Americans Are Ready to Win the Commercial Space Race. First They Need D.C. to Take the Shackles Off

When Dale Skran drives by the airport near his New Jersey home, he can’t help but notice the “conga line of planes” taking off and landing: “It’s just zoom, zoom, zoom,” he said. “Every few minutes a big jet lands and there’s multiple runways.”

A leader at the National Space Society, Skran sees a similar future for space travel.

There were 148 licensed commercial space operations in fiscal 2024; that’s about one launch every two-and-a-half days, a more than 900 percent increase over a decade, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

But to continue leading in space, the United States needs to move