been a major criticism<\/a>\u00a0after details were revealed in a pair of environmental impact statements for the KSC and Cape Canaveral launch sites.<\/p>\nLaunch operations would close airspace over the Atlantic from 40 minutes to two hours, which could affect the Bahamas and Canada in addition to U.S. routes. That could affect 133 to 400 aircraft during peak travel periods and equates to as much as 8,800 commercial flights a year, although half the launches are expected to fall during overnight hours.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the return flights, though, that could cause bigger headaches for airports in Florida and elsewhere as the upper stage trajectory would be similar to how the Space Shuttle would come back for landings. The west-to-east path could shut down southbound U.S. as well as international air traffic headed for Orlando, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Miami. It could also affect airspace over Mexico, Central America and Cuba,<\/p>\n
Landing approaches would prompt a minimum of 40 minutes and up to one hour of airspace closure, impacting 400 to 600 commercial aircraft during peak daily travel periods, which is from 8,800 to 13,200 per year.<\/p>\n
Christopher Oswald, the senior vice president of safety and regulatory affairs for Airports Council International \u2013 North America. which represents local, regional and state governing bodies that own and operate commercial airports in the United States and Canada, raised the alarm on the potential delays in a filing for the KSC\u2019s Draft EIS.<\/p>\n
His organization said the proposed limits on commercial operations could affect between 900,000 and 2.3 million passengers per year experiencing a collective delay of between 600,000 and 3.2 million hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe calculate that the costs of delays and disruptions associated with the proposed Starship operations would range between $80 million and $350 million annually,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
But he was also concerned with existing safety guardrails in place for launches as space and air travel become more intertwined.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe the safety and practicality of using air traffic control initiatives such as ground stops, use of miles-in-trail restrictions, dynamic reroutes, and other air traffic management techniques requires additional review and stakeholder engagement,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
SpaceX for now is working with much larger no-fly zones with Starship, which uses a less documented methane-based fuel mixture on launch. It expects those zones will shrink with a higher launch rate and the effect on airspace will diminish, similar to what it has seen with launch operations tied to its smaller Falcon 9 rockets.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpaceX will continue to ensure maximum public safety while also working to integrate Starship more efficiently into the airspace,\u201d it stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With plans to launch the massive Starship from Florida next year, SpaceX defended its commitment to airspace safety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[558,114,115,139,141,140,554,109,1769],"class_list":{"0":"post-94931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-orlando","12":"tag-orlando-headlines","13":"tag-orlando-news","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-social","16":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}