The retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America.

Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a $600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit.

It’s also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, according to Chief Executive Officer Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations Group, who has overseen space launches at bases in Cape Canaveral, Florida and Vandenberg in California.

Beijing has financed and built at least 11 ground stations, satellite tracking facilities and radio telescopes in Latin America, according to a congressional report. To Washington, the installations that stretch from Argentina to Venezuela represent a looming regional security threat.

“China has been building dual-use space access facilities all over,” Catledge said in an interview. “We want to keep these kind of actors out of the Western Hemisphere — we want to work to counter this.”

Launch on Demand already has financing from an undisclosed private equity firm that “understands that this is a good investment and is very lucrative, like any other port infrastructure,” he said.

Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader has called the project a national priority as he works to diversify the Caribbean nation’s economy beyond tourism and mining. But his government will not be providing subsidies.

“This will be a 100% commercial spaceport to support 100% commercial rockets,” Catledge said. “We are moving away from government taxpayers paying for everything.”

The global space economy is booming. McKinsey & Co. expects the sector to be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035 — up from about $630 billion in 2023, as lower launch costs allow smaller companies to embrace satellite technology.

In Latin America, the two main commercial launch sites are the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana and the Alcantara Launch Center in Brazil. But other types of infrastructure abound.

China has made space cooperation one of the pillars of its outreach to Latin America, offering developing nations infrastructure and expertise.

A US House select committee focused on competition between the US and China has identified almost a dozen China-linked facilities in Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile and Brazil.

“Beijing uses space infrastructure in Latin America to collect adversary intelligence and strengthen” the Chinese army’s “future warfighting capabilities,” the committee said. It warned that the sites provide “near-continuous global surveillance, supporting counter-space operations, and enabling the terminal guidance required for advanced weapons systems.”

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the congressional report, saying the select committee “has consistently attacked and smeared” the government in Beijing for political purposes. “Sino-Latin American cooperation in science and astronomy conforms to laws and regulations, and is open, transparent and mutually beneficial,” the ministry said in response to written questions.

Washington has at least 76 military installations in the region, ranging from fully staffed US bases to host-country operations that provide access to the US military, according to Army University Press. A Space Force spokesperson said the agency doesn’t discuss specific capabilities or infrastructure in the region but works in concert with regional partners and commercial providers to meet US security objectives.

Founded in 2018, Launch on Demand and its team have designed major commercial spaceports in the US and abroad, helping steer projects through engineering and environmental regulatory hurdles. The company provided details of its private-sector work under the condition that its partners not be named due to confidentiality agreements.

Catledge said the company settled on the Dominican Republic due to its political stability and its proximity to the Equator. The company will build power and water treatment plants that will serve the needs of the base and also provide services to the surrounding community in Pedernales, a rural area in southwestern Dominican Republic.

The space base is key to Abinader’s efforts to modernize the economy of one of the poorest and most remote regions of the country. The government is already building an international airport, a cruise-port terminal, and more than 12,000 hotel rooms in that area as part of a $2.2 billion public-private partnership.

In a national address on Feb. 27, Abinader said it had taken three years of negotiations to reach the “historic agreement” with Launch on Demand.

“This will be pioneering infrastructure that opens the doors of the global-space economy for our country,” he said. “Pedernales is not only becoming a tourism and logistics hub, but the symbol of a nation that’s looking toward the future.”