PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - SpaceX flight testing in South Texas
View Single Post
Old 16th May 2025 | 18:19
  #1058 (permalink)  
meleagertoo
Community Builder
5 Anniversary
 
Joined: Mar 2018
Posts: 2,259
Likes: 1,165
From: Central UK
The first sight of that informative map immediately shouts to me, 'If these guys want to fire space-shots on a frequent basis" (as in dozens/scores per year, rather than three or four) "then they're simply in the wrong place."

Surely it just isn't workable (or fair) to disrupt that much commercial airspace and airways for hours on end on a frequent basis? The concentration of airways out of Miami and over the Caribbean is intense - and with the literally last-minute maybe-maybe not nature of space-shots sometimes extending over several hours commercial aviation surely can't be expected to suffer this level of interference for long?

If space launch danger zones have to be as extensive as this then maybe they need to happen much, much farther away from intense airway systems than the busy caribbean - ie mid Pacific perhaps (eg Diego Garcia?)
Or is this just a temporary 'abundance of caution' associated with a new and innovatory, unproven technology that will soon prove reliable enough to become a routine and percieved hazard-minimal event? (Good luck with that!)
meleagertoo is offline  
Reply