UPDATED FEBRUARY 2026
Executive Summary: On October 10, 2025, the U.S. Department of the Air Force approved SpaceX's expansion to 100 launches per year at Vandenberg, overriding two separate votes by the California Coastal Commission, including a unanimous 9-0 rejection. It did so while critical wildlife monitoring data remained incomplete, while environmental justice analysis was stripped from the review mid-process, and while the company's Starship program was scattering debris across international borders. Since this petition was first published, every warning we raised has been vindicated, and the threat has escalated far beyond what we originally feared. The federal government is now actively dismantling California's coastal authority through executive orders, agency gutting, and a new solicitation that could bring the Starship rocket itself to Vandenberg. We are no longer fighting a proposal. We are fighting to reclaim protections that have already been taken from us.

To: The U.S. Department of the Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Cc: California Legislators, California Coastal Commission, California Attorney General Rob Bonta

 
For a family with a child on the autism spectrum, where clinical research confirms that unexpected loud noises can trigger hyperacusis and a full-blown crisis [1], or for a combat veteran with PTSD whose startle response can be dangerously activated, the sudden, explosive force of a sonic boom is a direct threat to their well-being. For an elderly resident with a heart condition, the sudden stress from a sonic boom can trigger a life-threatening cardiac event. For all of us, it is the persistent intrusion on our lives, from the physical shock of rattling windows to the psychological weight of knowing the next launch could spark a wildfire in our fire-prone region.

The argument that these impacts affect only a minority of residents is untrue, and it is an admission of sacrifice, not a justification for it.

When we launched this petition in November 2024, we warned that the environmental review was legally deficient, that SpaceX's operational culture posed unacceptable risks, and that a coordinated strategy was underway to dismantle California's environmental safeguards. In the fourteen months since, every one of those warnings has come true, and the situation is dramatically worse than we feared.

SpaceX launched 64 missions from Vandenberg in 2025, a base record. Eighty-two are planned for 2026. One hundred per year by 2027. And in January 2026, the Space Force quietly opened bidding for a new launch complex sized for "super heavy" vehicles, a description that fits only one rocket: Starship. That is the same vehicle that exploded on a Texas launch pad in June 2025 and scattered nearly two tons of flaming wreckage across the Rio Grande into Mexico.

This is not hypothetical. This is happening now. And the system designed to protect us has been systematically dismantled from the inside.

 
What Has Happened Since We Sounded the Alarm
The EIS Was Approved Over Unanimous Opposition
The public comment period closed on July 7, 2025. Thousands of residents from Lompoc to Ojai, a corridor spanning more than 100 miles, submitted comments documenting cracked walls, shattered windows, traumatized children, and panicked wildlife. An entire East Ventura neighborhood of 300 homes filed a collective complaint about structural damage from sonic booms.

The Coastal Commission listened. On August 14, 2025, the CCC voted 9-0 to reject the Air Force's expansion proposal. This was not a close call. It was not a partisan vote. Two commissioners who had made controversial remarks about Elon Musk during a prior 2024 vote had been replaced, and the new, reconstituted commission still rejected the proposal unanimously. Their objections were purely environmental: insufficient biological monitoring data, inadequate sonic boom modeling, no mitigation tracking, and the fundamental question of whether SpaceX's predominantly commercial Starlink launches even qualify as "federal agency activity" exempt from state coastal review. CCC staff estimated that only approximately 30 of SpaceX's roughly 132 launches from Vandenberg between 2018 and mid-2025 carried U.S. government payloads. The rest were commercial missions.

Neither SpaceX nor the Space Force sent a single representative to the hearing.

Less than two months later, the Air Force signed the Record of Decision anyway, overriding both CCC objections under federal consistency rules and self-certifying that its actions were fully consistent with California's coastal management program. The EPA's Federal Register notice was delayed until November due to an appropriations lapse, meaning the mandatory 30-day public review period occurred months after the decision had already been made.

And here is what the Air Force changed between the Draft and the Final EIS: it removed the environmental justice analysis entirely, citing a new executive order. It dropped cumulative impacts terminology, citing rescinded CEQ regulations. It incorporated Executive Order 14335, signed one day before the CCC's unanimous rejection, which created a federal framework to override state coastal authority over spaceports. These were not refinements. These were deletions designed to insulate the decision from legal challenge.

The Playbook We Warned About Is Now Federal Policy
In our original petition, we identified a three-front strategy: a flawed federal review, a direct lawsuit against the CCC, and legislation to strip the CCC's authority. We described it as a coordinated playbook. We were right. But we underestimated how far it would go.

Assembly Bill 10 died, not because the legislature defeated it, but because its sponsor, Assemblyman Bill Essayli, resigned on April 1, 2025, to become interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. No committee hearing was ever held. No replacement bill has been introduced. That front went quiet.

But what AB 10 could not accomplish through Sacramento, the Trump administration accomplished through Washington. Executive Order 14335, "Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry," was signed on August 13, 2025, one day before the CCC's 9-0 vote. Its provisions read like a surgical strike on California's coastal protections:

It directs the Secretary of Commerce to evaluate whether states' Coastal Zone Management Act approvals should be revoked if they impede spaceport development, with a deadline of February 9, 2026, which has now passed.
It orders the Council on Environmental Quality to develop new NEPA categorical exclusions for launch licenses and spaceport construction, exempting them from the very environmental review process that was supposed to protect us.
It directs agencies to consider requesting Endangered Species Act exemptions through the rarely invoked "God Squad" process for spaceport projects, bypassing the biological protections that safeguard our coast's threatened species.
It requires DOD, Commerce, DOT, and NASA to notify the Department of Justice of any state or local limitation on spaceport development that may conflict with federal law. Multiple legal analyses identified California and the CCC as the explicit target. This is not interpretation. This is the text of the order.

And the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, added financial incentives: Section 70309 treats spaceports like airports for tax-exempt bond financing and exempts them from public-use requirements. The federal government is not just permitting this expansion. It is subsidizing it.

SpaceX's Lawsuit Against the CCC Is Alive and Advancing
The lawsuit that we flagged in our original petition has evolved. After Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. dismissed SpaceX's initial claims in March 2025, the company filed a broader Second Amended Complaint alleging a pattern of biased conduct and detailing CCC enforcement threats, including potential daily fines exceeding $11,250 for operating without a Coastal Development Permit.

On July 2, 2025, the judge issued a pivotal ruling: he threw out the First Amendment retaliation claims against individual commissioners but allowed SpaceX's core claims to proceed, specifically the question of whether the CCC can lawfully require SpaceX to obtain a permit at all. The judge found that SpaceX had "plausibly alleged a ripe, nonspeculative case or controversy" and noted a "credible threat" of enforcement. The case remains in discovery as of February 2026, with no trial date set.

Meanwhile, Judicial Watch filed its own lawsuit seeking CCC internal communications, adding another vector of legal pressure against the state's primary coastal watchdog.

DOGE Gutted the Agencies That Regulate SpaceX
When we warned about the conflict of interest inherent in Elon Musk's appointment to a government efficiency task force, we did not yet know the full scope of what would follow. The record is now clear, and it is damning.

Musk served as a Special Government Employee at DOGE from January 20 to May 30, 2025. During that period, DOGE targeted the very agencies that oversee his companies. Public Citizen documented that Musk held a direct financial interest in over 70% of the agencies DOGE targeted. SpaceX alone holds more than $22 billion in government contracts.

At the FAA, DOGE fired approximately 400 probationary employees starting February 14, 2025, including environmental protection specialists: the staff directly responsible for environmental oversight of commercial space launches. A federal court ordered 132 reinstated. Over 1,300 additional FAA employees took early retirement buyouts. FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker had already resigned under pressure on Inauguration Day, after Musk publicly demanded his ouster following the FAA's proposal of $633,009 in penalties against SpaceX for safety violations. The Department of Justice then dropped its hiring discrimination case against SpaceX on February 21, one month into Musk's DOGE tenure.

At the EPA, all funding actions over $50,000 required approval from a DOGE team member. That team member, Erica Jehling, had worked at SpaceX for more than eight years, including as purchasing director. The EPA eliminated its Office of Environmental Justice, fired scientific advisory panels, and announced plans to roll back 31 major environmental rules.

The man whose rockets are shaking our homes was given the keys to the agencies responsible for holding him accountable. And he used them.

 
The Proof Has Only Gotten Worse

• Starship's 2025: A Catastrophe on Repeat
  Our original petition cited Starship's history of explosions as a case study in what SpaceX's "fail fast" culture looks like when imported to a community. That history has grown dramatically worse.
• January 16, 2025 (Flight 7): Ship 33 exploded over the Turks and Caicos Islands. Debris struck a car in South Caicos and scattered across multiple Caribbean nations. The UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch opened an inquiry.
• March 6, 2025 (Flight 8): Ship 34 broke apart over Florida and the Bahamas after four of six engines failed, disrupting commercial airline flights and raining debris across international waters.
• May 27, 2025 (Flight 9): Both stages failed. The booster exploded during its Gulf of Mexico landing burn. Ship 35 lost attitude control and broke apart over the Indian Ocean. Debris washed ashore extensively on Mexican beaches near Matamoros, with conservation groups documenting 18 large tanks, aluminum fragments, and what were described as millions of plastic fragments.
• June 18, 2025 (Ship 36 ground explosion): A Starship vehicle detonated catastrophically at the Texas launch site during propellant loading, before a static fire test could even begin. The cause was a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) failure, the same type of failure that destroyed a Falcon 9 in 2016. Flaming debris crossed into Mexico. On June 25, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum publicly confirmed contamination and announced a review of international law violations. The debris landed during the critical Kemp's ridley sea turtle nesting season. Environmental groups and Mexican officials documented die-offs of dolphins, sea turtles, and fish.
• November 21, 2025: Booster 18, the first new-generation Super Heavy, suffered a catastrophic structural failure during ground testing and was destroyed. Another COPV failure.

Three consecutive flight failures. A ground explosion that became an international incident. A pattern of pressure vessel failures that SpaceX has not resolved.

This is the company that the federal government has authorized to launch 100 times per year from our coast, and the vehicle whose even-larger successor may be coming to Vandenberg next.

Documented Harm to Our Communities and Coast: The Record Grows
The damage from current operations is no longer anecdotal. It is systematic and escalating.

Sonic booms have been documented causing property damage from Lompoc to eastern Ventura County, a 100-mile corridor. An entire 300-home East Ventura neighborhood submitted a collective structural damage complaint. The Air Force's own EIS acknowledged that launches "have the potential to cause damage to some structures depending on the overpressure levels." Yet no community mitigation fund exists, no independent monitoring is in place, and no property damage claims process has been established.

The projected frequency of sonic booms exceeding 2 pounds per square foot at the Northern Channel Islands tells the story in numbers: 5 events in 2024. 12 in 2025. 24 in 2026. 30 in 2027. 33 in 2028. Sonic boom modeling may underpredict the impacted area; the CCC noted "discrepancies between years of predictions" that call model accuracy into question.

Wildlife impacts are increasingly documented and alarming. Carpinteria Seal Watch recorded five separate video incidents between January and May 2025 of harbor seals stampeding into the ocean during sonic booms at the Carpinteria rookery, during pupping season, when stress-induced flight can cause miscarriage or abandonment of pups. Colony numbers have declined in recent years. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff acknowledged that launch impacts on Western snowy plovers have been "much more significant than what the Air Force had predicted," with damaged eggs found after launches. USFWS also recently learned that launches have disturbed southern sea otters, a separately listed species.

No studies exist on sonic boom impacts on whales. According to reporting from the Santa Barbara Independent, there is "no data or current studies on the impact of sonic booms on whales in this area or anywhere else in the world." The CCC has asked for this data. The Air Force has not provided it.

And two Falcon 9 upper-stage anomalies originated from VSFB during this period: a February 2025 oxygen leak that caused debris to crash in Poland, and a February 2026 anomaly that marked the fourth upper-stage issue in 19 months. Even the "proven" Falcon 9 is not immune to failure.

Violation of Tribal Sovereignty and Sacred Lands
Vandenberg Space Force Base operates on unceded Chumash land, home to over 1,500 prehistoric Chumash cultural resources, including 14 sacred rock art sites with drawings dating back 3,500 years and two 10,000-year-old archaeological sites.

The base's consultation under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act was strikingly limited. The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians expressed concerns and requested a site visit in January 2025. Vandenberg offered dates in February. As of April 30, the tribe had not yet scheduled the visit, and the base archaeologist concluded the project would have "no potential to affect a historic property," effectively closing the consultation before the Final EIS was even published.

Meanwhile, the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, designated November 30, 2024, as the first Indigenous-nominated sanctuary in U.S. history, spans 4,543 square miles along 116 miles of Central California coastline adjacent to VSFB. Its establishment created a direct nexus between expanded launch operations and Indigenous marine stewardship. The increasing frequency of sonic booms, the unknown effects on marine mammals, and the unresolved questions about debris and pollutant discharge into these waters represent an ongoing affront to the cultural and spiritual values that the sanctuary was created to protect.

The Texas Warning Continues to Prove Us Right
Every warning we issued about the Texas precedent has been confirmed. The June 18, 2025, Starship explosion scattered flaming debris across protected wetlands and into the Rio Grande, creating an international incident that prompted Mexico's president to publicly demand accountability. SpaceX's history of Clean Water Act violations at Boca Chica resulted in a $148,000 EPA penalty, a cost of doing business for a company valued at over $350 billion. The company's broken promise on the Texas land swap, withdrawing after years of cultivating public goodwill, demonstrated its approach to community trust.

And while environmental groups challenged SpaceX's Texas operations in federal court, that challenge was dismissed in September 2025. The legal avenues for accountability are narrowing even as the documented harm grows.

 
The Next Threat: Starship at Vandenberg
On January 6, 2026, the Space Force issued a Request for Information for Space Launch Complex 14 at Vandenberg. The solicitation calls for a launch pad capable of accommodating "super heavy" launch vehicles. Only one operational rocket fits that description: Starship.

If SpaceX wins this contract, it would bring Starship's dramatically larger sonic boom footprint, and its demonstrated pattern of catastrophic failures, ground explosions, and international debris incidents, directly to the Central Coast. This would represent a qualitative escalation far beyond the Falcon 9/Heavy expansion already approved. The sonic booms from a Starship launch would be orders of magnitude more intense. The risk of a ground explosion like the June 18 incident, occurring on our coast, adjacent to the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, within wildfire range of our communities, is not theoretical. It is an engineering probability that SpaceX has not yet solved.

The SLC-14 solicitation requires a new environmental review. But given that the Air Force rushed the Falcon expansion EIS to completion while stripping environmental justice analysis and overriding two CCC objections, we have no reason to trust that a future Starship review will be any more rigorous.

 
Our Demands: Updated for the Current Crisis
We are not against innovation, space exploration, or national security. But we insist on lawful, transparent, and responsible partnership, not the regulatory capture and institutional vandalism that we have witnessed over the past year. The following demands are prioritized by urgency.

I. Immediate Federal Action:

• Conduct a Supplemental EIS for the Falcon Expansion. The October 2025 Record of Decision was based on a Final EIS that stripped environmental justice analysis, dropped cumulative impact methodology, and was completed before critical biological monitoring data was available. A supplemental review incorporating the missing data is required for NEPA compliance.
• Halt the SLC-14 Solicitation Until a Full Starship EIS Is Completed. No contract should be awarded for a launch complex designed for Starship-class vehicles until a comprehensive environmental impact statement, with full public participation, evaluates the unique and dramatically greater risks of that vehicle.
• Restore Full Transparency of Sonic Boom Data. Require the public release and side-by-side comparison of all sonic boom modeling data, including the PCBoom and SpaceX 1122 models. Deploy real-time noise monitors on the Channel Islands, in the town of Avalon, and inside representative homes along the coast. All data must be publicly accessible.
• Complete the Missing Wildlife Studies. Fund and conduct independent studies on the impact of sonic booms on marine mammals, including whales, within the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary. Address the acknowledged deficiencies in snowy plover and sea otter monitoring before any further launch rate increases.

II. Operational Constraints and Community Protection

• Establish a Nighttime Curfew. Prohibit routine launches between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. to protect public health and safety.
• Create an Independent Community Mitigation Fund. Require SpaceX to fund a property damage and soundproofing program, administered by an independent third party, with eligibility tied to objective, measurable triggers based on publicly monitored overpressure and decibel levels.
• Implement a Wildfire Readiness Plan. Require SpaceX to fund seasonal, on-call fire crews and a network of remote-sensing cameras to detect and respond to any launch-sparked fires, with particular urgency given the COPV failure pattern and the June 2025 Texas explosion.

III. Defense of State and Local Authority

• Defend the California Coastal Commission's Authority. The Attorney General of California should intervene to protect the CCC's jurisdiction over commercial launch activities at Vandenberg, particularly in light of Executive Order 14335's directive to evaluate revoking states' CZMA approvals.
• Challenge the Federal Consistency Override. The CCC should pursue all available legal remedies to contest the Air Force's self-certification that its expansion is fully consistent with California's coastal management program, in the face of two formal CCC objections.
• Oppose Any Future Legislation That Strips Coastal Protections. While AB 10 died, the threat it represented persists. Vigilance is required against any future bill, state or federal, that would exempt launch operations from environmental oversight.

Your Voice Is Needed More Than Ever
The public comment deadline for the Draft EIS has passed. The Record of Decision has been signed. But this fight is far from over.

Here is what you can do right now:

1. Sign this petition to demonstrate continued community opposition and build the public record for future legal action.
2. Contact your state legislators, particularly Assemblymember Gregg Hart (District 37), Assemblymember Dawn Addis (District 30), and Senator John Laird (District 17), and demand they defend the CCC's authority against federal overreach.
3. Contact Rep. Salud Carbajal (CA-24) and urge support for the Space Launch Noise Mitigation Study Act and continued congressional oversight of launch impacts.
4. Contact Governor Newsom and Attorney General Bonta and demand the state defend its coastal jurisdiction against Executive Order 14335.
5. Submit comments on any future SLC-14 environmental review when the opportunity arises, and demand that Starship operations undergo the rigorous, transparent analysis that the Falcon expansion never received.
6. Support Surfrider Foundation, Gaviota Coast Conservancy, and Coastal Protection Network, the organizations fighting this battle on the ground.

Their coordinated strategy to dismantle our protections is real, documented, and advancing. But so is our opposition. The CCC's unanimous vote proved that the facts are on our side. The question is whether we have the political will to defend the coast we cherish before it is too late.

We must act now. The Central Coast is not a sacrifice zone.

 
Referenced Notes
[1] Khalfa, S., et al. (2004). "Increased perception of loudness in autism." Hearing Research, 198(1-2), 87-92.

[2] WildEarth Guardians v. Bureau of Land Management, 870 F.3d 1222 (10th Cir. 2017).

[3] Anderson et al. (2025). "Acoustic propagation of Falcon 9 sonic booms: Extended range analysis." Proceedings of the 188th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 147(4), 2234-2241.

[4] Hafner, M., et al. (2017). "Why Sleep Matters: The Economic Costs of Insufficient Sleep." RAND Corporation.

[5] Reports from CBS News, Spaceflight Now, and other outlets (June 19, 2025) detailed the Ship 36 explosion during propellant loading at Starbase, Texas, confirming the resulting fireball ignited multiple fires and scattered wreckage into the Rio Grande. On June 25, 2025, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum publicly confirmed contamination and announced a review of applicable international laws.

[6] The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and EPA documented SpaceX's repeated violations of the Clean Water Act at its Boca Chica facility, resulting in a $148,000 EPA penalty.

[7] SpaceX withdrew from its proposed Texas land swap in September 2024 after years of cultivating public goodwill, as reported by the Texas Tribune and other outlets.

[8] California Coastal Act of 1976, Public Resources Code § 30000 et seq. Specifically, § 30240 protects sensitive coastal habitats, and § 30253 mandates that new development shall minimize risks to life and property in areas of high geologic, flood, and fire hazard.

[9] Space Exploration Technologies Corp. v. California Coastal Commission, Case No. 2:24-cv-08893-SB-SK (C.D. Cal.). On July 2, 2025, Judge Blumenfeld allowed SpaceX's core claims to proceed regarding CCC permit authority while dismissing First Amendment retaliation claims.

[10] Executive Order 14335, "Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry," signed August 13, 2025. Directs Commerce to evaluate CZMA revocation, CEQ to develop NEPA categorical exclusions for spaceports, and agencies to consider ESA exemptions for launch operations.

[11] Public Citizen (2025). "New Report: Elon Musk Has Conflict of Interest at Over 70% of DOGE's Targets."

[12] U.S. Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, Minority Staff Memorandum on Elon Musk Conflicts of Interest (April 27, 2025).

[13] Federal Register Notice of Record of Decision, 90 FR 56738 (December 8, 2025), for the Environmental Impact Statement for Authorizing Changes to the Falcon Launch Program at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

[14] Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, designated November 30, 2024, by NOAA as the first Indigenous-nominated national marine sanctuary in U.S. history. Spans 4,543 square miles along 116 miles of Central California coastline.

[15] Spaceflight Now (January 6, 2026). "Dept. of the Air Force opens bidding for Space Launch Complex 14 at Vandenberg SFB."