Public, private, or both?

But there’s no firm plan yet for when the military might get moving on actually setting up a new launch base. “It’s going to take a strong partnership with local and state governments,” Garrant said. “As far as decision timelines, we don’t have anything yet.”

There were 175 orbital launch attempts last year from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Space Force officials project the country’s established spaceports will need to support 700 launches per year by 2036.

A third launch site would offload some of the launch demand from limited real estate at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg.…