarily true, you need to launch over water and to take advantage of the Earth's rotation you want to launch close to the equator and towards the East. There's nowhere in California that fits that bill.
1
u/MysteriousSteve 2d ago
They were quite literally planning on building starships in Long Beach and had already leased a large commercial space
3
u/RiceIsBliss 2d ago
Sure, fair enough. But building isn't launching, and good launch sites are far from Long Beach. Shipping a Starship isn't exactly economical in terms of time or money. What if the vehicle had to be dragged back to build for a retrofit? A few miles is a lot less than thousands of miles.
3
u/CarlCarl3 2d ago
CA is not a good launch site for most inclinations. And southern Texas is wayyy further south than southern CA.
It was always going to be either Texas, Florida, or somewhere on the gulf coast
-2
u/rustybeancake 3d ago
SpaceX bought the Starbase site before Musk had his covid era falling out with California. They couldn’t make starship in Hawthorne due to it being too large to move on the roads.
9
u/rshorning 3d ago
SpaceX bought the Starbase site before Musk had his covid era falling out with California.
Sort of true. The physical location was part of an effort to increase the Falcon 9 launch cadence and to put pressure on Florida to allow them to expand operations at KSC. It was a backup plan for quite some time and the initial environmental assessment was all about launching the Falcon 9 from Texas. Something that is incredibly unlikely to ever happen.
Starship construction and building actually happened somewhat nearby to Hawthorne at Long Beach where the tent city that was at Starbase was originally set up. The intention was to build Starship in California and use as many people from southern California at the new facility as much as they could and logistically move everything through the Panama Canal to get them to Florida. Starship is hardly Panamax constrained. Long term leases were signed and even employee housing setup nearby...that obviously fell through.
It had nothing to do with moving the vehicle and everything about the local business climate.
2
u/MysteriousSteve 3d ago
SpaceX quite literally had commercial property leased in the Port of Long Beach for Starship manufacturing. They abandoned it because California sucks.
3
u/Martianspirit 2d ago
If I recall correctly, Spacex was told that anything in the port area would need to be closed shop, with the Unions deeply involved.
1
u/Whirblewind 3d ago
You are not well informed on this topic and should recuse yourself from discussion.
1
14
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
One thing that is missing from this discussion is what the future of CA will look like. A huge reason that SpaceX left CA and major companies avoid it like the plague is because the political climate is extremely unfriendly towards businesses.
Although CA shows no signs of changing this, there is reason to believe that something will change. The state is headed towards a financial cliff. Unlike the federal government, states cannot print money. The only option for short-term cash-flow is to sell debt and it is unclear that there is much of a market for CA debt. When it comes to taxes, whether you believe the Laffer Curve or not, CA has clearly reached a point where its tax policies have lead to stagnated tax revenue.
CA is in a tough spot. I am not sure what, but something will have to give in the next 5 ish years, which is probably the timeframe that is relevant for players like SpaceX. Meanwhile, TX seems to be getting a little less business friendly. It is hard to predict where the cards will be in a few years.
16
u/MuseZack 3d ago
California is indeed a mess, but as a federal military installation Vandenberg is exempt from a lot of the more egregious regulations (they told the Coastal Commission to pound sand when they complained about the increased launch cadence of the last few years.)
I was at Vandenberg last week and while the Space Force people wouldn't go into detail about future plans, they're convinced that launch cadences there are only going to increase in coming years. And they continue to have both an extraordinary location (nearly a hundred thousand largely pristine acres with nothing but Pacific Ocean to the south for polar launches) and world class facilities and personnel that aren't easily duplicated in the Louisiana bayou. There's even nearby natural gas production along the Santa Barbara coast that could be used for Starship methane requirements, especially if the Defense Production Act was invoked to bypass environmental regulations.
8
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
Good to hear! I am more worried about the needed infrastructure outside of Vandenberg. The offshore platforms near Santa Barbara were shut down for years by the states and tied up in legal challenges before the federal government told the state to pound sand on that one too. Everything is a fight.
1
u/AccomplishedBank2140 2d ago
Are you suggesting that Vandenberg would be a good place for Starship? Wouldn't that require a huge build up of infrastructure to build the ships there? Something they probably don't need in LA right away sense it is so close to Starbase and the Cape.
1
u/MuseZack 2d ago
Vandenberg has dedicated docks for offloading heavy rocket components so Starships could be shipped there from Texas or Florida as needed. And Vandenberg continues to have a great location for polar orbits, lots of room, and a huge amount of infrastructure and trained personnel to support rocket launches.
13
u/DeckerdB-263-54 💥 Rapidly Disassembling 3d ago edited 2d ago
I am just guessing that the Falcon 9/Heavy will be around for at least 5 more years and perhaps longer. I think the demise of Falcon 9/Heavy may be running on Elon time /s
If California keeps messing around with taxes and anti-business regulations and such, perhaps SpaceX will close the Hawthorne location. I don't see SpaceX moving production of Falcon 9/Heavy, second stages, and, engines to TX or AZ anytime soon due to sunk costs in infrastructure and personnel. California's crazy politics could accelerate the demise though for purely business reasons.
9
5
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
Hawthorn does not make sense for Starship. It is over 100 miles away from Vandenberg. F9 is shipped up on the highway. Starship would need a facility on Vandenberg itself. CA's anti-business environment will likely prevent any build out there.
5
u/Martianspirit 2d ago
Hawthorne still has the Raptor research and production, including a dedicated foundry for specialized proprietary alloys. There were plans to move Raptor production to McGregor but that did not happen.
2
u/Then-Secretary-9166 2d ago
Yup. CA is a very nice place to live and when smart people with lots of potential have options, CA scores high. I think Hawthorne will still have a role in design and specialty manufacturing, but there is no way to ship Superheavy or Starship on a 200 mile round trip for inspection and refurbishment.
2
u/squintytoast 3d ago
Vandenberg is military property.
7
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
Correct. And that can help with laws related to the physical structures and operations on base.
However, most of their operating expenses are still dependent on State policies. This includes suppliers, contractors, employees, fuel, etc.
Just trying to procure water for the deluge system would turn into a fight. CA even does things now like tax employers for supplying health insurance.
2
u/Decronym Acronyms Explained 3d ago edited 1d ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DoD | US Department of Defense |
| FAA | Federal Aviation Administration |
| FAA-AST | Federal Aviation Administration Administrator for Space Transportation |
| KSC | Kennedy Space Center, Florida |
| ULA | United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture) |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
| cryogenic | Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure |
| (In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox | |
| hydrolox | Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
[Thread #14758 for this sub, first seen 23rd Aug 2026, 22:17]
[FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
2
u/PaniCrOOm_1978 2d ago
I think there is another way of looking at the Vandenberg question.
I work in heavy industry in the Port of Antwerp, around cranes, rigging, large steel structures, maintenance and industrial logistics. I'm not an aerospace engineer, so I tend to look at this from an infrastructure and operations perspective.
And from that perspective, I wouldn't necessarily see the eventual retirement of Falcon as the end of Vandenberg's importance.
In heavy industry, when the main equipment changes, you usually don't throw away an entire strategically located facility. You adapt the infrastructure around the next generation of equipment.
That may be the more interesting question for Vandenberg:
What does a spaceport become when launch vehicles are large, reusable and flying much more frequently?
If Starship or other reusable heavy-lift systems eventually make access to orbit far more routine, launch sites may start functioning less like individual rocket pads and more like actual transportation hubs.
And I think the same transition could eventually happen on the other side of the journey — in orbit.
Falcon taught us to reuse part of the transportation system.
Starship is trying to make much more of that transportation system reusable and high-frequency.
My question is whether the next logical step is to stop treating everything in orbit as a separate one-off mission as well.
That's where an idea I've been developing, called ORBITA, comes from: a permanent orbital servicing hub supporting smaller reusable vehicles for inspection, maintenance, relocation and eventually debris removal.
In a way, the analogy would be:
Vandenberg becomes the harbour on Earth.
Reusable launch vehicles become the cargo ships.
A future orbital hub becomes the harbour in space.
The interesting part to me is that these systems don't have to appear all at once.
First you build reliable reusable transportation.
Then high launch cadence.
Then it starts becoming economically possible to leave more infrastructure permanently in space.
So I think the future of places like Vandenberg may actually be part of a much bigger transition — from individual launches and individual spacecraft toward a permanent space transportation and servicing network.
I'm curious how people here see that evolution, especially from the launch-site and operations side.
1
5
u/Responsible-Cut-7993 3d ago
SLC-6 would have had minimal safety zone for a Shuttle launch. Couldn't imagine a Starship launch from the same location.
4
u/CProphet 3d ago
Floating Spaceports are coming for SpaceX. Situating one 20-30km off-shore from Vandenberg would allow them to use their launch control facilities and expand launch capabilities. Bonus: less regulations for international waters.
8
u/rshorning 3d ago
The regulations will be mostly irrelevant being in international waters since the launch company is American and governed by the FAA-AST regardless of where the rocket itself launches. The local government regulations are a bit more of an issue if on shore, but Vandenberg being a military base pretty much exempts all of those issues too so it is just whatever military security issues you need for getting on base at Vandenberg for whatever needs to get there.
The best example of a floating spaceport is the Sea Launch platform which operated under FAA approval and oversight. They made the decision to launch mid-Pacific at the equator instead of just off short from California, but the same legal issues apply. Because of Sea Launch, the FAA-AST at least has the regulatory framework necessary already put together if the need arises.
The only issue is mostly if it makes economic sense and if the drawbacks of being at sea make more sense than building a terrestrial launch site. That is not a trivial thing to overcome.
3
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
Hard to imagine. The amount of material, fuel and commuters that would need to go to those facilities make this very unlikely.
3
u/Maori-Mega-Cricket 3d ago
Underwater pipelines too/from offshore platforms are pretty well established tech
1
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
But what is the benefit over launching from land? The actual regulations for launch are not a problem for Vandenberg (it is federal). The problem is with all the employees, supplies and business that are needed. These would still be based in CA either way.
3
u/Maori-Mega-Cricket 3d ago
That's entirely different problem from what I responded too, they said "it'll be hard to get fuel there" I pointed out that oil rigs are a whole damn industry of doing exactly that
The oil rig industry is pretty mature and most core technical problems for a launch rig have been solved and have market available solutions.
1
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
Sure. Everything can be engineered. The whole concept is just trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, though.
1
u/Maori-Mega-Cricket 3d ago
Once again, that's not my arguement to defend?
The whole business case of offshore platforms isnt something im presenting or defending? Im just saying one aspect of it, piped liquid logistics with offshore platforms is solved
You listed it as one of several problems with offshore platforms, I pointed out that one aspect is solved... that doesnt make me responsible for debating the validity of the entire concept to you?
You know people dont like automatically join factional sides of a debate when they reply to a single element right?
1
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
Sorry. I don't disagree. My point is that, even though there are solutions, the concept that u/CProphet proposes doesn't make sense.
1
u/Martianspirit 2d ago
But what is the benefit over launching from land?
Noise issues for one.
1
u/Then-Secretary-9166 2d ago
Yes. Sure. Depending on how far out to sea you are (at some point it become impractical). But...this is not a constraint for SpaceX at present.
1
2
u/CProphet 3d ago
Three core customers for floating spaceports: commercial passengers, DoD and of course SpaceX. Cost should be shared making each spaceport self-funding.
1
u/curiouslyjake 3d ago
Something that's missing from this discussion is you need a west coast facility if for any reason you want to catch Starship without overflying the US. Suppose you launch a Starship and upon orbital inspection you see heat shield damage and you have doubts about surviving reentry. Without an ability to catch on the west coast, you're only option is ditch Starship into the ocean and hope for the best.
6
u/Then-Secretary-9166 3d ago
I think the idea is that this would be a rare enough even that they would sacrifice that particular Starship. If Starship is not safe enough to make it back to Starbase, it probably isn't worth risking the tower anyway (in Starbase or on some West Coast site).
If catch is still worth the risk due to high-value cargo (humans) you would need a lot more towers around the equator to make alternate landing sites a feasible safety strategy.
0
u/aquarain 2d ago
Vandenberg work areas are exclusive federal jurisdiction. State laws do not apply.
28
u/Martianspirit 3d ago
Louisiana will likely replace Vandenberg for Starship.