The California Coastal Commission is going for another round with Elon Musk’s space company.
U.S. Space Force officials will be back in front of the commission next week with a proposal to double SpaceX's rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force base from 50 to 95 per year — and staff at the agency charged with protecting California's 840-mile coastline are recommending commissioners reject it.
"The simple fact remains that it is a privately owned company engaged in activities primarily for its own commercial business,” staff said in a report Friday. “It is not a public federal agency or conducting its launches on behalf of the federal government."
The vote promises to reopen a rift between Musk and the agency after the commission rejected Space Force's previous proposal to increase SpaceX launches from 36 to 50, but cited Musk's politics and support for President Donald Trump in doing so.
The commission drew a lawsuit from Musk — and a rebuke from Gov. Gavin Newsom at the time.
“I’m with Elon,” Newsom said in October after Musk sued the commission for political bias. “You can’t bring up that explicit level of politics.”
The fight is flying further under the radar this time around, though. Where a bipartisan group of pro-space state and federal lawmakers spoke up for SpaceX ahead of October's vote — and environmentalists chimed in on behalf of nearby residents and wildlife they argued would be disturbed by the launches' sonic booms — that type of lobbying hasn’t materialized.
Neither Newsom's office nor SpaceX responded to a request for comment. Space Launch Delta 30 commander Col. James T. Horne III, who oversees Vandenberg and Western operations, said in a statement that the commission staff recommendation doesn’t change the military’s “unwavering commitment to preserving the California coastline,” and that its partnership with SpaceX helps maintain “its technological edge and strategic advantage over competitors."
The relative quiet comes amid a shifted political landscape, after Trump returned to power and Republicans swept Congress on a message of affordability and economic strength. Newsom and Democratic state lawmakers, faced with looming refinery closures and perpetually high building costs, are trying to boost in-state oil drilling and have already weakened environmental permitting for everything from wildfire fuel breaks to high-speed rail, putting environmentalists on the back foot.
Jennifer Savage, California policy associate director for the Surfrider Foundation, said environmental groups are in rapid response mode, which has “taken energy away from other things that we normally would have perhaps had more capacity to deal with.”
“I do think there's a lot of political overwhelm happening on all fronts, and that has divided people's attention perhaps more than when this first came up,” Savage said.
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire have also shaken up the commission since last year, replacing members like former chair Justin Cummings, former vice chair Paloma Aguirre and alternate Gretchen Newsom (no relation to Gavin Newsom), all of whom had bemoaned Musk’s behavior.
And Newsom himself spent the early part of this year clipping the commission’s wings, issuing several executive orders in the wake of the Los Angeles fires to suspend the Coastal Act — the 1976 law that established the commission — in an effort to fast-track rebuilding.
But there’s also the reality that Space Force officials moved forward with the increase from 36 to 50 last year, even after the no vote, citing federal preemption and national security considerations.
Rep. Kevin Kiley, one of the lawmakers who signed a bipartisan letter last year backing the launch increase, said the reality that the commission can’t stop the military’s plan means the issue has taken on less urgency.
“Now that the commission has proved its own irrelevance, maybe that same imperative doesn't exist,” said Kiley, who is pushing a bill that would limit state authority to review certain activities related to national security and post-disaster recovery and rebuilding.
The commission is scheduled to consider the proposal Aug. 14.
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