The Federal Aviation Administration announced plans to drastically reduce paperwork for launch companies to get licensed, and several of its five proposed fixes touch operations that play out every week along the Space Coast: booster landings, lightning, and the blast analyses that protect windows in nearby towns.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced the proposals Oct. 6. All five appeared in the Federal Register a day earlier as notices of proposed rulemaking amending Part 450, the launch and reentry licensing framework that took effect in March 2021. Public comments on each are due Nov. 4.

Follow the link below to read the original announcement and rule change proposals in their entirety:

Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Announces Five Actions to Accelerate Commercial Space Licensing

“We can’t unlock the final frontier if we let red tape hold American innovators back from leading the way,” Duffy said in a statement. The FAA says its public safety limits do not change under any of the proposals, which instead target how operators prove they meet them.

The five proposals

1. Cut the paperwork in flight safety reviews

Flight safety analyses are meant to show that a launch will not expose the public to unacceptable risk. They can include roughly a dozen separate reviews covering debris, toxic releases, blast effects, trajectories and other hazards.

FAA now requires six categories of supporting documentation for each analytical method.

The proposal would keep three: the science and statistics behind the method, its assumptions and proof that it has been validated.

The other three — model fidelity, comparisons between testing and real flight conditions, and how risk reductions were credited — could be addressed once for the overall analysis. Benchmark comparisons would be required only when uncertainty could materially affect the result.

DOT describes the change as combining three safety analyses into one submission. The underlying analyses would remain; most of the savings would come from eliminating duplicate paperwork.

2. Simplify “physical containment”

Physical containment applies when a vehicle does not have enough energy for its hazards to reach the public.

FAA says the current rule is contradictory. It allows a probabilistic hazard area to exclude extremely unlikely risks, but also requires every possible hazard to remain inside that same area.

The proposal would let operators instead define the hazard area using the vehicle’s maximum possible energy, avoiding a full probabilistic analysis.

The area would still have to be cleared of people, and operators would still need a validated method backed by representative data.

FAA points to a first stage making its final landing burn toward a drone ship as one example. The change would also cover reentry vehicles, which the agency says were mistakenly left out of the 2020 rule.

3. Ease lightning rules for returning vehicles

Operators now deal with lightning in one of two ways: avoid it through launch weather rules or build the vehicle to survive a strike.

FAA is proposing a third option for descending vehicles.

If a returning vehicle reaches altitudes where lightning is possible but cannot physically leave an area already cleared of the public — even if struck or damaged — no additional lightning mitigation would be required for that phase.

FAA has already approved similar cases individually through “equivalent level of safety” findings. The new rule would make that pathway generally available, including for first-stage returns.

4. Analyze where people are, not where they might be

Far-field overpressure is the risk that a blast or focused shock wave could break windows miles away and injure people inside buildings.

Operators must identify locations where casualty risk reaches at least 1 in 1 million for the public, or 1 in 100,000 for workers at nearby operations.

The current rule refers to the “hypothetical” location of people who could be exposed. Some applicants have taken that to mean they must account for places where people might be in the future.

FAA wants to delete the word “hypothetical.”

The agency says the intent was always to analyze actual locations, not speculate about future development.

5. Move licensing online

FAA is building a new Licensing Electronic Application Portal, or LEAP.

The problem: current regulations recognize only paper, email or physical storage devices for submitting applications. Using the new portal would technically require a waiver.

The proposal would allow any electronic filing method approved by the FAA administrator and eliminate paper submissions altogether.

FAA says no licensed operator has filed on paper in 20 years.

Email and physical storage devices would remain acceptable for now, though the agency is seeking comment on whether LEAP should eventually become mandatory. The same rules would also apply to waiver requests and safety element approvals.

How to comment

Anyone can comment on any of the five proposals through Nov. 4 at regulations.gov, by mail or by fax. Comments are posted publicly, including any personal information they contain. FAA says the most useful comments cite a specific part of a proposal, explain the requested change and include supporting data.

• Flight safety analysis: FAA-2026-9936
• Physical containment: FAA-2026-9934
• Lightning exception: FAA-2026-9940
• Overpressure clarification: FAA-2026-9941
• Electronic applications: FAA-2026-9935

The FAA contact for all five is Lisa E. Cacciatore of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, (202) 880-1489.