SpaceX, Blue Origin may get quicker launch OK with fewer environmental rules

The Trump administration on Tuesday said it was moving to waive what it called “unnecessary environmental laws and regulations” to speed up the approval process for commercial space rocket launches and reentries.

The proposed rule by the Federal Aviation Administration would be a boon for Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, as well as other rocket launch companies.

The FAA’s rule would allow the agency to waive requirements imposed on certain commercial space licenses and permits under 13 laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, parts of both the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, the National Historic Preservation Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

“Requirements that are needed to protect public health and safety, property, national security, or U.S. foreign policy interests would not be impacted” under the proposed rule, the U.S. Department of Transportation said in a statement. The FAA is part of the DOT.

The DOT said that despite a sharply growing number of commercial space operations authorized by the FAA in recent years, “applicants face pointless, time-consuming requirements and expenses preparing environmental studies and providing information for overlapping reviews from multiple federal agencies.”

There were a record 205 commercial space operations authorized by the FAA in the fiscal year 2025, and the agency’s commercial space forecast projects up to 4,288 such operations over the next decade, according to the FAA.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford in May said SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told him her company aimed to reach 10,000 launches annually within the next five years, Reuters reported at the time. Bedford cautioned “we need to see a lot more reliability” for that to happen.

The move to lessen regulations surrounding private-sector launches comes nearly a year after President Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry.”

That order directed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy “to eliminate or expedite” his department’s environmental reviews for space launch and reentry licenses.

“America won the first Space Race, and we can do it again — but only if we get government red tape out of the way,” Duffy said in a statement on Tuesday announcing the FAA’s proposed rule.

“That’s why President Trump has charged USDOT with unlocking the final frontier and re-establishing the United States’ dominance in space,” Duffy said.

The proposed rule is subject to a 30-day public comment period.

The DOT said the FAA “will thoroughly review all relevant comments before issuing a final rule.”

In September 2024, SpaceX was fined a combined $150,000 by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality after those agencies determined the company had violated the Clean Water Act in connection with the discharge of tens of gallons of what was classified as industrial wastewater from a launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, National Public Radio reported that year. CNBC first reported the notices of violations and related investigative records.

SpaceX has flatly denied that the water that was used in launches was hazardous.

In June, the Department of Justice asked a federal judge in Mississippi to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the NAACP against Musk’s artificial lab xAI, which is owned by SpaceX, that accuses xAI of violating the Clean Air Act in its use of dozens of methane gas-burning turbines to power its AI data centers without proper permits or pollution controls.

The DOJ, in a filing, accused the NAACP of threatening “American national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations.”

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this article