The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Security Council is expected to circulate a draft of its recommendations among the affected federal agencies next month, following a review that has been underway since May.
The goal is to set standards and procedures establishing clear roles for the military and private industry at the launching bases, increasingly home to more commercial launch traffic than government-sponsored business. Government payloads have accounted for a declining share of the total number of space launches conducted annually and in 1998 was outpaced by commercial industry for the first time.
The U.S. space industry has strongly opposed any new fees for launches from the facilities. Aerospace Industries Association head John Douglass has pointed out that industry already pays an indirect fee for launching from the sites, in terms of maintenance costs for the launching pads used by each firms space booster. "More fees really isnt the answer" to the question of the future of the sites, Douglass said.
Facilities at the sites are in some cases decades old and have not received a major overhaul since the 1960s. Range radars at Cape Canaveral still use vacuum tubes in some of the equipment and have other parts that are difficult to replace from suppliers that are dwindling, experts say.
When it announced the study, the White House said it would "assess civil, commercial, and national security roles and responsibilities for operations, maintenance, improvement, and modernization at U.S. space launch bases and ranges," particularly at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida.
"Clear and appropriate roles and responsibilities of the government and the private sector, including management and operation of the U.S. space launch bases are critical to the ability of the four U.S. space sectors--military, intelligence, civil, and commercial--to access space," the announcement of the study said last May.
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