S.Amdt. 6457

SA 6457, submitted by Mr. Hickenlooper, aims to add a new section (SEC. 1510A) to bill S. 4784. Its purpose is to require the Secretary of Defense to produce a report on safe orbital launch trajectory options from nontraditional and inland launch sites.

The Secretary of Defense must work with the Administrator of NASA and the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to provide this report to congressional defense committees within 180 days of the Act's enactment.

The report must include the following:

• An assessment of flight safety requirements for overland launch trajectories involving expendable, partially reusable, or fully reusable systems across different orbital regimes, such as LEO, MEO, GEO, and HEO.
• Modeling for debris-risk and public safety for launch and reentry, including environmental and economic impacts.
• An evaluation of suitable vehicles for these sites and the infrastructure needed for vertical launch.
• Cost estimates for activating and using individual sites, looking at both new sites and existing commercial spaceport infrastructure.
• A cost-benefit analysis regarding national security resilience benefits versus the investment needed for heavy-lift launch vehicles.
• An analysis of how these options affect future capability and operational requirements for national security launch providers.
• A framework for integrating these ranges into the national launch enterprise using flexible deployment, dynamic airspace management, and Federal range services.
• The viability of the assumptions and conditions used in the report.

The report must be unclassified but can include a classified annex.