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America's Space Launch Infrastructure: A Critical Infrastructure Crisis?
- ICIT Research
- 11 minutes ago
- 2 min read
July 2026
By Sam Berryessa, Hugo Holopainen, Brett Freedman
America’s economy, military, communications networks, financial systems, and emergency services increasingly depend on space-based assets, but the infrastructure that gets those assets to orbit remains dangerously concentrated. Launch is often understood through rockets, but the entire system includes launch pads, integration hangars, propellant pipelines, payload processing facilities, tracking ranges, roads, bridges, and power grids. These systems function as transportation infrastructure for the space economy, yet capacity constraints, aging facilities, and limited redundancy are creating a chokepoint for national security and economic resilience.
The United States has built extraordinary resilience in orbit through proliferated satellite architectures, but that resilience depends on fragile infrastructure on the ground. With launch activity concentrated around a small number of providers and ranges, a major accident, infrastructure failure, or prolonged grounding could sharply reduce America’s ability to replenish, deploy, or protect critical space systems.
ICIT's latest Op-ed investigates the current launch environment and the most critical areas at risk. Addressing this risk requires sustained investment in launch infrastructure, development of additional launch sites, continued support for new launch providers, and formal recognition that space systems and launch infrastructure are critical infrastructure.
About ICIT
The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)3think tank with the mission of modernizing, securing, and making resilient critical infrastructure that provides for people’s foundational needs. ICIT takes no institutional positions on policy matters. Rather than advocate, ICIT is dedicated to being a resource for the organizations and communities that share our mission. By applying a people-centric lens to critical infrastructure research and decision making, our work ensures that modernization and security investments have a lasting, positive impact on society. Learn more at www.icitech.org.
