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The Billionaire Space Race Is Making Life Difficult for Airlines (bloomberg.com)
On Feb. 6, Elon Musk's SpaceX launched its largest rocket into the blue Florida sky. Onboard was "Starman," a dummy strapped into the billionaire's cherry red Tesla roadster. Minutes later, fans cheered as Musk topped himself by nailing a simultaneous landing of the Falcon Heavy's boosters. It was arguably a turning point for the commercial space age. Airlines were somewhat less thrilled. From a report: On that day, 563 flights were delayed and 62 extra miles added to flights in the southeast region of the U.S., according to Federal Aviation Administration data released Tuesday by the Air Line Pilots Association, or ALPA.
America's airspace is a finite resource, and the growth of commercial launches has U.S. airlines worried. Whenever Musk or one of his rivals sends up a spacecraft, the carriers which operate closer to the ground must avoid large swaths of territory and incur sizable expenses. Most of the commercial activity to date has been focused on Cape Canaveral, the Air Force post on Florida's Atlantic coast, where Musk's Space Exploration Technologies and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin base their stellar operations. It is one of 22 active U.S. launch sites, and a number of other locales -- including Brownsville, Texas; Watkins, Colorado; and Camden County, Georgia -- are pursuing new spaceport ventures to capitalize on commercial space activity.
America's airspace is a finite resource, and the growth of commercial launches has U.S. airlines worried. Whenever Musk or one of his rivals sends up a spacecraft, the carriers which operate closer to the ground must avoid large swaths of territory and incur sizable expenses. Most of the commercial activity to date has been focused on Cape Canaveral, the Air Force post on Florida's Atlantic coast, where Musk's Space Exploration Technologies and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin base their stellar operations. It is one of 22 active U.S. launch sites, and a number of other locales -- including Brownsville, Texas; Watkins, Colorado; and Camden County, Georgia -- are pursuing new spaceport ventures to capitalize on commercial space activity.
But space satellites are showing the planes faster routes to get around the problem.
According to the former story, this story is a non-story.
The airlines need to adjust and adapt, just like everyone else.
#DeleteChrome
Frosty pists
"Musk topped himself by nailing a simultaneous landing of the Falcon Heavy's boosters."
I guess he was riding on top of them guiding them into place right? It was Musk's engineers not Musk.
God damn horseless carriages ruining everything...
Sorry horse buggy whip makers of the world your time is over.
So far the airlines complain about anything else using the skies except them. They can work with the system as designed,d which gives everyone access and lays out rules of fair use. If the extra deviations for a space launch caused so much chaos, imagine those natural event storms, eh? Maybe those can be legislated into compliance too?
Here's an idea, rework your old systems to handle flexible timing events better. Save fuel by not forcing deviations, instead reschedule the flight to avoid the time of contention instead of location of contention. A space launch is announced significantly in advance, there is little excuse to whine about it conflicting with your schedule.
If you want to campaign for something useful, work on a FAA managed scheduler system that the airlines can post scheduled flights and pull data from for coordinating the best use of IFR departure and arrival slots instead of the existing system which is a simple request/receive as a first come / first serve for those slots. Space launches can then be required to request and reserve those same slots and allow the planning software to better handle the changes.
The system we have now is designed to put safe operation as top priority. Guess what the airlines prioritize? There's a reason they should never get what they really want.
Doesn't ANY launch disrupt the airspace? Commercial guys are getting faster turnaround on the hardware, but weren't launches frequent enough for airlines to be impacted before private firms came along?
Eric Ralph at Teslarati has an article up right now:
"SpaceX urges Congress to expedite commercial spaceflight regulation reforms"
https://www.teslarati.com/spac...
"Related to the focus of this particular hearing, namely regulatory reform, Representative Rick Larsen (WA-2) appeared to speak for everyone when he mirrored the four panelists’ sense of urgency for beginning the process of reforming federal space launch regulations by asking for an informal meeting outside the doors of the chamber once the session concluded, stating that “it’s that urgent.” In order for companies like SpaceX (and eventually Blue Origin) to be able to sustainably and reliably reach cadences of one launch per week in the near future, the currently cumbersome and dated launch licensing apparatus will almost invariably require significant reforms."
Blue Origin, SpaceX, the United Launch Alliance and the the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) are on it. Expect some rapid change, mostly in approval time for flights (right now: 200 days!) and a reduction in the huge time periods (90 minutes pre- and post- activity) of the no-fly restrictions around launches and landings.
Yes, but NASA launches are just a few times a year, SPACE X and its competitors want weekly or even daily launches.
Launches from the top of a Hawaiian island would be closer to the equator and higher up in the sky to start with.
That is right on the approach to Denver International...
Think prior use applies there..
At least in this instance society derives some benefit from the scientific work. Increased costs due to the actions of others with no societal benefit already occur every day and we tolerate it, just like we'll tolerate road delays due to construction (which does actually have societal benefit).
When somebody causes an accident on the freeway and thousands of cars creep along for an hour they might each burn an extra half gallon or gallon of fuel, not to mention trucks that only get eight miles to the gallon under the best circumstances. I read an article once that a good fender-bender in the middle of rush hour may cost society $5,000 or more in increased gasoline consumption alone. Then you start looking at opportunity costs and the figures quickly skyrocket.
That's just the way the world works.
Airspace has been defined as a public good. Many of us can't fully enjoy the use of our property because of air space considerations and have to put up will all kinds of noise pollution from over flights. To frigging bad if the airlines suffer because someone else wants to enjoy the use of the public good.
Frankly the World would be much much better off without the airline industry. The risk of invasive species and pathogens spreading would be greatly reduced. A significant amount of pollution would be cut.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
So lots of retirees were late for Bingo.
Whenever Musk or one of his rivals sends up a spacecraft, the carriers which operate closer to the ground must avoid large swaths of territory and incur sizable expenses.
They're not launching things willy-nilly for funzies - ding-dongs; they're doing it because they're providing a service for paying customers (commercial and governmental) and preparing for future services. It's not the "billionaire space race" it's commerce and the free market. If it wasn't SpaceX or Blue Origin, etc... it would be the Air Force or NASA directly. Air carriers would have to delay and/or re-direct their traffic regardless. Jesus, get some critical thinking skills.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Sigh... seriously, the headline is clearly written by somebody who either hates space travel, or somebody who just hates that billionaires are involved in it.
Grow up.
You don't hear about airlines complaining about restrictions flying over military bases or other "top secret" places.
Put a permanent flight path block over the area and be done with it. "Our fuel costs jump an extra hundred dollars because we had to fly around a flight restriction which incurred a 10 cent increase on a ticket price."
Womp womp, get over yourselves.
The Bloomberg article makes a point of stating how many flights were delayed and extra distance traveled on the day of the launch, but how many flights are delayed on other days? How much extra distance is added because of bad weather? Without these numbers to compare to, the launch day may have had fewer delays. We have no way of knowing from this article.
Please please please add extra charge for rocket launches. I really enjoy my paid water, carry on luggage, assigned seat and airport and security fees. Looking forward for rocket tax as well.
We just had a story where airlines could save "big. big, money, huge money" using satellite comms to reroute planes. How the fuck are they supposed to get the satellites up there if they can't launch them on rockets?
Once that sat net is up, airlines will just route around the rocket plume like a road closure.
...for airspace.
They should pay for the airspace they use. That is, the rocket companies as well as the airline companies. If you use a lot of air space and cause inconveniences for others in the space, you pay a lot. If you use a little, you pay less. People who buy airplane tickets shouldn't have to subsidize commercial space companies (nor the other way around, but that doesn't seem like an issue at the moment). No special favors for anyone -- not even Musk.
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
fans cheered as Musk topped himself
Musk topped himself? End of his problems then.
Oh, I see from Wikipedia that it has a different meaning in US slang from UK slang.
The FAA closes thousands of cubic miles of airspace for these launches without any valid justification. This is bureaucratic inertia at its worst - the agency closes airspace for launches using essentially the same guidelines they used in the 1960s as though modern avionics and telemetry and radars do not exist. The simple fact is that NO American rocket has veered significantly off course on ascent since the earliest days. Even Challenger, as it was destroyed by its exploding external fuel tank, stayed within the rather well-defined launch area and the range safety systems properly terminated the SRBs within the area.
There is simply no reason to close 90% of the airspace they routinely close. Indeed, even if a launch vehicle fails (rare event) and the range safety systems fail (insanely rare event), a typical airliner will know exactly where the rocket and/or parts of an ex-rocket is/are (both the airliner and ground controllers will see it on radar and the aircraft's collision avoidance systems will be aware of it) and it will be no greater of a problem to air traffic than an errant jet or a bit of bad weather. Doing the FAA thing of boxing-out a huge area of the Atlantic or the Pacific ocean is just plain Luddite.
The solution is NOT to complain about commercial spaceflight, it is rather to give the FAA a kick in the pants and tell them to stop being an impediment. The real heroes of aviation safety are NOT the FAA but rather are the great folks at the NTSB who impartially, scientifically, and rigorously study all transport accidents using technical experts and then openly publish the results and recommendations for all to study and learn from.
It's time to ask: Why is the FAA closing ANY airspace and why is it issuing individual launch licenses? Once it licenses a launch vehicle and provider (like an Atlas V and ULA or a Falcon 9 and SpaceX) then it ought to be as hands-off as it is with a B737 and Southwest Airlines.
What do you think the state of the space industry was without an intercommunicating and easy travelling world ? It would be NOWHERE.
Damn those evil soulless billionaires! If only it were NASA doing the launches, things would've been completely different...
Those are FAA requirements, from the same people, who only a few years ago claimed (and compelled the airlines to claim), your cellphone could bring down your airliner...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
These impact the local traffic in my area (Washington DC) every day. This is costing thousands of drivers thousands of drivers every year. We aren't thrilled about it either.
What about those red painted vehicles with flashing lights? Why do they get priority routing? What's so important?
The article is clearly suggesting a causal relationship between the launch and the cited delays, but it provides absolutely no evidence that this is in fact the case.
What is the average number of delays for a similar non-launch day, for example? Oddly enough, they don't include this information.
Smells like bullshit to me.
Japan 336 people per square kilometer
United Kingdom 266
Netherlands 411
Germany 226
United States 33
Rail works okay when you live and work within 2km of the station. Compared to many countries, the US has 90% less people close to the station. What makes sense in one scenario doesn't make sense with the population density an order of magnitude lower.
TFA is bullshit. FAA waivers and airspace notifications are sent out all the time. The LDRS (Large and Dangerous Rocket Ships) meets (and Tripoli Rocketry) launch non-orbital high powered rockets all the time with FAA waivers and such.
Let's just go back to declaring the airspace always closed like it was in the 60s. You give someone the privilege of flying through a space and all they want to do is bitch.
In other news, I'm pissed that the airlines are always in the way of flying my drones. I think they should yield the space.
Elon has been taunting and teasing them, "Tsunami of hurt coming their way ..." "In three weeks their position is going to explode ..." "They are going to get a rude awakening ...". It is coming to a head, tomorrow is a short settlement date and next week Q2 numbers are going to be released. Meanwhile AWD models are announced, and price has been dropped, and people are configuring AWD, performance options, white interior etc etc.
Goldman Sachs had been whispering it is going to miss the production numbers, now it is saying "even if it meets the production number it does not mean much".
The shorts are painting the picture of wild eyed liberal tree huggers enamoured by con man who is making cars in a tent, burning cash, losing money in every car sold, and trying to make it up in volume. But 85% of the float is owned by institutions, that is 60% of the total, that is 100 million shares valued at 30 billion dollars. It does not compute these seasoned mutual funds and investment managers would risk their return "to save the world". Shorts are still have not started covering their position. So we will know end of next week, how it all ends.
Either shorts are right, stock crashes to 100$, SpaceX buys Tesla and takes it private.
Or they are wrong, and the stock hits 500$, and so many hedge funds go bankrupt we actually learn the names of the people behind the shorting.
Anyway it sounds more like sour grapes story spun up by the shorts.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
And the fact is, that the amount of air space combined with length of time, is minimal. Seriously. Even if they end up doing a daily launch at Kennedy, and then close it off 24x7, the airspace really is minor.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If Only... There were some kind of Aviation Administration, but at the Federal level.
If Only... Cape Canaveral, Edwards Airforce Base, JPL and Vandenburg hadn't opened so recently.
If Only... Rocket launches weren't performed at the last minute, with no warning or scheduling.
If Only... There was some kind of Space Administration, including Aerospace, but at the National level.
(facepalm)!