Stop unregulated rocket launches from public ocean waters
Notice of Request for Information: Potential Use of the Outer Continental Shelf for Offshore Space Launch and Re-Entry Activities
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management· Outer Continental ShelfFederal Register 2026-13788 ↗
BOEM is laying groundwork to let private companies use public ocean shelf for space launches.
What’s at risk
Sensitive ocean ecosystems, fishing grounds, and coastal communities on the Outer Continental Shelf could face industrial space launch operations. BOEM is gathering information now that will shape any future policy allowing platforms and re-entry sites on these public waters.
If this goes through
Early agency decisions made here will lock in a framework that could open public ocean shelf to commercial rocket launch platforms with limited environmental review or public input later.
Our plain-English read of the official notice ↗. Check it against the agency’s own words below.
4 holes in the agency’s own analysis
What the public could have raised, from the agency’s own document
- I oppose this action as proposed, and I ask the agency to weigh the specific harms below.
- BOEM should not repurpose Outer Continental Shelf submerged lands and existing offshore facilities for space launch and re-entry platforms without first completing full NEPA environmental review.
- Before any OCS lease, easement, or right-of-way for space launch activities is considered, BOEM must conduct meaningful government-to-government consultation with Tribal governments.
- I urge BOEM to ensure that any future policy development for offshore space launch platforms on the OCS protects ocean wildlife and ecosystems from launch and re-entry operations.
- State and local governments must have a formal role in any interagency coordination before BOEM advances guidance or policy on siting space launch platforms on the OCS.
Show all 6 points from the document
- Say something only you can say. The law requires the agency to consider and respond to substantive comments, and specifics are what make a comment substantive.
In the agency’s own words
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is seeking public input regarding the potential use of submerged lands and existing offshore facilities on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) for space launch-related activities, including the siting and operation of offshore space launch platforms and potential identification of re- entry sites on the OCS. This Request for Information (RFI) is intended to inform BOEM's understanding of technical, environmental, operational, legal, regulatory, and interagency considerations associated with such activities. BOEM is not proposing a specific project, lease, easement, right…
The reporting behind this
From More Than Just ParksAfter more than a decade chasing peak color across America, we built the foliage map we always wanted.
Another foreign mining company wants a piece of America’s public lands. This one comes with millions of gallons of groundwater pumping and radioactive radon.
The administration went looking for a sliver of Yosemite for a private developer and finally convinced the rest of public-lands world that if Yosemite is negotiable, nothing is safe.
More actions that need you
Go deeper, free
See how your members of Congress vote on public lands
Every representative, graded on the votes that decide the fate of parks, forests, and refuges.
Open ↗The mapSee the places under active threat
A live map of the parks, monuments, and wild country in the crosshairs right now.
Open ↗A wrong fact, a dead link, a form that wouldn’t take your letter: one tap and it comes to the people who build PLAN, with this fight attached.
Know an open comment period we are missing, or spotted a wrong deadline? .