Climate Change and the Future of America’s Space Launch Infrastructure

The Shifting Ground

America’s access to space is a cornerstone of its economic competitiveness, scientific leadership, and national security. This capability is not abstract; it is tethered to a network of highly specialized, expensive, and geographically fixed ground infrastructure. The nation’s spaceports—the very gateways to orbit—are located on the front lines of a changing planet. The complex machinery of launch pads, assembly buildings, fuel depots, and tracking stations is increasingly exposed to the accelerating impacts of climate change. From the low-lying barrier islands of Florida to the arid deserts of the Southwest, the physical foundations of the U.S. space enterprise face a new and escalating set of environmental risks.

The strategic importance of this infrastructure cannot be overstated. United States spaceports are the origin points for missions that protect national security, enable global communications, drive scientific discovery, and fuel a commercial space economy expected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2035. The satellites launched from these facilities provide essential data for weather forecasting, navigation, and financial transactions. They are also, in a twist of significant irony, our primary tools for monitoring the very climate changes that now threaten the launch sites themselves. This creates a potential feedback loop where climate-induced disruptions to launch capabilities could hamper our ability to observe and understand the escalating global crisis. The infrastructure that provides our eyes on the storm is itself in the storm’s path.

This article presents a comprehensive assessment of the climate-driven vulnerabilities facing the U.S. space launch network. It begins with an inventory of the nation’s key launch assets, establishing their geographic context and strategic importance. It then details the primary climate hazards—from sea-level rise to extreme heat—that pose the most direct threats. The analysis proceeds to a site-by-site examination of specific vulnerabilities, exploring how these hazards will manifest at each major spaceport. Finally, it considers the cascading operational and economic consequences of these physical risks and reviews the adaptation strategies being developed to secure the future of American space access. The challenge is clear: the continued ability to reach for the stars depends fundamentally on securing our footing on a rapidly changing Earth.

America’s Gateways to Orbit: A National Asset Inventory

The United States maintains a diverse portfolio of space launch facilities, each with a specific geographic and strategic purpose. These sites are not interchangeable; they form a national network of critical infrastructure. Understanding their locations, roles, and unique characteristics is the first step in assessing their collective vulnerability to a changing climate. The primary orbital launch sites are clustered on coastlines not by accident, but by the physical necessities of rocketry. Launching eastward from a low latitude provides a velocity boost from the Earth’s rotation, saving fuel, while launching over an ocean ensures that spent rocket stages fall harmlessly into the water. This foundational requirement has inadvertently created a systemic vulnerability for the entire U.S. space enterprise, concentrating the most critical assets in areas now identified as high-risk zones for climate change. The historical advantage of a coastal location has become a future liability.

The Florida Space Coast: The Epicenter of U.S. Launch

The undisputed heart of America’s space launch operations lies on a stretch of barrier islands along Florida’s Atlantic coast. This area is home to two adjacent but distinct facilities: NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and the U.S. Space Force’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). Together, they form a sprawling complex that has been the starting point for the nation’s most ambitious space endeavors.

KSC, established in the 1960s for the Apollo program, is NASA’s primary center for human spaceflight. Its iconic facilities, including the colossal 525-foot-tall Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and the historic Launch Complex 39 pads (39A and 39B), were built to send astronauts to the Moon. They were later adapted for the Space Shuttle program and are now the launch site for the Artemis missions, which aim to return humans to the lunar surface, as well as for commercial crew missions operated by SpaceX. KSC is an irreplaceable national asset, a hub of both historical significance and cutting-edge activity.

Adjacent to KSC, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station has a longer history, serving as the nation’s premier missile testing range since the 1950s. It was the launch site for America’s first satellite, Explorer I, and the first Mercury astronaut flights. Today, it is the workhorse of the Eastern Range, hosting dozens of launches per year for national security, scientific, and commercial payloads. Companies like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance operate multiple launch pads at CCSFS, making it a vital engine for the commercial space industry. The choice of this location was deliberate: its southern latitude provides a valuable orbital mechanics advantage, and its position on the Atlantic coast allows for safe eastward launches over open water. This very geography now places the entire complex at the forefront of climate risk.

California’s Coastal Launch Corridors

On the opposite coast, Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) in central California serves a unique and critical function. While Florida is ideal for launches into equatorial orbits, Vandenberg is the nation’s primary site for launching satellites into polar orbits. This trajectory, which takes spacecraft over the Earth’s poles, is essential for many Earth observation, weather, and national security reconnaissance satellites.

Established as an Army training camp during World War II, the site was selected for missile testing in the 1950s because its coastal location allowed for safe launches southward over the Pacific Ocean without overflying populated areas until reaching Antarctica. This unique capability makes VSFB indispensable. It supports missions for the Department of Defense, NASA, and commercial entities like SpaceX. Beyond space launch, the base also serves as a key test site for the nation’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force. Its sprawling grounds and restricted airspace are vital for both operational space access and strategic defense testing. Like its Florida counterparts, Vandenberg’s operational necessity is tied directly to its coastal geography, exposing it to a distinct set of marine and terrestrial climate threats.

The Gulf Coast Frontier: Starbase, Texas

A new paradigm in spaceport development is taking shape at the southern tip of Texas. SpaceX’s Starbase, located on the remote Boca Chica peninsula, is not a government facility but a privately built and operated spaceport. It represents the ambition of the “New Space” era, designed from the ground up for a single purpose: to be the production and launch hub for Starship, SpaceX’s next-generation, fully reusable launch vehicle intended to enable human settlement of Mars.

Construction at Starbase has been rapid, transforming a quiet coastal area into a bustling industrial complex with massive assembly buildings, test stands, and a towering orbital launch mount. Unlike traditional spaceports that serve multiple users and vehicle types, Starbase is a vertically integrated facility dedicated to an unprecedented launch cadence. Its location was chosen to provide an exclusive launch corridor over the Gulf of Mexico, free from the crowded airspace of Florida. This choice placed the multi-billion-dollar facility in an extremely low-lying and ecologically sensitive coastal wetland, making it acutely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change from its very inception.

The Mid-Atlantic Hub: Wallops and MARS

On the Eastern Shore of Virginia, another critical launch hub operates from a barrier island. NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) has been a center for scientific research since 1945, launching thousands of suborbital sounding rockets that provide invaluable data on Earth’s upper atmosphere. It also supports small satellite orbital missions and high-altitude scientific balloon flights.

Co-located at the southern end of the NASA facility is the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), a commercial spaceport owned and operated by the Virginia Spaceport Authority. MARS is one of only a few FAA-licensed sites on the East Coast for vertical orbital launches. It is best known as the launch site for Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which carries out commercial resupply missions to the International Space Station. The partnership between the federal facility at Wallops and the commercial spaceport at MARS makes this a key site for both scientific research and logistical support for low-Earth orbit operations. Its location on Wallops Island means it is directly exposed to the dynamic forces of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Northern Exposure: Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska

To achieve certain high-inclination and polar orbits, a launch site with a clear northward trajectory is needed. The Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska (PSCA), located on Kodiak Island, provides this capability. Operated by the state-owned Alaska Aerospace Corporation, PSCA is one of only four vertical orbital launch sites in the United States.

It serves a mix of commercial and government clients, including critical missions for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, which has used the site for tests of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. Its remote location and wide launch azimuth range make it a valuable asset for national security and for commercial companies seeking to place small satellites into specific orbits. Being situated on a rugged island in the Gulf of Alaska, PSCA is exposed to the harsh weather systems of the northern Pacific and unique coastal environmental pressures.

Inland and High-Desert Spaceports

In contrast to the coastal facilities, a number of spaceports operate from inland locations, seemingly insulated from the threat of rising seas. These sites face a different but equally challenging set of climate-driven risks. The assumption that inland locations are “climate-proof” is a dangerously simplistic view. The reality is that there is no safe harbor; the entire national portfolio is exposed. The challenge is not avoiding risk, but managing a diverse and geographically distributed set of different risks.

Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert is the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport. It was designed specifically for the nascent space tourism industry and is the home base for Virgin Galactic’s suborbital flights. It also hosts vertical launches of smaller research rockets.

The Mojave Air and Space Port in California’s high desert has a long history as a center for experimental flight testing. It is home to the National Test Pilot School and innovative companies like Stratolaunch. It was the first facility in the U.S. licensed for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft, a method where a vehicle is carried to altitude by a mother ship before igniting its own engines.

Other facilities, such as the Colorado Air and Space Port near Denver and various sites in Texas and Florida, are also licensed for horizontal launch operations, leveraging existing long runways to serve as hubs for the next generation of air-launched space vehicles. While these desert and inland sites are safe from storm surge, they are on the front lines of another set of climate impacts: extreme heat and significant water scarcity.

A Climate of Escalating Risk: The Primary Hazards

The threats posed by climate change to space launch infrastructure are not abstract or distant; they are measurable, accelerating, and multifaceted. A comprehensive risk assessment requires moving beyond generalities and examining the specific physical mechanisms through which a changing climate will impact these critical facilities. The hazards are not discrete events but are often interconnected, creating compounding and cascading effects. A true understanding of the risk must analyze these interactions, not just individual threats in isolation. For instance, a heatwave is not just a heat problem; it’s a water supply problem and a fire risk problem. A hurricane is not just a wind problem; it’s a storm surge problem amplified by sea-level rise and a freshwater flooding problem from extreme rain. This interconnectedness means that resilience strategies must be holistic and multi-hazard, not siloed.

The Encroaching Ocean: Sea-Level Rise and Storm Surge

For the nation’s coastal spaceports, the most relentless and certain threat is the rise of the global sea level. This phenomenon is driven by two primary consequences of a warming planet: the thermal expansion of seawater, as water expands when it heats up, and the addition of vast quantities of meltwater from the world’s glaciers and ice sheets. Satellite observations since 1993 show an accelerating rate of rise, a trend unprecedented over the past 2,500 years.

According to the latest interagency reports from federal bodies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA, U.S. coastlines are projected to see an average of 10 to 12 inches of sea-level rise by 2050 compared to levels in 2000. This near-term increase is largely locked in, regardless of future emissions scenarios, due to the warming that has already occurred. The amount of rise is not uniform across the country. Some regions, like the Texas Gulf Coast and the Mid-Atlantic coast of Virginia, are experiencing even faster rates of relative sea-level rise because the land itself is sinking, a process known as subsidence. This geological settling, combined with the rising ocean, creates a powerful compounding effect.

The most direct consequence of a higher baseline sea level is the amplification of storm surge. Storm surge is the abnormal rise of water generated by a storm, over and above the predicted astronomical tides. When a powerful hurricane makes landfall, its strong winds and low pressure push a mound of water ashore. With a sea level that is a foot or more higher than it was decades ago, this surge starts from an elevated platform, allowing it to penetrate much further inland, inundate larger areas, and reach elevations that were previously considered safe.

Beyond these extreme storm events, rising seas are also increasing the frequency of what is known as “nuisance” or high-tide flooding. This is flooding that occurs during routine high tides, without any storm activity. Roads, parking lots, and low-lying utility infrastructure that were built to be dry during normal tidal cycles now find themselves regularly inundated. What was once a rare event is becoming a common occurrence in many coastal communities, disrupting daily operations and placing persistent stress on infrastructure. For spaceports located just a few feet above the current high-tide line, this represents a chronic, creeping threat to accessibility and operational readiness.

The Intensifying Fury: Hurricanes and Extreme Storms

The Atlantic and Gulf coasts, home to the majority of America’s orbital launch capacity, are no strangers to hurricanes. The scientific consensus is that climate change is altering the character of these powerful storms. While models do not project a clear increase in the overall number of hurricanes per season, they do indicate a significant increase in their intensity.

Warmer sea surface temperatures provide more thermal energy to fuel developing storms. This is expected to lead to a higher proportion of hurricanes reaching the most destructive categories—Category 4 and 5—with higher sustained wind speeds. These stronger winds pose a direct threat to the tall, exposed structures that define a spaceport, such as launch towers, service structures, and large assembly buildings like the VAB at Kennedy Space Center.

In addition to stronger winds, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. This translates into wetter hurricanes, with projections suggesting 10-15 percent more precipitation from future storms. This extreme rainfall can overwhelm stormwater drainage systems, leading to widespread freshwater flooding that is independent of, but often occurs concurrently with, coastal storm surge.

A more recent and concerning observed trend is the tendency for hurricanes to slow their forward speed or “stall” over coastal regions. This slowdown prolongs the exposure of any given location to destructive winds, storm surge, and torrential rain, dramatically increasing the total damage. A storm that might have passed in 12 hours might now linger for 24 or 36, subjecting infrastructure to a much longer period of extreme stress and causing far more extensive flooding as rainfall totals accumulate.

The Persistent Scorch: Extreme Heat and Drought

For the inland spaceports of the Southwest and, increasingly, for all U.S. launch facilities, extreme heat is a rapidly escalating operational hazard. Analysis of weather records shows a sharp upward trend in the number of days per year exceeding 100°F in states like Texas, Florida, California, and New Mexico. In Texas, for example, the average number of triple-digit days has tripled since the 1970s. These are not just marginal increases; they represent a fundamental shift toward hotter and longer summers.

This trend is magnified within the built environment of a spaceport by the “urban heat island” effect. Vast expanses of concrete and asphalt—runways, launch pads, roads, and parking lots—absorb and re-radiate solar energy, making the temperature on the tarmac significantly hotter than the officially reported air temperature. This localized, intense heat has direct operational consequences.

Aircraft, including the carrier planes used for horizontal launch systems, have maximum certified operating temperatures. Extreme heat reduces air density, which in turn reduces lift and engine performance, potentially forcing weight restrictions or grounding flights altogether. Sensitive electronics in both launch vehicles and ground support equipment can overheat and malfunction. For human ground crews working outdoors in heavy gear, these conditions pose a serious health and safety risk, leading to heat exhaustion or heatstroke and necessitating changes in work schedules and procedures.

Prolonged periods of extreme heat are also a primary driver of drought. Increased evaporation from hotter temperatures dries out soils and depletes surface water reservoirs. For spaceports, particularly those in already arid regions like New Mexico, this strains the availability of water, which is a critical resource. Large quantities of water are needed for sound suppression systems during launch to protect the vehicle and pad from acoustic damage. Water is also essential for fire control, dust suppression on unpaved areas, and basic human consumption for the on-site workforce. In the future, water could become even more critical for in-situ propellant production, where processes like the Sabatier reaction could be used to create methane fuel on-site, a key goal for companies like SpaceX. Worsening drought threatens this vital resource, creating a potential bottleneck for future operations.

The Widening Fire Line: Wildfire Risk

The same factors that drive drought—prolonged heat and reduced precipitation—also dramatically increase the risk of wildfire. Hotter, drier conditions create a landscape that is primed to burn. Vegetation becomes tinder-dry, making it easier for fires to ignite and spread rapidly and with greater intensity. This threat is most acute in California, but it is a growing concern across the western United States.

For sprawling facilities like Vandenberg Space Force Base, which covers nearly 100,000 acres of coastal chaparral and grasslands, wildfire is a major and present danger. A large, fast-moving fire could threaten or destroy critical and often remote infrastructure, including launch complexes, fuel storage areas, power substations, and the network of telemetry and tracking stations that are essential for monitoring a launch.

Even if a fire does not directly damage key facilities, it can have significant operational impacts. The threat of a fire can force the evacuation of non-essential personnel, disrupting pre-launch preparations. Furthermore, thick smoke plumes can reduce visibility and compromise air quality, creating unsafe conditions that can delay or scrub a launch for days at a time. The increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires represents a growing terrestrial threat that must be managed alongside the more widely recognized coastal hazards.

Site-Specific Vulnerability Assessments

Applying the broad hazards of climate change to the specific geographies and operational realities of each spaceport reveals a detailed landscape of risk. The vulnerability of a facility is not just a function of its location, but of the specific infrastructure it houses, its unique environmental setting, and its critical role in the national space enterprise. A launch is a complex logistical chain involving power grids, transportation networks, communication lines, and water systems. Climate events can sever these critical links. The failure of a secondary system, such as a bridge or a power line, can cause a primary mission failure. Therefore, a true risk profile must account for the vulnerability of the entire supporting ecosystem, not just the primary assets on the launch pad.

Florida’s Space Coast Under Siege (KSC & CCSFS)

The concentration of critical launch infrastructure on Florida’s low-lying barrier islands makes this region exceptionally vulnerable. NASA itself has acknowledged these risks, sponsoring detailed studies to map the potential impacts of future coastal flooding on its assets. These analyses, which combine sea-level rise projections with storm surge models, paint a concerning picture. Key facilities, including the iconic Launch Complex 39 pads from which the Artemis missions will depart, are at growing risk of inundation.

One analysis projects that parts of Launch Complex 39A, currently leased by SpaceX, already face a notable annual risk of flooding, a risk that could grow to the point of chronic, near-monthly flooding by the end of the century if no adaptive measures are taken. Similarly, Launch Complex 40 at CCSFS, another SpaceX workhorse for cargo and satellite missions, is projected to surpass a 10% annual flood risk by 2040. These risks are not limited to the pads themselves. The crawlerway, the specialized rock road that transports rockets from the VAB to the pad, is only a few feet above sea level. The NASA Causeway, a critical bridge and road link to the mainland, could be overtopped during a major storm, cutting off access. The payload processing facilities, where billion-dollar satellites are prepared for flight, are also located in these vulnerable low-lying areas.

The threats are compounding. More intense hurricanes bring not only a higher and more powerful storm surge but also extreme rainfall that can overwhelm the area’s drainage canals, which are already less effective when high tides prevent them from discharging into the surrounding lagoons. At the same time, the increasing frequency of extreme heat days adds another layer of operational stress, affecting ground crew safety and the performance of sensitive equipment during Florida’s long and humid summers.

Vandenberg’s Dual Threat: Coastal Erosion and Wildfire

Vandenberg Space Force Base faces a unique pincer movement of climate threats from both the ocean and the land. Its launch pads and support facilities are perched on coastal bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. This location is subject to the same sea-level rise affecting the entire California coast, which is exacerbated in some areas by vertical land motion—the subtle sinking or rising of the land itself due to geological and human factors like groundwater extraction. This combination increases the risk of coastal erosion and bluff failure, potentially undermining the foundations of critical infrastructure over time.

Simultaneously, the base’s vast interior is a classic California wildland-urban interface. Its nearly 100,000 acres of undeveloped canyons and hills are covered in vegetation that becomes highly flammable during the state’s increasingly hot and dry fire seasons. A major wildfire, driven by strong Santa Ana winds, could sweep across the base, threatening not only the launch complexes but also the widely dispersed network of tracking antennas, communication hubs, and power lines that make up the Western Range. The 30th Civil Engineer Squadron and base fire department must plan for these scenarios, which could include widespread power outages, forced evacuations, and the destruction of irreplaceable assets. Smoke from a nearby fire, even one not on base property, could be enough to violate launch weather criteria and scrub a mission. Vandenberg’s resilience planning must therefore address the possibility of facing concurrent or sequential disasters from two entirely different fronts.

Starbase: A Future Atlantis?

Of all the major U.S. launch sites, SpaceX’s Starbase in South Texas is arguably the most exposed to long-term climate risk. Built from scratch on a flat, low-lying coastal delta at the mouth of the Rio Grande, the entire facility is just a few feet above sea level. This location, chosen for its clear launch corridor over the Gulf of Mexico, places it directly in the path of both long-term sea-level rise and acute hurricane storm surge.

Coastal risk screening tools, which project the impact of rising sea levels, indicate that by 2080, much of the Starbase area could be subject to annual flooding. By 2100, the launch site itself could be below the annual flood level, effectively becoming an island or being completely submerged. This long-term existential threat is paired with a severe short-term risk. A direct hit from a major hurricane could be catastrophic. The storm surge from a Category 4 or 5 storm could inundate the entire site, while extreme winds would batter the 400-foot-tall integration tower, known as “Mechazilla,” the large production tents, and the vast farm of propellant storage tanks.

Even a near-miss from a powerful storm could cause significant disruption through coastal erosion, which could undermine the launch mount’s foundations, and flooding of Highway 4, the sole road providing access to the site. The very existence of Starbase represents a high-stakes wager against the future impacts of climate change in one of the country’s most vulnerable coastal zones.

Wallops Island: A Disappearing Act

The launch facilities at Wallops Island, Virginia, face an existential threat driven by the rapid dynamics of their barrier island environment. The island is experiencing one of the highest rates of shoreline erosion on the Atlantic coast, losing 10 to 22 feet of beach per year in some places. This erosion is a direct consequence of rising sea levels and storm activity. NASA has already been forced to repeatedly rebuild access roads and fortify the shoreline with sand to protect its infrastructure.

The facility is highly susceptible to storm surge, not just from hurricanes but also from powerful nor’easters, the winter storms that can batter the Mid-Atlantic coast for days. A significant storm surge event could inundate the launch pads and payload processing facilities. A critical point of failure is the Wallops Island Causeway Bridge, the sole connection to the mainland. Damage to or flooding of this causeway could completely isolate the launch site, making it impossible to transport personnel, equipment, or rocket components. The long-term viability of Wallops as a launch site is inextricably linked to the physical stability of the island itself, which is being steadily compromised by the changing climate.

Inland Spaceports: The Challenge of Heat and Scarcity

Spaceport America in New Mexico and the Mojave Air and Space Port in California are geographically insulated from rising seas, but they are on the front lines of the Southwest’s escalating heat and water crises. The increasing frequency of days with temperatures exceeding 100°F or even 110°F creates direct operational constraints.

For the horizontal launch systems that are a focus at Mojave, extreme heat poses a fundamental aerodynamic problem. Hot air is less dense than cool air, which reduces the amount of lift generated by wings and decreases the efficiency of jet engines. This can force aircraft to take off at higher speeds, requiring longer runways, or to reduce their payload weight, impacting mission viability and cost-effectiveness. In some cases, temperatures can exceed the maximum certified operating limits for an aircraft, forcing operations to be canceled or rescheduled for the cooler hours of the early morning or night.

The persistent heat also contributes to the region’s long-term “megadrought.” This creates a growing challenge for water security. Spaceport America and Mojave are located in arid regions where water is already a scarce and carefully managed resource. Current spaceport operations require water for dust control, fire suppression, and cooling systems. Future operations, particularly if they involve on-site manufacturing of propellants like methane and liquid oxygen, would require substantially more. The increasing competition for diminishing water resources among agriculture, municipalities, and industry could create a significant constraint on the future growth and operational capacity of these inland spaceports. The strategic calculus for future spaceport siting is being fundamentally reshaped by these emerging climate realities. The historical criteria for selecting launch sites—favorable geography, clear safety corridors, and restricted airspace—are being challenged by new climate criteria. The extreme vulnerability of new, high-value sites like Starbase raises serious questions about the long-term wisdom of concentrating massive private and public investment in high-risk coastal zones. Future decisions on where to build the next generation of spaceports will have to weigh traditional requirements against sophisticated climate risk modeling. This could lead to a greater emphasis on inland locations, despite their own challenges with heat and water, or perhaps spur the development of entirely new launch paradigms, such as mobile offshore platforms, to mitigate the growing risks to ground-based infrastructure.

The Ripple Effect: Operational, Economic, and Strategic Consequences

The impacts of climate change on space launch facilities extend far beyond the physical damage to buildings and launch pads. These initial impacts trigger a cascade of operational, economic, and strategic consequences that ripple through the entire space enterprise, affecting commercial markets, scientific progress, and national security. The true cost of a climate-driven disruption is not just the repair bill for a damaged facility; it’s the lost access to space and the downstream effects of that loss.

The Rising Tide of Delays and Disruptions

Weather has always been a primary factor in launch scheduling. High winds, thunderstorms, and thick clouds can all violate the strict launch commit criteria designed to ensure the safety of the vehicle and its payload. The Space Shuttle program, for instance, had an extensive list of weather constraints, from temperature limits for propellant loading to rules about launching near clouds with the potential for lightning. Even today, roughly 16% of all launch attempts from Cape Canaveral are scrubbed due to weather.

Climate change is set to worsen this already challenging situation. The projected increase in the intensity of thunderstorms in regions like Florida will mean more frequent lightning threats near the pad. Stronger and more variable upper-atmospheric winds, or wind shear, can exert dangerous forces on a rocket as it ascends at supersonic speeds, forcing a postponement. At Vandenberg, the growing threat of wildfire means that smoke plumes can become a new and more common reason for scrubbing a launch.

These launch-day delays are compounded by longer-term disruptions from infrastructure damage. A hurricane that damages a launch tower, floods a payload processing facility, or erodes the foundation of a tracking station can take a facility offline for months or even years. This creates a significant backlog in the launch manifest, affecting a wide range of customers who rely on a predictable schedule. For many missions, particularly scientific probes heading to other planets, launch windows are not flexible. They are dictated by celestial mechanics, and a delay of a few days or weeks can mean waiting months or years for the planets to align again. In this context, a climate-induced scrub is not a simple postponement; it can represent a catastrophic mission failure before the rocket ever leaves the ground. The increasing probability of weather-related delays directly translates to an increasing probability of these critical mission failures.

The Economics of Climate Risk

The financial costs associated with climate impacts are staggering and multifaceted. The direct costs involve the emergency response during a storm and the subsequent repair and rebuilding of damaged infrastructure. The U.S. has seen a dramatic increase in the number of weather and climate disasters causing over a billion dollars in damage. Past hurricanes have inflicted significant costs on NASA facilities; Hurricane Ike in 2008 caused over $40 million in damage at Johnson Space Center in Houston, and Hurricane Matthew in 2016 resulted in millions of dollars in repairs at Kennedy Space Center. As storms become more intense, these repair bills are expected to grow.

These direct costs are only part of the economic picture. The indirect costs ripple through the economy. Launch delays mean lost revenue for launch providers and their extensive supply chains. For satellite operators, a delay in getting their asset into orbit is a delay in generating revenue from services like telecommunications or Earth observation. The burgeoning space economy, which supports hundreds of thousands of jobs and generates over $70 billion in economic output for NASA activities alone, is highly sensitive to disruptions at its foundational launch sites.

A more systemic economic threat is emerging in the insurance market. As the frequency and severity of extreme weather events increase, insurers are re-evaluating the risk of covering high-value assets in vulnerable coastal areas. This is leading to sharply rising premiums for property and casualty insurance and, in some high-risk regions, insurers are reducing coverage or pulling out of the market altogether. For spaceport operators, both public and private, higher insurance costs increase their fixed operational overhead. For potential investors, the difficulty and expense of insuring a new facility in a location like the Gulf Coast could deter the private capital needed to build the next generation of launch infrastructure. For decades, the U.S. government and private companies have built infrastructure in coastal areas without fully pricing in the long-term costs of climate change. This has acted as a form of “hidden subsidy,” allowing for development in physically optimal but environmentally precarious locations. Now, the bill is coming due in the form of massive, often taxpayer-funded, repair bills and rising insurance costs. The economic models that justified the initial investments are being invalidated by a new climate reality, creating a massive unfunded liability for maintaining and hardening this critical infrastructure.

Securing Assured Access to Space

Beyond the economic and scientific implications, the vulnerability of U.S. spaceports poses a direct threat to national security. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Space Force depend on a small number of key launch sites—primarily Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg—to place critical national security assets into orbit. These include GPS satellites that are essential for both military operations and the civilian economy, missile warning satellites that provide early detection of threats, and secure communications and intelligence-gathering spacecraft.

A core principle of U.S. space policy is “assured access to space,” which means having the guaranteed ability to launch a payload into orbit when needed, without delay. This requires a resilient and reliable launch infrastructure. The concentration of critical launch capabilities at a few coastal locations creates a systemic risk. A single, powerful hurricane making landfall on the Florida Space Coast could temporarily disable a significant portion of the nation’s ability to launch national security payloads. A scenario where a major hurricane hits Florida at the same time that wildfires are threatening Vandenberg could create a window of strategic vulnerability, leaving the U.S. unable to respond to a threat in space or replace a disabled satellite in a timely manner. Maintaining assured access in a changing climate requires a clear-eyed assessment of these vulnerabilities and a strategic approach to mitigating them.

Building for a New Climate: Adaptation and Resilience

The escalating climate risks to America’s space launch infrastructure demand a fundamental shift in strategy, moving from a reactive posture of repairing damage after it occurs to a proactive approach of building long-term resilience. Acknowledging that the climate of the past is no longer a reliable guide for the future, key institutions like NASA and the Department of Defense are beginning to integrate forward-looking climate projections into their long-term planning. This involves a combination of hardening existing infrastructure, adapting operational procedures, and rethinking the future design and location of spaceports.

Hardening the Infrastructure: Engineering for Resilience

The most immediate response to climate threats involves engineering solutions to protect existing assets. These strategies can be broadly categorized into “gray” and “green” infrastructure.

Gray infrastructure refers to traditional, human-engineered structures. For coastal spaceports, this includes building higher and stronger seawalls to protect against storm surge, elevating critical buildings and sensitive electronic equipment above projected flood levels, and reinforcing structures to withstand higher wind loads from more intense hurricanes. At facilities like Wallops, this could also mean fortifying or elevating the causeway that provides the only access to the launch pads.

Increasingly, planners are turning to green and hybrid infrastructure, which uses natural or nature-based systems to provide protection. These approaches are often more cost-effective over the long term and provide additional ecological benefits. Examples include the large-scale restoration of coastal dunes at Kennedy Space Center to act as a natural buffer against storm surge and erosion. Creating “living shorelines” by planting salt-tolerant marsh grasses and establishing oyster reefs can dissipate wave energy more effectively and with less environmental impact than a concrete bulkhead. Protecting and restoring mangrove forests and coastal wetlands provides a vital first line of defense against incoming storms. These nature-based solutions can be used in combination with gray infrastructure to create a layered, more resilient defense system.

Adapting Operations and Planning

Beyond physical structures, resilience also requires adapting institutional processes and operational procedures. NASA and the Department of the Air Force, which oversees the Space Force, have developed formal Climate Action Plans. These plans mandate that all NASA centers and military installations conduct detailed climate vulnerability assessments to identify their specific risks. The findings from these assessments are then required to be integrated into all long-range master planning for facilities and infrastructure. This represents a critical strategic shift. For decades, the approach to extreme weather was reactive. The new climate adaptation plans represent a move toward proactive resilience, using climate projections to anticipate future conditions and invest in hardening infrastructure before a disaster strikes.

This new approach is supported by technological advancements. At Vandenberg, for example, emergency response teams are deploying advanced, AI-driven software dashboards that integrate data from a variety of sensors. This provides a real-time, common operating picture during a wildfire, allowing for better prediction of a fire’s path and more effective deployment of firefighting resources. Similarly, NOAA’s SLOSH (Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes) model provides increasingly sophisticated storm surge forecasts that help emergency managers make better decisions about which facilities to protect and when to evacuate personnel.

The Future of U.S. Launch Infrastructure

The growing awareness of climate risk is forcing a strategic reconsideration of the entire U.S. launch infrastructure portfolio. Relying on a few highly vulnerable coastal sites represents a significant strategic weakness. Ensuring assured access to space in the future may require a greater emphasis on diversification and redundancy. This could mean investing in the capabilities of more inland sites for certain types of missions or exploring entirely new concepts like mobile, sea-based launch platforms that are not tied to a fixed, vulnerable coastal location.

For any new spaceport construction, climate resilience must be treated as a core design requirement from the very beginning, not as an afterthought. This means siting new facilities away from the most vulnerable coastal zones, designing all infrastructure to withstand the projected climate conditions of the late 21st century, and incorporating both gray and green resilience measures from the outset. In the increasingly competitive commercial space market, the ability to launch reliably and on schedule is a key differentiator. A spaceport that has invested heavily in climate resilience—and can therefore minimize downtime from extreme weather—will offer a more attractive service to commercial clients than a more vulnerable competitor. As climate disruptions become more common, resilience will evolve from an operational necessity into a significant commercial and strategic advantage, potentially driving investment and launch contracts toward the best-prepared facilities.

Summary

Every major United States launch facility, from the historic pads on Florida’s coast to the modern commercial spaceports in the desert, faces significant and escalating threats from climate change. The nation’s most critical gateways to orbit, concentrated on coastlines for reasons of physics and safety, are now acutely vulnerable to sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and the increasing intensity of hurricanes. Inland sites, while safe from the encroaching ocean, confront their own set of climate-driven challenges in the form of debilitating extreme heat, worsening drought, and strained water resources.

These are not isolated or future problems. The impacts are already being felt in the form of higher operational costs, more frequent weather-related launch delays, and expensive repairs to infrastructure damaged by storms. The consequences of inaction are significant. The continued degradation of this critical infrastructure poses a direct threat to America’s economic vitality, which is increasingly tied to the burgeoning space economy; to its scientific progress, which depends on the ability to launch complex missions on precise schedules; and to its national security, which relies on the principle of assured access to space.

While the challenges are immense, they are not insurmountable. Acknowledging the risks is the first step toward managing them. The path forward requires a sustained, national commitment to building a more resilient space launch enterprise. This involves making proactive, science-informed investments to harden existing facilities using a combination of engineered and nature-based solutions. It demands that climate projections be integrated into every aspect of long-term planning and new construction. Ultimately, it may require a strategic diversification of our launch capabilities to ensure that the failure of any single site does not compromise the nation’s ability to reach orbit. The future of America’s journey to the stars depends on securing its foundations here on a changing Earth.