The Rocket Riviera

IThe boats before the towers

Louisiana coast, 2040

At the bend in the road, the shrimp boat seemed to be carrying the last of the night out to sea.

Its deck lights trembled on the channel. High above the wheelhouse, the rigging held a patch of paling sky, and a gull followed as though it had an appointment aboard. Elena watched from the window of the campus shuttle, her new steel-toed boots planted carefully beneath the seat. In her bag were a notebook, her internship papers, and a lunch her grandfather had insisted on packing.

He had repaired boats most of his life. When she was little, he could make an afternoon last forever by stopping to speak to somebody at the docks, where the air smelled of diesel and shrimp on ice. She would pull at his hand, impatient to leave; now she wished she remembered more of what those men had said. Which boat belonged to whose brother. Who had gone out. Who was coming home.

How many boats had once crossed this water? How many families had arranged their lives around the sound of those engines? She wondered where the work went when a harbor grew quieter, and whether the people who stayed heard the silence differently from everyone else.

As the shuttle rounded the bend, the boat slipped past a channel marker. Beyond it, the coast opened.

Towers rose out of the blue half-light, their upper platforms already touched with gold by the rising sun. There were so many that her eyes kept finding another behind the first. Silver launch vehicles stood beside them. Roads curved between pale tanks and assembly buildings whose roofs caught the dawn in broad sheets. She had grown up under this sky. For a moment she felt she had arrived somewhere no one in her family had ever been.

NOAA's March 2026 assessment reports over 4,500 active Gulf shrimp vessels in 2015-2016 and under 2,700 in 2023: about 40% fewer. This includes federally permitted and state-permit-only vessels across the U.S. Gulf, not just Texas and Louisiana. The comparable series begins in 2015 because trip-ticket reporting became consistent. Its endpoint is 2023.¹

The money shrank with the fleet. Gulf shrimp revenue fell from $489 million in 2021 to $221 million in 2023, in 2023 dollars. NOAA traces that fall to price: adjusted for inflation, the Gulf price followed cheap imports, most of them farmed, downward. Weaker demand after 2021 pushed it lower still, to under $2 a pound in 2023, the lowest on record. In 2022, fuel climbed just as prices fell, and the federal fleet slid from a 9.8% profit margin into the red. NOAA tells a market story. Rockets never enter it.²

For a proposed Rocket Riviera, the question is how that history should inform the next investment. A region can gain an industry while some residents remain excluded from its opportunities. It can also strengthen several kinds of work at once. Repair businesses, schools, ports, and public services deserve examination for the useful roles they could play across employers.

What would it mean to welcome the towers while giving the person on that boat a reason to welcome them too? A job count cannot answer that. Can the people who live along this coast reach the new jobs? Can the boats and shops already here keep working? And when the next change comes, will these towns be stronger for having welcomed this one?

IIThe shore catches fire

The shuttle stopped at a viewing area on the shore, well away from the launch grounds. Other workers were already at the railing, coffee cups balanced beside their elbows. A little girl stood between her father's knees, looking in the wrong direction until he gently turned her shoulders.

Across the water, a white cloud of steam gathered at the foot of a tower.

Then light broke beneath the rocket.

The light spread across the channel in a trembling golden road. For an instant the vehicle seemed held between earth and sky, too enormous to belong to either. Then a gap opened beneath it. The silver body climbed, drawing a fierce, glistening tail through the morning, and Elena found that she had stopped breathing.

The sound reached them seconds afterward, a crackling roar. It filled the air, pressed through her clothes, and settled somewhere behind her ribs. The little girl gripped her father's hand. Elena gripped the railing. Above the marsh, the plume widened into a luminous fold, its edges catching a sun that had barely reached the people watching below.

She wanted her grandfather beside her. She wanted to turn and find him looking up, his face lit by something he had never had to repair.

Farther along the coast, another vehicle waited upright in its tower. Beyond that stood another. The morning's launch had begun to seem like the first note of something the whole horizon was preparing to play. She tried to imagine this happening through a day, a season, a childhood: one departure following another until the extraordinary became part of the weather of people's lives.

On August 25, 2026, Louisiana Economic Development described a planned $100 billion SpaceX campus in Vermilion Parish. At full buildout, the plan calls for five launch complexes with two pads each, along with propellant facilities, power generation, vehicle processing, and housing. The announcement describes intended capacity for thousands of launches annually, with construction expected in 2027 and a first launch targeted as soon as 2029.³

Texas offers a useful record of how a larger ambition passes through distinct decisions. On May 6, 2025, the FAA announced completion of an environmental assessment for increasing Boca Chica launches from five to as many as 25 annually. On May 15, it announced the corresponding license modification, while keeping a flight restriction in place pending the Flight 8 mishap process. On May 22, it cleared Flight 9 following a return-to-flight determination. These dated actions show why environmental review, licensing, and readiness for a particular flight have different meanings.⁴

Louisiana's project page likewise says that applicable reviews will occur and that the responsible agencies retain their independent authority. Development at that scale would depend on those processes, sustained demand, infrastructure, and successful operations.⁵

The grandeur raises the stakes of ordinary decisions. Where will workers live? How will roads serve both launch activity and daily life? What will frequent departures mean for neighboring businesses and access to the coast? A region preparing for that scale should give those questions the same seriousness it gives the towers.

IIIA name carried across water

Back on the shuttle, Elena turned her phone sideways to look at the photograph she had taken at the railing. The rocket had become a bright scratch near the top of the frame. The water filled most of it.

On the window above her reflection were the words ROCKET RIVIERA.

The name had sent her looking at maps the night she applied. She remembered the curve of a distant Mediterranean shore, then the familiar bend of her own Gulf. Now she could see her face in the glass, overlaid on the water, the letters passing across it whenever the shuttle turned.

She had always thought of a coast as the place where the road eventually ran out. This morning the road seemed to continue upward.

Still, the shrimp boat was somewhere out there. She searched the photograph until she found it, a small dark shape beneath all that light.

Riviera is an Italian word for a shore or coast, with a geographic association with the Gulf of Genoa. The Académie française also records its use for Mediterranean coastal destinations known for their scenery and climate. That history gives the proposed name both a place and a feeling: a shore whose character draws attention.⁶

For Texas and Louisiana, the name could invite people to recognize a larger region of related work. The geography would extend along the western and northern Gulf, with connections inland to schools, suppliers, and research institutions.

Existing institutions offer specific starting points. Houston's Johnson Space Center supports human spaceflight operations, training, and mission planning. NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans provides large-scale space-hardware manufacturing. The Port of Brownsville describes deepwater access, road and rail connections, and experience handling industrial cargo. Each capability belongs to a particular organization with its own responsibilities and requirements.⁷⁸⁹

Michoud also complicates the idea that a coast simply trades an old industry for a new one. Its manufacturing history includes Saturn rocket stages and space shuttle external tanks, followed by later space systems. Knowledge can persist through changes in the objects people build. A regional strategy should ask which skills and institutions could provide that continuity for the next generation.¹⁰

IVThe hands beneath the wonder

Her mentor met her after orientation. Ralph was shorter than Elena expected and carried a notebook with a broken elastic band. At the entrance to the assembly hall, he checked Elena's safety glasses, waited for a cart to pass, and led her along the walkway marked in yellow paint.

Inside, an unfinished rocket lay in sections beneath the high roof. Without the sky around it, its size was harder to understand. Elena followed a curve of silver upward until the ceiling lights shone back at her. An open end revealed rings, braces, cables, and the intricate interior of a thing she had known mostly as a distant flame.

People were working all along it. Someone called for a measurement. A technician leaned close to a joint. Above them, a crane moved so slowly that its load, another silver ring for the rocket, seemed suspended in thought.

Ralph stopped beside a workbench. On it lay a small practice piece, two steel plates joined by a single weld bead, along with a drawing and a measuring instrument. Elena almost laughed. After the towers and the thunder, here was a surface she could reach with both hands.

She remembered a school afternoon, the heat beneath her welding hood, the rough bead she had been embarrassed to show her instructor. He had pulled up a stool and stayed until she understood what had gone wrong with her angle and her speed. It had been an ordinary kindness at the end of an ordinary school day. She felt the distance between that school afternoon and this room close so suddenly that her throat tightened.

"Show me how you'd check it," Ralph said, and slid the plates toward her.

Elena set down her bag.

The most consequential distance may be the one between the school workbench and the employer's door. Equipment, teaching, further qualifications, transport, and supervised experience all help determine whether a student can cross it. A workforce proposal becomes useful when those steps have responsible institutions and funding attached to them.

There are concrete precedents for investing in the first steps. Aransas Pass ISD reported in April 2024 that it had completed equipment installation and training under a Jobs and Education for Texans (JET) grant exceeding $1.4 million, awarded in May 2023. The award supported healthcare and welding together. Welding purchases included machines, booths, a plasma table, and pipe-fitting stations. The district identified sheet-metal and structural-steel welding credentials among students' opportunities.¹¹

Like Elena, students across Texas and Louisiana learn to weld in school shops, and many carry that skill into competition. At the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Texas 4-H and FFA members build gates, hay haulers, and trailers for the Agricultural Mechanics Project Show, and judges score the workmanship down to the welds.¹² At the Rodeo's Trailer Build-Off, teams of up to four Texas FFA and 4-H members stick-weld a small utility trailer in eight hours.¹³ In Louisiana, FFA teams cut and weld at a state contest judged by Certified Welding Inspectors.¹⁴

Much of that talent grows in small schools. The top three teams at the fall 2025 Build-Off, from Newton, West Hardin, and Bland, all come from districts that federal locale codes classify as rural.¹⁵ The Texas Education Agency classified 469 districts as rural in 2024-25, more than any other category, and by definition none of them enrolled more than the state median of 887 students.¹⁶ In Louisiana, nearly two-thirds of high school classes in 2025-26 had 20 or fewer students.¹⁷ One shop class of fifteen looks small. But that same school year, 1,009 Texas teachers taught Agricultural Mechanics and Metal Technologies to 28,579 students, and 446 taught Welding I.¹⁸ Taken together, classes like these are a workforce.

The talent is there. But when school ends, will those skills find a place to grow, or will they fade for lack of use? What would help is connective tissue, a bond between the school workbench and the employer's door, and what better bond than welding, the old craft of controlling fire? That is the fire that will set the Riviera ablaze.

Some of that connective tissue already exists. Louisiana's Fast Forward program links high school with technical associate degrees and approved registered apprenticeships. Such programs offer institutions through which a proposal could be developed, subject to participating schools, approved pathways, and employer capacity.¹⁹

For rural districts across both states, the practical first step is to walk into the shops already running and talk with the people who teach in them. Which courses already prepare students for relevant work? Which instructors need time or support to learn new equipment? Can a college provide the next credential? Can an employer supply a paid placement with meaningful supervision? A trophy shows what a student can do. The answers to those questions decide whether she has somewhere to take it.

VWhat a promise owes

At lunch, Elena unwrapped what her grandfather had packed and called home from a bench facing the water. He answered on the third ring. She described the launch too quickly, lost her place, and started again.

"Did they give you something to do?" he asked.

She looked at the little mark the edge of her notebook had left in her palm. "They did."

He wanted to know Ralph's name. Whether Elena had eaten. What time the shuttle would bring her back. She could hear a cupboard closing in the kitchen behind his voice, and for a moment the whole immense morning fit inside the familiar sounds of home.

After the call, she watched a line of cars and pickup trucks on a road beyond the fence. Someone in one of them might be late for an appointment. Somebody might be heading to a night shift, or to collect a child. The rocket she had watched was far beyond that road now, but the people were still using it.

A law student's contribution is to follow a public promise into the documents that make it usable. Who undertakes an obligation? Who receives its benefit? When does performance become due, and what can happen if it falls short?

Could a parent explain how the investment helped a child enter work? Could an existing business get a fair shot at the work? Could residents find out which promises were kept? Those questions bring the scale of the launch grounds back to the scale of a household.

VIThe water remembers

By afternoon, a bank of cloud had gathered beyond the towers. Its belly had gone dark, but the top still burned so white it hurt to look at. From a corridor window, Elena watched the sunlight slide off the tanks and leave them gray, the color the sea turns just before the rain.

A second rocket had gone up earlier, during a short break after lunch. She could still trace part of its pale trail. Now the wind was pulling it apart.

She remembered carrying boxes upstairs before a storm, her grandfather lifting the family photographs off the walls first. In the frames were birthdays, boats, a wedding, a child missing her front teeth. They had made room for every one.

Below the window, marsh water shivered along the grass. The buildings looked permanent. So had the places in some of those photographs.

What would it take, she wondered, to build something magnificent here and still have a home from which to admire it?

The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority's 2023 Coastal Master Plan addresses continuing land loss and flood risk through restoration and risk-reduction planning. It supplies a necessary regional context for any vision of growth along this coast. The physical ground beneath an investment needs attention throughout its life.²⁰

For a Rocket Riviera, that means examining roads, drainage, housing, utilities, emergency access, working waterfronts, and the habitats on which existing livelihoods depend. Assessing a particular site's suitability and effects would require project-specific studies and public participation.

The FAA describes stakeholder engagement as part of its commercial-space licensing process, including opportunities associated with environmental review. That provides one setting in which people can examine proposals and their consequences. Other decisions about local services and development involve their own institutions.²¹

This essay proposes making those relationships visible early. A community should be able to understand when it can participate, what information is being evaluated, who decides, and how a commitment will be monitored. A beautiful view from a new workplace would be more persuasive if people outside its fence could see their own future considered in the plans.

The shrimp boat needs a functioning coast too. A regional vision should investigate where new investment could support shared needs, and where uses might conflict. Both questions belong in the account of what the Riviera could become.

VIIAfter the age of fire

At the end of her shift, with the cloud bank gone, Elena returned to the water's edge before boarding the shuttle home.

The third launch came in the blue interval before night. This time she saw the steam cloud brighten first, lit from within. Then the rocket rose through it, carrying a white-gold flame above the darkening marsh. Along the shore, faces turned upward. The light entered windows, crossed the water, and caught the raised arms of a child on someone's shoulders.

Morning, afternoon, evening: one departure after another, as though Mother Earth herself were playing with fireworks for the wonder of the creatures gathered on her shore.

Elena stood very still. Somewhere above her, the rocket was entering a place she could scarcely imagine. Yet what she could not stop imagining was the day when this, too, would be remembered.

Would a child in some later century study these towers with the tenderness she felt for the old boats? Would people look at the flame and say: this was how they began, when they knew a little less? What would they have learned by then? Would the age of the spaceship make the age of the rocket seem as brief and brave as a first crossing of unfamiliar water?

She wanted that future suddenly, fiercely, even knowing she could not picture its machines. She wanted to have helped it arrive. And she wanted to tell someone how beautiful this beginning had been.

"Spaceship" names a craft and "rocket" can name its propulsion; the terms do not mark two cleanly separated scientific eras. Elena's distinction expresses the possibility that a later generation could travel and understand the universe in ways that would make today's most impressive vehicles seem early.

Different forms of propulsion already work together. NASA's Psyche spacecraft launched aboard a Falcon Heavy on October 13, 2023. A May 2024 mission report describes its subsequent use of solar electric propulsion: sunlight supplies electrical power, and its thrusters expel charged xenon to create a gentle push through space. That example shows how a dramatic departure from Earth can begin a journey continued by a very different kind of engine.²²

For regional policy, the useful question is what could remain valuable through such change. Schools that teach people to learn new methods, businesses able to qualify for different customers, infrastructure with wider uses, and public institutions that can assess changing evidence would give a coast more choices. These are the capacities this essay proposes cultivating alongside the growth of any particular launch system.

The Rocket Riviera could begin with a small, documented set of partnerships: willing schools and colleges, employers with identified needs, and suppliers able to pursue specific work. Their agreements could state the resources, responsibilities, and measures of success. What they learn would guide expansion. The proposed United States Space Academy, intended to combine technical education with leadership development for the space domain, could eventually become a partner; the institutions already serving Gulf communities can begin the work.²³

The question running through Elena's day is therefore how to build a future people can enter, inhabit, and help change. The wonder belongs in that inquiry. It gives people a reason to look up. The research asks what they will find when they look around them again.

A light moved on the channel below the fading plume. A shrimp boat was making its way home through the dusk. She could not tell whether it was the one she had seen that morning.

Her phone vibrated. A message from home: How was your first day?

Elena looked from the boat to the last bright thread of the rocket, still visible high above the coast. For a moment she let the question remain unanswered. Then she opened the camera, wanting to keep them both in the picture.

Sources

1. Christopher Liese et al., Nat'l Oceanic & Atmospheric Admin., Snapshot: Economics of the Gulf of America Federal Shrimp Fishery 4 fig. 3 & n.7 (NOAA Tech. Mem. NMFS-SEFSC-795, Mar. 2026), https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/s3/2026-03/Gulf-Shrimp-Economic-Snapshot-Report-Final-NMFS-SEFSC-795.pdf. The report covers the whole Gulf; it does not trace where inactive vessels went and does not discuss space development. ↩
2. Id. at 1–4, 7–8, 13. All monetary figures are expressed in 2023 dollars. The report addresses the shrimp fishery; it does not attribute the decline to space development. ↩
3. SpaceX Launches New Era of Commercial Spaceflight with $100 Billion Louisiana Campus, La. Econ. Dev. (Aug. 25, 2026), https://www.opportunitylouisiana.gov/news/spacex-launches-new-era-of-commercial-spaceflight-with-100-billion-louisiana-campus. Investment, facilities, capacity, and dates are announced plans. ↩
4. General Statements, Fed. Aviation Admin., https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statements/general-statements (last visited Sept. 28, 2026) (entries dated May 6, May 15, and May 22, 2025). Used for the sequence of environmental assessment, license modification, and Flight 9 return-to-flight authorization; not a current complete license inventory. ↩
5. SpaceX in Louisiana, La. Econ. Dev., https://www.opportunitylouisiana.gov/spacex (last visited Sept. 28, 2026) (sections titled “Economic & Community Benefits,” “Transportation & Infrastructure,” and “Permitting & Regulatory Oversight”). State descriptions identify matters for further review; underlying agreements were not audited. ↩
6. Riviera, Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (9th ed. 2024), https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9R2742. Supports the Italian meaning and Genoese geographic association; no first namer or definitive naming date is claimed. ↩
7. Mission Planning & Execution, NASA (Nov. 17, 2025), https://www.nasa.gov/johnson/frontdoor/capabilities/mission-planning-execution/ (sections titled “Spaceflight Operations,” “Crew & Operations Training,” and “Planning, Architecture & Analysis”). Institutional capabilities, not a partnership commitment. ↩
8. NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility Overview, NASA (May 5, 2025), https://www.nasa.gov/michoud-assembly-facility/nasas-michoud-assembly-facility-overview/. Supports capabilities and program succession; no spare capacity is inferred. ↩
9. About the Port, Port of Brownsville, https://www.portofbrownsville.com/about/ (last visited Sept. 28, 2026) (section titled “Overview”). Supports existing access and industrial-cargo capabilities; no new supply relationship is established. ↩
10. NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility Overview, supra note 8 (discussing the facility’s manufacturing history). Supports capabilities and program succession; no spare capacity is inferred. ↩
11. APISD Admin., APISD Finalizes $1.4 Million JET Grant for Healthcare and Welding, Aransas Pass High Sch. (Apr. 11, 2024), https://aphs.apisd.org/o/aphs/article/1566861. The award covered both fields; the district’s April 2024 report states that the work was completed in March 2024. No rural classification, championship, or aerospace-placement outcome is attributed to it. ↩
12. Judging & Contests, Hous. Livestock Show & Rodeo, https://www.rodeohouston.com/exhibitors-contestants/judging-and-contests/ (last visited Sept. 28, 2026) (section titled “Agricultural Mechanics”); Hous. Livestock Show & Rodeo, 2026 Exhibitor Handbook 260 (2026), https://www.rodeohouston.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2026-Exhibitor-Handbook_V7.pdf (Special Rules for Agricultural Mechanics Project Show, judging criteria, “Workmanship (25 points)”; PDF p. 261). Supports the show’s 4-H and FFA entrants, the projects they build, and weld quality within the workmanship score; the cited materials do not establish a current count of individual student participants. ↩
13. Hous. Livestock Show & Rodeo, Agricultural Mechanics Trailer Build-Off Contest rr. 2, 3, 5, 9 (2027 show year), https://www.rodeohouston.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/2027-Ag-Mech-Trailer-Build-Off-FINAL-PDF.pdf. Supports team eligibility and size, stick (SMAW) welding of a small utility trailer, and the eight-hour build; entry is capped at 20 teams by drawing, so the contest shows the standard of the work, not how many students do it. ↩
14. Welding, La. FFA Ass’n, https://la-ffa.org/what-we-do/cde-ldes/welding.html (last visited Sept. 28, 2026); La. FFA Ass’n, Welding Career Development Event rr. 2, 8 (rev. 2026), https://la-ffa.org/file_download/inline/b1bf8a03-7e59-4455-84ea-ea523f26e399. Supports two-member FFA teams, oxyfuel cutting and arc welding, and Certified Welding Inspectors as judges at the State Event; the event is designed for Louisiana only. ↩
15. Hous. Livestock Show & Rodeo, Trailer Build-Off Placings 1 (2025), https://www.rodeohouston.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Trailer-Build-Off-Placings.pdf (places 1–3); Tex. Educ. Agency, District Type Data, 2024–25, https://tea.texas.gov/data-reports/school-data/district-type-data-search/district-type2425.xlsx (last visited Sept. 28, 2026) (worksheet “2425_Data,” NCES Description for Newton ISD (Rural-Remote), West Hardin County CISD (Rural-Distant), and Bland ISD (Rural-Distant)). The placings list FFA chapters; the federal locale codes differ from TEA’s own types, under which Newton ISD is non-metropolitan stable. ↩
16. District Type Glossary of Terms, 2024–25, Tex. Educ. Agency, https://tea.texas.gov/data-reports/school-data/district-type-data-search/district-type-glossary-terms-2024-25 (last visited Sept. 28, 2026) (sections titled “TEA District Types,” “Rural (469 districts),” cl. (a), and “Other Central City Suburban,” cl. (d), and the Snyder ISD example). TEA’s rural type turns on enrollment and growth, not distance. ↩
17. La. Dep’t of Educ., 2025–2026 School District State Class Size Summary, https://doe.louisiana.gov/docs/default-source/data-management/2025-2026-school-district-state-class-size-summary.xlsx?sfvrsn=950084c1_3 (last visited Sept. 28, 2026) (worksheet “class_size_2025_2026,” State of Louisiana, category “HIGH,” “Class Enrollment 01–20” (72,743 classes; 64.51%)). The report groups classes by grade level, not by course, so it has no separate figure for shop or welding classes. ↩
18. Tex. Educ. Agency, 2025–2026 Teacher FTE Counts and Course Enrollment Reports, https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/cgi/sas/broker?_service=marykay&_program=adhoc.std_driver1.sas&RptClass=FteEnroll&_debug=0&SchoolYr=26&report=StateState&Campus=&format=html (last visited Sept. 28, 2026) (statewide PEIMS totals, course 13002200 (Agricultural Mechanics & Metal Technologies: teacher head count 1,009; course enrollment 28,579) and course 13032300 (Welding I: teacher head count 446)). A teacher can teach more than one course, and the totals include schools of every size. ↩
19. Fast Forward, La. Dep’t of Educ., https://doe.louisiana.gov/school-system-leaders/ccr/fast-forward (last visited Sept. 28, 2026) (describing technical-associate-degree and registered-apprenticeship pathways). Program descriptions do not establish availability at every school. ↩
20. 2023 Coastal Master Plan, La. Coastal Prot. & Restoration Auth., https://coastal.la.gov/our-plan/2023-coastal-master-plan/ (last visited Sept. 28, 2026). Regional restoration and risk-reduction context; not a parcel-specific suitability determination. ↩
21. Stakeholder Engagement, Fed. Aviation Admin., https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement (last visited Sept. 28, 2026). General participation process; its project list is not used to infer whether any Louisiana review has begun. ↩
22. NASA’s Psyche Fires Up Its Sci-Fi-Worthy Thrusters, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. (May 22, 2024), https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-psyche-fires-up-its-sci-fi-worthy-thrusters/. Historical launch and solar-electric-propulsion example; neither a current mission-status report nor a prediction about replacing launch rockets. ↩
23. Exec. Order No. 14,423, § 3(a), 91 Fed. Reg. 56,737, 56,737 (Sept. 3, 2026), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-09-03/pdf/2026-18141.pdf. Supports the proposed Academy’s educational and leadership purpose; no partnership with Gulf institutions is established. ↩