Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
For years, California has been making life difficult for SpaceX. The regulations, the slow approvals, the constant pushback—it all piled up until even Musk started publicly calling them out. Things got so tense that SpaceX moved its headquarters to Texas and shifted most of its major operations to Boca Chica and Cape Canaveral. But even with all that, they could never fully abandon California. Vandenberg is still too important for certain high-value satellite deployments, so walking away completely just isn’t an option.
And now, after years of friction, California has finally done something that actually benefits SpaceX—and not just a little.
Before we dive deeper, make sure to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss any updates on Starship and SpaceX’s other groundbreaking achievements.
SpaceX has been launching rockets nonstop from Florida and Texas for years, but now the company is aiming straight for the heart of the West Coast. In a huge new step forward, the U.S. Air Force has officially cleared SpaceX to perform up to 100 Falcon launches per year from California.
That’s a huge jump compared to what SpaceX was limited to before. Until now, they were capped at just 50 launches a year from Vandenberg, and even reaching that number took years of negotiations. SpaceX actually tried to raise that limit earlier, first from 36 to 50, and then from 50 to 95, but the California Coastal Commission shot them down every time.
For years, California has been making life difficult for SpaceX. The regulations, the slow approvals, the constant pushback—it all piled up until even Musk started publicly calling them out. Things got so tense that SpaceX moved its headquarters to Texas and shifted most of its major operations to Boca Chica and Cape Canaveral. But even with all that, they could never fully abandon California. Vandenberg is still too important for certain high-value satellite deployments, so walking away completely just isn’t an option.
And now, after years of friction, California has finally done something that actually benefits SpaceX—and not just a little.
Before we dive deeper, make sure to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss any updates on Starship and SpaceX’s other groundbreaking achievements.
SpaceX has been launching rockets nonstop from Florida and Texas for years, but now the company is aiming straight for the heart of the West Coast. In a huge new step forward, the U.S. Air Force has officially cleared SpaceX to perform up to 100 Falcon launches per year from California.
That’s a huge jump compared to what SpaceX was limited to before. Until now, they were capped at just 50 launches a year from Vandenberg, and even reaching that number took years of negotiations. SpaceX actually tried to raise that limit earlier, first from 36 to 50, and then from 50 to 95, but the California Coastal Commission shot them down every time.
