TL;DR
The United States has officially decided that rocket launches should become routine. A White House memo signed Aug. 20 orders the country's launch ranges to handle more than 1,000 launches and reentries a year by 2030, about five times the pace of 2025. SpaceX has asked to fly its giant Starship up to 456 times a year from a single site in Texas, and says it expects weekly flights in the first half of 2027. Blue Origin wants to fly from Florida several times a week by the end of the decade. If even part of this happens, space stops being a place visited a few times a month and starts looking like a shipping lane: more satellites, more stations, more cargo to the Moon. The rockets and the permits are what decide how fast. Right now, one company is waiting on regulators, and the other's rocket is grounded.
Below the line, for paid subscribers: The full story: where it stands, how we got here and what's dated next; our Odds board on 6 milestones, starting with "Federal land for a U.S. reentry site is publicly identified by 2026"; and every source.