What could Kaiju do to stop us from travelling into deep space?

Question

The world's overrun with Kaiju but, while they kill many and cause much destruction, our civilization continues, migrating inward, away from the coasts where the Kaiju typically occupy.

Question is what environments or resources would the Kaiju need to destroy, consume or deplete to prevent us from advancing into space? We would still launch satellites and the international space station would be operational, however, any advancements in space exploration (missions to the moon, a mission to Mars, exploration probes) would be out of the question.

What would the Kaiju need to do to put us in that predicament?

Answer 1

Kaiju could wreak a little havoc on NASA's programs, in that their launch facilities are coastal. Rokketmog, the gigantic devourer of space craft, could wade in a day before launch and just fuck some shit up, then go nap until they have something carted in to the pad again.

The Soviets of course (and now the Russians, though they seem more interested in waging unwinnable wars of aggression badly) were never much vulnerable to kaiju attacks.

Elon Musk (not a kaiju himself, mind you) has his launch facilities in Boca Chica... also a not great location to secure rockets from kaiju. It's on the gulf coast of Texas. It is far from Canaveral so might need to delegate its destruction to another kaiju.

These locations are chosen for their low risk of collateral damage when rocketry goes wrong... there's little chance of a malfunctioning booster or stage falling on a house (though, strangely never zero risk). If kaiju were wrecking coastal facilities though, the FAA might relent and permit rockets to launch from inland facilities.

Which brings me to the conclusion none of you expected. The kaiju could (theoretically) hire lobbyists to influence Congress who would then disallow the FAA from making the necessary exemptions. This may seem unfair, but there is a Constitutional right to petition government for redress of grievances, and little to be done about this disturbing scenario.

Answer 2

The world's overrun with Kaiju but, while they kill many and cause much destruction, our civilization continues, migrating inward, away from the coasts where the Kaiju typically occupy.

And there's your answer. I don't know what percantage of the world's population lives in coastal areas, but it's a lot. In US alone, most of the biggest cities, including New York, LA, Miami, Boston, San Francisco, Houston etc are all on the coast. NYC alone has 8.5 million people. If all those people are either dead or have to be evacuated inland, that's a big problem.

More than this, coastal cities is where the ports are. No more access to ports means no more shipping. No more iPhones. No more cheap Chinese crap you order on Amazon. If you rely on shipments of Liquefied Natural Gas, as many European nations do nowadays, you'll just have to find something else. If your factories rely on shipments of raw materials, no more working factories. If your nation relies on food imports, you just starve I guess.

You can transport goods by cargo planes, but you can't get anywhere near the volume you get from shipping. The global economy relies on being able to transport raw materials or products anywhere in the world, it cannot function if that's no longer possible.

So if humanity loses access to coastal areas, it will certainly mean the end of space exploration, because mankind will have more pressing problems, like trying to keep civilization from collapsing.