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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.
The airlines need to adjust and adapt, just like everyone else.
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Sorry horse buggy whip makers of the world your time is over.
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.
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
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.
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.
Airlines love to blame their efficiency problems on everyone else. Gee, I thought space programs were were supposed to be an insignificant part of the economy. I suppose they were, back in the days when we had to sit around waiting out NASA's endless delays (see adjacent article on the JWST project). So now that private enterprise is upgrading the game, we are to believe that their launches are suddenly an obstacle to the friendly skies of commercial aviation?
Airframe manufacturers have a new generation of large, high efficiency aircraft on offer. So long as airlines would rather cram us into puddle-jumpers on major routes instead of buying the new planes, those crowded skies are their own fault.