The Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska on Kodiak Island is waiting for approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to quadruple its number of annual launches, from nine to 36. That application is still being reviewed and according to a corporation staff member, Rob Greene, a decision is not expected until next year.
If that license is approved, then the spaceport will see more activity and residents will likely see more road closures. Christine Burton has a family home on Narrow Cape, roughly 50 miles south of Kodiak, neighboring the spaceport. She said the spaceport has limited access to Fossil Beach and other local recreational areas on the road system.
"It used to be you could go year-round; it didn’t matter," Burton told Adam Federman with Type Investigations. "But now it’s kind of on the whim of the rocket launch. If they have something going on, they can close access to that section of the island now.”
During the last launch in August of 2025, Burton said she was prevented from leaving her own property, which is connected to the main road through the spaceport, and she was given little advance notice about the road closure.
So many locals were upset about road closures several years ago that the public pushed to ensure vehicle access on the final five-mile section of the road, between Pasagshak and the Burton Ranch, was included in the 2020-2030 Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska’s masterplan. That document, which was developed with input from the Kodiak Island Borough and members of the public, was meant to “ensure community interests and concerns were addressed, according to the Alaska Aerospace Corporation's 2021 annual report.
From 2019 to the end of 2020, public workshops were held so that community members could share their input. Kodiak Island Borough Mayor, Jared Griffin, has lived in Kodiak for twenty years, but he didn’t participate in those workshops. And although he said communication from the spaceport about road closures has gotten better, it’s still a community concern.
“So in the past, the spaceport has not been very good about communicating when those closures are going to be," he told Adam Federman with Type Investigations. "But you know, we just mind it when we drive out 45 minutes, just to find that the road is closed, right?”
For transparency, Griffin is also the general manager of KMXT radio station. Per KMXT’s policy, he does not have any editorial influence over news stories and doesn’t review them before they air.
Other than further limiting access to Kodiak’s only road to the southeastern point of the island, residents are also concerned that more activity at the spaceport will negatively impact critical salmon stocks, marine mammals and wild game in the area.
Matt Van Daele, the natural resources director for the Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak, recently told Alaska Aerospace board members during their Aug. 28 board meeting, that he’s very concerned about how the corporation’s future plans could harm gray whales.
“We’re very concerned about the barge landing and the boat launch and its location," he said. "It’s good to hear that it might not be as big or have the footprint that was described for it in 2013 and then in 2019. But that is one of the most critical areas for gray whale feeding, and as many of you probably know, gray whales are having a really rough time.”
Gray whales have been washing up dead on Kodiak Island beaches for the past several summers, mostly showing signs of starvation. They’re part of a larger trend of emaciated, dead whales that triggered an unusual mortality event from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2019 to 2023.
And adding a barge landing and increasing vessel traffic into Pasagshak Bay can bring the risk of vessel strikes for these migrating whales too.
But John Oberst, the CEO and president of Alaska Aerospace, said he’s considering building a barge landing in order to reduce the corporation’s impact on the island’s road system.
“A barge landing is basically a hard surface going into the water. It may have some low-level rock on each side to guide a barge in, but it would be a landing craft and the front ramp would go down, you’d have a hard surface where you could roll off," he said. "Pasasgshak has been historically what Alaska Aerospace has looked at before I got here. There’s engineering studies on it from 10 years ago.”
The idea for building a barge landing in Pasagshak Bay, less than five miles away from the spaceport, was first proposed in 2013 according to documents from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Construction didn’t move ahead and the project was put on the shelf.
But on March 26, Alaska’s lone Representative in the U.S. House, Nick Begich, requested $3.5 million from Congress to revive the idea. He called the barge landing study in Pasagshak Bay an, “appropriate use of taxpayer funds” since the study will, “support safer and more efficient delivery of oversized cargo and reduce heavy-haul traffic impacts on local roads.”
Some locals like Mike Brechan, who have homes in Pasagshak roughly forty road miles south of Kodiak, aren’t so sure. Brechan is part of a group of dozens of residents who formed the Pasagshak Bridge Association and paid for a bridge to be put in decades ago so they could access their properties that sit between Pasagshak River and the bay. In a letter he sent to Rep. Begich in August, Brechan said the association, “didn’t build a bridge on a beach forty miles out of town to have it turned into an industrial area.”
He’s concerned about the conflicts the barge landing will create for local property owners and the negative impacts it will have on the Pasagshak salmon runs. So, Brechan told Oberst at the most recent Alaska Aerospace Corporation board meeting that the corporation should build a barge landing at Narrow Cape, a few miles away instead.
“I've been a strong supporter of the launch complex for our community for a long time. I won't lie about how it works or what it does, and I'm not really concerned about it," Brechan said. "I am really concerned about putting [a] launch facility at our bay in Pasagshak.”
Stacy Studebaker said via email: “Mr. Brechan expresses the views of most of our members of the Pasagshak Bridge Association. In fact, I don’t know anyone in Pasagshak who is for it [the barge landing].”
Oberst said the barge landing study will look at other viable locations for a dock, like near the spaceport, not just in Pasagshak Bay.
“I think in a perfect world, a barge landing in Narrow Cape would be a much shorter distance out to the site and I’m interested in looking at that as an option," Oberst said. "Pasagshak is protected and that’s why it was looked at historically. It doesn’t have to be there, and there may be other options.”
Regardless of where the potential barge landing ends up, Alaska Aerospace is looking to reduce the amount of materials it brings into its spaceport by road. The corporation ships rocket materials, which are sometimes hazardous, to the island either by air or by barge and then drives them roughly 50 miles from Kodiak to the spaceport.
Another way to transport those materials, Oberst said, is for the spaceport to build an airstrip somewhere on the more than 3,700 acres of state land at Narrow Cape.
“Over the last, I’d say, year and a half there’s been a lot of requirements popping up, both from a state perspective and also a national perspective, that brought the airstrip to a higher level of priority for both the state and the nation," Oberst said during
a live call-in show on KMXT on Sept. 22.
He also said the Coast Guard is interested in using an airstrip at the spaceport for its operations and training. Similarly, the U.S. Air Force has expressed interest in using several airstrips spread around the state for resiliency according to Oberst.
Omar Faba, a spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard Base Kodiak and Arctic District said via email they are aware that the corporation is interested in constructing an airstrip at Narrow Cape. But, “at this time, Air Station Kodiak does not have a defined operational requirement for an airstrip at Narrow Cape. Additionally, the Coast Guard has no formal operational agreement, contract, or financial commitment related to the use, funding, or development of a future airstrip at the spaceport,” he wrote.
The potential airstrip would also allow the spaceport to do horizontal launches, which involve using an airplane to carry a rocket into the air before launching it. That launch option could attract more customers like Fenix Space, a startup out of California. Oberst said Fenix Space wants to try launching a rocket in Kodiak by towing it behind an airplane, also known as a tow-launch, by the end of 2027.
“So we have all the facilities out there to process payloads, to fuel rockets, and if we can use an airstrip to take off with those horizontally and launch in the Pacific from our range, we're utilizing all of our assets out there, and we're maximizing our capability," Oberst said. "And instead of encumbering a launch pad, we can actually add capacity by taking off from an airstrip.”
But more launch activities and rocket tests mean more road closures, which Kodiak residents have pushed back against for years. During previous launches, Alaska Aerospace has closed up to seven miles of the island’s only road from Pasagshak to the southeastern end, which includes the only land access to popular public beaches, trails, and the spaceport.
Carolyn Heitman has advocated for public access and transparency at the spaceport going back to the 1990s when it was first established. And she said the corporation will close even more sections of the road if it puts in a barge landing.
"If they have a barge area at Pasagshak and someone wants to come out camping, or just to go fishing, what’s going to happen to that road? I mean, because they’re going to have liquid fuels and all kinds of whatever’s on there; they’re going to have to close the road,” Heitman said.
Oberst said he has a workaround for that too – establishing a second road or using an older road from decades ago, that goes around the spaceport to the beaches on Narrow Cape.
“That would also minimize the amount of closures. If we're doing a fueling operation or something that is considered hazardous, where we need a certain radius around it down at the launch pads, we may have to close down that Burton Road and restrict transit. We don't like doing that," he said. "If you have the old road, the original Narrow Cape Road, it would minimize a lot of the impact of closures.”
Nothing official has been worked out between the corporation and the Alaska Department of Transportation, which owns the road through the spaceport. A regional director for the state department, Vicky Roberts, said via email that DOT shared a draft memorandum of agreement with Alaska Aerospace earlier this year although no agreement has been finalized yet and discussions remain ongoing. According to Roberts, the proposed agreement would involve DOT retaining ownership and responsibility for maintaining the Pasagshak road, while the corporation would provide funding to improve parts of the road.
There’s a potential tourism element that could be developed too, which Oberst said he’s excited about – providing a public viewing area at the Narrow Cape Lodge, also known locally as the space hotel. The lodge, which is owned by Bernie Karl of Fairbanks, could be a venue where locals can watch future rocket launches from a safe distance, Oberst told KMXT listeners during a call-in show on Sept. 22.
But so far this idea and several others from Oberst, have not been discussed with the public or during open meetings where residents can give feedback.
Heitman, the transparency advocate, said in years past entities that were launching at the spaceport, like the Missile Defense Agency, would hold public meetings for residents to express their concerns.
"That doesn’t happen anymore. You don’t see Rocket Lab holding a public meeting to get some opinions," she said. "I mean this is all on state land, and the locals have no say so.”
A spokesperson for Rocket Lab, Murielle Baker, did not respond to KMXT’s requests for comment.
Oberst told attendees at the most recent Alaska Aerospace Corporation board meeting on Aug. 28 that he plans to hold community meetings in Kodiak, separate from the corporation’s quarterly board meetings.
But none have been announced yet. And until the spaceport resumes meetings in Kodiak instead of on-site, more than an hour drive away from town, Heitman said the corporation is avoiding public input.
“Why don't they have it in the evening time where the town people can go to their meetings and ask questions? I mean, it's a workday. Who's going to drive out to the launch site for a meeting at 9 o'clock in the morning? So that, to me, is a way to deter the public; less people knowing what’s going on," Heitman said.
Former Borough Assembly member, Tuck Bonney, wrote an op-ed in the Kodiak Daily Mirror in August urging Oberst and spaceport officials to schedule a public meeting to address these concerns with the community.
Despite public pushback, Oberst believes that the spaceport can benefit the Kodiak Island Borough and its residents.
One example is what he calls a boon for Kodiak - the contract with Rocket Lab that was announced this summer to host government launches at the spaceport. Up to 18 launches will take place between now and the end of 2028 for missile defense testing, which will bring off-island staff from the private space company in California, government officials and potentially other customers to Kodiak.
Oberst said Rocket Lab’s diversification in building solar panels for satellites, launching satellite systems, and its participation in NASA and U.S. Spaceforce programs, makes them a great partner for Kodiak.
“They care. They want to be part of the community. They want to contribute to the community," he said. "Okay, the biggest part of Rocket Lab is it's the safest rocket out there. They've got a track record that's remarkable. So as a partner here, I couldn’t think of a better one.”
Heitman said previous leaders of the corporation have been promising local economic benefits for years, but not much has actually materialized.
“I don't see that it's helped our local economy that much. Our taxes haven't gone down," she said.
Because the spaceport sits on state land, and Alaska Aerospace is a state entity, they are exempt from paying taxes to the local government. Kodiak Island Borough Mayor Jared Griffin said he’s been pushing for the corporation to voluntarily make payment in lieu of taxes, also known as PILT, to the Kodiak Island Borough through the federal government.
Oberst said he’s exploring that possibility.
“I think PILT has to be part of the future, and so I have talked to the borough mayor about it, and we're going to find a way to work that in. I also think that if we can tie our success to the borough, and when we win, they win; I think that's the win-win scenario that I'm looking for," Oberst said.
Editor's note: This series is a collaboration between KMXT and Type Investigations and was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
