The United States conducted 178 orbital launches and re-entries last year, but the White House now wants at least a thousand a year by 2030.
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday directing federal agencies to clear the path to that number, largely by getting out of the way.
It instructs them to speed up permitting and environmental review, to co-develop launch infrastructure with private operators, and to make sure enough radio spectrum is allocated to handle the traffic.
The arithmetic is the interesting part, as going from 178 to 1,000 in four years means roughly three launches a day, every day, from a national infrastructure that currently manages about one every other day.
Environmental review is the binding constraint that the memo goes after most directly. Launch sites sit on coastlines and near protected habitats, and each significant increase in cadence has historically required a fresh assessment, which is the process the administration wants compressed.
