California vs. Space X

 Tech Crunch:

SpaceX has filed a lawsuit against a California agency this week after the body rejected a proposal to increase the company’s launches from the state’s coastline to 50 per year.

The California Coastal Commission (CCC) made its decision at an October 10 meeting, despite the U.S. Air Force (USAF) endorsing the plan on the grounds that more launches of Starlink and Starshield, the defense-focused unit, are critical to national security.

In the lawsuit, SpaceX says that the commission engaged in “naked political discrimination” when some commissioners cited the political activity of CEO Elon Musk, while also attempting to unlawfully regulate federal agency activities. The CCC declined to comment for this story. SpaceX did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

The first part of the complaint has gotten most of the headlines, and SpaceX will need to prove in court that the commission’s decision was substantially influenced by Musk’s politics. But the second part is arguably more substantial: What is the final legal authority over launch activities on a defense base, and do those activities count as federal or private when conducted by a commercial entity on behalf of the Department of Defense (DoD)?

SpaceX and the USAF say that launch cadence at Vandenberg Space Force base is a “federal agency activity” because of the capabilities of Starlink and the company’s launches of other national security payloads, even though Starlink is also a commercial product.

Under this interpretation, the USAF would simply need to submit a certification stating that the proposed launches are consistent with state policy.
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California is currently in the grip of left-wing climate kooks.  Musk who now lives in Texas should consider more launches from South Texas sites.  He is a smart guy and could probably make it work.  However the Federal Courts should rule against the California decision to restrict Space X launches,  It should be considered a national security issue.

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ELON MUSK: "SpaceX competed and won for a $42B award to deliver rural broadband. They revoked the award. We would have been able to provide Starlink terminals and rural broadband and they revoked the award. To date out of that $42 billion allocation the amount of people who have received internet has been has been zero. There was also a nationwide initiative for superchargers -- they made like 10. There are so many examples of wastes of money. The money goes to bureaucrats and consultants and nothing gets done. The opportunity to reduce government waste is easy, because there's so much of it."