[AR] Re: Michigan Announces a vertical launch facility
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2020 17:34:19 -0400 (EDT)
On Thu, 30 Jul 2020, Elliot Robert wrote:
I think they were thinking airplane launched rockets would work in
Oscoda because the airforce base there has contaminants in the ground
that would likely make setting up shop easier from a paper work
standpoint.
As Jeff Greason said once, approximately: "You want a place where the
bulldozers have already been and all the endangered species have already
been killed." :-)
Both these sites have the same problem as launching dog-leg southern
trajectories from the cape. They are going to be going over populated
areas. Not much up there but those little villages near the north shore
of Lake Superior still count don't they?
Does anyone on this list know if legal framework of any kind exists for
the operation of rockets over populated areas?
There isn't anything in the rules about "populated areas", per se, last I
looked. The basic requirement is that risks to the uninvolved public be
held below a specified level; whether you achieve that by not flying
anywhere near them, or by flying safely enough that there is little chance
of harming them, is your decision. (You may find it harder to convince
the FAA that the latter strategy is effective, especially for the first
flight of a new design.) If I recall correctly, they borrowed the USAF
launch-safety rule: "expected casualties", per flight, below 30e-6, a
number chosen to be similar to the risks to the uninvolved public from
mid-20th-century aircraft flying overhead.
The population density along the ground track of a launch north from the
Upper Peninsula is low enough that meeting the requirement probably
wouldn't be prohibitively hard. It would help a great deal if the
rocket(s) in question already have a flight history; it's hard to convince
the regulators that a paper rocket's probability of failure is known with
any confidence.
*Most* orbital launches fly over populated areas eventually; it simply
can't be avoided. Every launch from the Cape to ISS flies over Western
Europe, which is one great big populated area.
Henry
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