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United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin are worried about SpaceX’s plans to launch its massive Starship rocket from Florida.

In documents submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration last month, ULA and Blue Origin expressed concern about the impact of Starship launch operations on their own operations on Florida’s Space Coast. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, has urged the federal government to consider limiting the number of Starship launches and landings, test launches and other operations, as well as limiting SpaceX’s activities to a certain time.

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, called Blue Origin’s filing with the FAA “a patently disingenuous response. It’s not cool of them to try (for the third time) to block SpaceX’s progress with a law.” We’ll get to that in a bit.

The FAA and SpaceX are preparing an environmental impact statement for Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket launches and landings at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), while the US Space Force is working with SpaceX on a similar environmental review for Flights of Starship from Space Launch Complex 37 at the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS).

Those reviews likely won’t be completed until late 2025 at the earliest, and only then will SpaceX receive permission to launch Starship from Florida. SpaceX also needs to build launch infrastructure at both sites, which could take several years. This is already being done in Start Complex 39A.

A big rocket with a big footprint

During the environmental review process, the FAA must assess how regular Starship reusable flights — up to 120 launches a year, according to TechCrunch — will affect other launch providers operating at Cape Canaveral, ULA and Blue Origin said. SpaceX’s final proposed launch cadence from each site will be part of the draft environmental assessments released for public comment soon after the end of this year.

SpaceX plans to launch Starlink satellites, consumer payloads and missions in support of NASA’s Artemis landings from launch pads in Florida. Commissioning a launch pad in Florida is one of several schedule hurdles facing SpaceX’s program to develop a human-rated lunar version of Starship, along with demonstrating orbital refueling.

“I would say we’re doing everything we can to get the schedule to where it needs to be, and we’re working with SpaceX to make sure that their timeline, the EIS timeline, and NASA are working in parallel as much as we can to meet our goals.” she said. “When you put it on paper as it is, it looks like there might be some tight areas, but I’d say collectively we’re working on it.”

Starship-Super Heavy launches and landings “are expected to have a greater environmental impact than any other launch system currently operating at KSC or CCFSS,” Blue Origin wrote. In its current configuration, Starship is the most powerful rocket in history, and SpaceX is developing a larger version, 492 feet (150 meters) tall with almost 15 million pounds (6,700 metric tons) of fuel. This larger variant is the one that will fly from Cape Canaveral.

“This is a very, very large rocket, and it’s getting bigger,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno wrote in a post on X. “This amount of fuel requires an evacuation zone whenever it’s refueled, which includes facilities to other people. (Weekly) launch has the harmful sound levels all the way in the Cape are not intended for monopoly.”

At SpaceX’s private launch site Starbase in South Texas, the evacuation zone is set at 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) when the Starship and Super Heavy are filled with methane and liquid oxygen. During an actual launch, the checkpoint is more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) back from the site.

“Cape’s overall launch capacity will be reduced if other suppliers are forced to evacuate their facilities every time the vehicle is refueled,” Bruno wrote.

We don’t yet know the radius of Starship operations’ containment zones in Florida, but Blue Origin wrote that the impact of Starship’s operations in Florida “may be even greater than at Starbase,” possibly due to larger missile plans of SpaceX to launch from Cape Canaveral. If this is the case, neighboring launch pads will need to be evacuated during Starship operations.

Based purely on the geography of Cape Canaveral, ULA appears to have bigger concerns. Its launch pad for the Vulcan and Atlas V rockets is located less than 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers) from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A). SpaceX’s proposal for up to 44 LC-39A launches “would result in significant airspace and ground closures, result in acoustic impacts felt in nearby operations, and potentially result in debris, particles and property damage,” ULA said.

ULA said those dangers could prevent it from fulfilling its contracts to launch national security-critical satellites for the U.S. military.

“As the largest rocket in existence, a single incident would cause severe or even catastrophic damage, while normal launch operations would have a cumulative impact on launch vehicle structures, hardware and other critical launch support equipment,” ULA said.