The skies may no longer be free for the space industry. Rocket companies like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (ULA) may soon be required to pay a fee to support FAA oversight and airspace coordination, part of a broader effort to keep up with the growing launch industry.
A budget reconciliation bill released by Senator Ted Cruz last week proposes that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) begin charging licensing fees to rocket companies starting next year. The collected fees would go into a trust fund to help the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) acquire more resources needed to manage the growing number of rocket launches as it faces budget cuts for the coming year.
Today, companies like SpaceX are required to pay small fees that cover the application process for launch and reentry licenses issued by the FAA. In return, the FAA clears airspace of commercial and private flights during the rocket launches and along the path of reentry. Airlines, on the other hand, do pay fees to the FAA, which go into the Airport and Airway Trust Fund that makes up nearly half the administration’s annual budget.
The burgeoning space industry is placing an added burden on the FAA, and the authors of the proposed bill suggest it’s time for companies to start paying their dues. “You have this group of new users that are paying nothing into the system that are an increasing share of the operations, and I truly believe the current structure isn’t sustainable,” former FAA administrator Michael Huerta told NPR in an interview in May 2024.
The FAA initially waived fees for space companies to help the industry grow in its early years. Last year, SpaceX launched 134 rockets to orbit, mostly the Falcon 9, and it’s aiming to break its record with 170 launches in 2025. As a clear industry leader, SpaceX dominates the use of airspace over the U.S., while other companies like ULA carried out a total of five launches in 2024.
SpaceX executives have also been the most vocal against the FAA’s lack of resources and its inability to keep up with the growing space sector. In 2023, William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president, spoke at a hearing by the Senate subcommittee on space and science, warning that the FAA’s licensing department is in “great distress” and “needs twice the resources it has today.”
Perhaps SpaceX didn’t anticipate that the funding for those resources would come out of the company’s own pockets. The new bill suggests the FAA charge rocket companies based on the weight of the payload per launch, starting with $0.25 per pound in 2026 and gradually increasing by approximately $0.10 every year. In 2033, companies will potentially have to pay $1.50 per pound of payload. For SpaceX, the fee for a Falcon 9 launch of the company’s Starlink satellites would amount to an average $9,400 in 2026, according to Ars Technica. SpaceX launched 89 Starlink missions in 2024, which would have cost it around $836,600 under the suggested fee guidelines.
The FAA’s AST could use that money as it faces a tight budget for 2026. The U.S. administration’s skinny budget, released last month, allocates $42 million for AST. The FAA’s overall budget request for 2026 is $22 billion, a very small portion of which will be used to expand the staffing for launch and reentry licensing. The budget for the FAA’s commercial space office increased from $27.6 million in 2021 to $42 million in 2024 to account for the increasing number of rocket launches. The AST received roughly the same budget in 2024 and 2025, without accounting for inflation or a continually growing industry. The suggested trust fund could help fill the budgeting gap for the FAA, and allow it to expand its rocket licensing operations.
Space companies have been quick to criticize regulatory bodies like the FAA for slow processes, but now it might be time for them to pay up to launch their rockets on a speedier timeline.
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