FAA Officials Stress Need for Liability Law in Georgia
FAA officials were in Georgia this week telling lawmakers the state needs to pass liability laws shielding spaceflight companies from lawsuits from injured passengers and their heirs if it wants to compete with other states.
“In states like Florida and Texas that have a law, that is the statute a federal judge is going to look at,” Dan Murray, a manager with the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, told members of a Georgia House subcommittee exploring a planned commercial spaceport in southeastern Georgia.
The Georgia House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation this year aimed at shielding spaceport operators from civil lawsuits stemming from injuries to civilians who participate in a space flight. But the bill died in the Georgia Senate amid concerns expressed primarily by Georgians with second homes on nearby Cumberland Island and Little Cumberland Island worried about the noise from commercial launches and their potential to pose a safety hazard.
Tuesday’s testimony from Murray and the FAA’s Jared Stout made it clear Georgia needs a liability shield law if the proposed Spaceport Camden is to compete with spaceports in Texas and Florida, said Rep. Jason Spencer, R-Woodbine, the House bill’s chief sponsor and chairman of the subcommittee.
“These states are trying to make themselves competitive by giving some additional layer of [protection from] liability beyond the federal act,” he said.
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83 responses to “FAA Officials Stress Need for Liability Law in Georgia”
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“concerns expressed primarily by Georgians with second homes on nearby Cumberland Island and Little Cumberland Island worried about the noise from commercial launches and their potential to pose a safety hazard.”
Sometimes I love my home-state, they want new high tech industries to come to town but they are too scared of the dangers those industries might pose and get a little worried about their vacation homes.
How many homes in Florida, California have been damaged or destroyed by spacecraft? For that matter, how many homes each year are damaged by planes taking off and landing from airports? That’s why we define launch azimuths and flight corridors.
As for the noise, there is no evidence to suggest that these flights will be occurring with high frequency. In fact it will probably end up being more of a novelty to watch these flights than a nuisance. People drive from Melbourne, Orlando and Jacksonville to watch a rocket launch
The old money doesn’t want the riff raff coming to town and blocking up their roads and their beaches to watch those infernal space rocket things.
AND most importantly
All the lawyers with shingles in GA don’t want to get shut out of getting a nice chunk of money should anything go wrong. They don’t want the precedent set for any kind of liability indemnity. Its not good for their business.
I predict that Space companies will come to Georgia… on their way to Florida.
Even with the law I don’t see any vertical launch firms locating there. The potential liability from the offshore islands is just too great. It would only be suitable for air launched systems.
But it makes no sense to do a new facility for air launch when you have the Malcolm-Mckinnon Airport just north and right on the ocean. Really it would be the logical site for the spaceport not the one being proposed by this group.
Errr… no. That airport is densely surrounded by urban areas. Even air launch still has to carry the very energetic rocket stage over those areas. You need a runway and approaches that does not overfly anything.
Something like Blue Origin’s New Shepard VTVL could easily operate out of Camden, as could Electron as long as they went due East out over the Atlantic where the only thing you over fly are some swampy barrier islands. They will make great soft squishy (but muddy) landings.
Not more so than Jacksonville and Ellington, and the FAA approved both airfields for air launch.
Also those swamps are part of a National Park, not just a refuge. It will be interesting to see the EIS on that aspect 🙂
Not more so than Jacksonville and Ellington, and the FAA approved both airfields for air launch.
Good luck getting an actual launch license though.
Given how the FAA has been handing licenses out you could probably get one for Laguardia Airport 🙂
How many rockets fly near homes in Florida or California when they launch? You really need to look closely at the launch paths from the proposed spaceport and how close they come to those homes and recreation sites.
No worse than Wallups Island. Camden probably won’t be able to compete with Wallups or KSC for big orbital launches, but it could easily and safely become a site for doing sub-orbital stuff. In fact its quite complementary with the other attractions in the area.
Wallops Island is located on the ocean. It is not an inland site that has the risk of overflying offshore islands, or else trying to limit its launch to a very narrow flight path over a channel to the open ocean.
Not really, “inland”. Its all swamps, salt marsh, and barrier islands. Nothing to hit except some birds and snakes. Much like any other range complex.
I take it you are referring to the Cumberland Island National Seashore, part of the National Park System. It attracts some 80,000 visitors a year.
https://www.nps.gov/cuis/in…
It will be fun watching the backlash from the local community when they lose tourist revenue when the park is shut down to accommodate a rocket launch. Especially given the waiting list for camping sites and permits to visit the part of the island that is wilderness. But hey, let’s just wave a red flag in from of the environmentalists by threatening a national park with rocket debris 🙂
I don’t understand your antithesis here. More spaceports and lower barriers to companies and people to access space is a good thing. Perhaps you just selfishly want to keep activity out in the Southwest?
More well designed and sited spaceports are a good thing.
Poorly located and designed spaceports are a drag on the industry.
Its not the old government space zero-sum game, its about doing it right to build a good reputation for the industry, one that will prevent over regulations and create barriers to financing.
But it is. The government has lots of cash at the moment and it needs/wants to spur economic development. Even building a spaceport that never launches anything is a vehicle for dispersing money into the local economy, which is all government really cares about.
“If you build it, they will come” doesn’t mean they will come right away. To whip out that old NewSpace cliche; Someday… (when ever that day comes), there will be an expansion of aerospace activity, and those sites that already have facilities or even just their spaceport certification paperwork done will be the points that operators will look at first.
A great example of the entitlement mentality that has become part of the space industry since Project Apollo. The government has lots of taxpayer money and opening space is a noble venture so we are entitled to every dime available…
Abandoned buildings and poor spending decisions on space are just as bad as any other poor government decisions. But I guess I want to see the space industry to follow a higher standard than it has in the past, or that you are used to.
I’m just telling you the way it is… When government is paying, it gets to call the tune.
Also government is not the most efficient or even the best judge of the best allocation of resources, even at the best of times, since it is influenced by politics. All it really has is lots of resources to throw at problems or opportunities. So it does, and then market forces take over and decide what persists. Your idea would limit those opportunities and constrain growth.
Governments don’t pay, taxpayers pay. And yes, markets forces will turn this spaceport into a failure, but not until it costs taxpayers millions of dollars. Opposition to a bad spaceport doesn’t limit economic growth, it ensures it will happen by not giving the industry a reputation for failure.
You mean the hypothetical reputation for an industry that was stillborn by self-appointed experts and interests that didn’t want to disrupt their status quo?
If it stillborn why is it so successful? But perhaps you prefer the good old days when everyone laughed at it.
It is successful because the US Government finds a National Interest in supporting an aerospace industry and a few launch sites to use.
Beyond that, not much. Those that do move forward privately are lampooned and hounded by the arm-chair set because they aren’t perfect or done the way they think it should be done.
Or because most of the schemes make about as much sense as those inventors trying to build planes with flapping wings 🙂
Weak.
JamesG,
Camden County is having to BORROW the money to repay its small budget just to pay for the naked property. There is no funding available from the County without issuing bonds for a single capital improvement on the naked property. The is no skin in the game by the State of Georgia.
You really need to get your facts straight before helping bankrupt our County.
The country really doesn’t need any help in that regard.
How do you think any government or organization finances civic projects?
You are right about the State of Georgia though, if its not in the vicinity of Atlanta, it might as well not exist. And so aerospace mfg. and operation will continue to keep going down the road to Florida.
Yes and they have to launch along a narrow flight path the avoid the sparsely populated area of Little Cumberland Island, that is only infrequently occupied by vacationers. If they can’t handle that narrow window then the launch providers are going to have a very serious problem with their guidance systems and orbital injection accuracy. However, this article is not about approving the spaceport, it is about GA approving a spaceport and then not taking steps to ensure that companies could operate without fear of getting their butts sued out from under them every time they want to do something.
And we aren’t talking about big F9’s, and Atlas class rockets, at best they will mostly launch sounding rockets, suborbital tourist vehicles, and small sat orbital launchers (eg Electron, Alpha class). “Three Mile Island of the aerospace industry” is a pretty bold claim considering the scale and low probability that anyone will actually heavily use this spaceport if at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the people who have houses out there, I am criticizing the state gov’t for not taking all the necessary steps to ensure their pet spaceport is successful
“If they can’t handle that narrow window then the launch providers are going to have a very serious problem with their guidance systems and orbital injection accuracy.”
Which is often what you have when you have a launch accident. The accident occurs because things go wrong, usually very fast. Also when you have a narrow flight path it limits the orbits you able to place payloads into without a huge penalty in terms of fuel to change an orbital inclination.
Also it is not like there is a shortage of proposed spaceports. Indeed there are probably far too many for the available systems. Given the problems with launches from this location there is little probably of any firm locating here. It will be like Spaceport Oklahoma, a ghost facility with no one using it.
“Which is often what you have when you have a launch accident. “
And why you place develop procedures to rapidly respond to know concerns. In less than a minute any large orbital launcher will be plenty clear of the inhabited area (sounding rockets will be out of the way in 10-15s) so your decision making time can be extended. Early in the flight FTS activation can be set to nearly automatic if the sensors or ground crews detect any problem. Not ideal but necessary.
“Also when you have a narrow flight path it limits the orbits you able to place payloads into”
Which is why this launch site selection makes absolutely no sense. I think air launch systems will be better suited for this site, low traffic allows flexibility in launch times.
“Also it is not like there is a shortage of proposed spaceports. “
Agreed there is no need for all the spaceports that are getting built but hey maybe it will encourage more start ups, or “spaceliners” to operate
Yes, just as long nothing goes wrong in that minute. But what could go wrong in the first minute of launch?
As long as the FTS procedures kick in immediately upon detection of flight path variations or sensor malfunctions, the danger would be significantly reduced. At that point in the flight the T/W is still reasonably low enough to prevent it from flying too far off course, and shutting down the engines will drop it in the swamp. We are still talking small launchers though so the risks can be more easily mitigated and controlled. It is all dependent on how you design your rocket, give the engineers some credit, they aren’t the bumbling buffoons people make them out to be
But how bad could it be….
https://m.youtube.com/watch…
Clearly you have not looked at the trajectory map for Camden. Here’s a link you will find instructive:
https://drive.google.com/op…
And another:
https://drive.google.com/op…
Clearly not, I was under the impression they were launching northbound above the island. Either way it doesn’t matter no one is going to launch out of Camden without removing damage liability from the launch providers and this is turning into little more than exhibit B on for how to waste tax payers money on a poorly conceived spaceport project.
Also as I said to Thomas Matula, I agree with the people on this decision, but I can still be critical of the politicians that started a project, spent the money and then backed out at the first sign of disapproval
Yes, those politicians should be held accountable and voted out of office for wasting money on what any rational person would see was a very bad idea.
I’ve been playing a little bit of the devils advocate here. I don’t support this spaceport because of the obvious dangers but it is worth pointing out that a project of this magnitude, once started, should have had all measures taken to ensure it was successful and commercially viable.
After 22 years of watching GA politicians make these same kind of decisions it gets a little redundant and plucks a few nerves
The swamp is actually a major national park, with all the negative PR for new space that implies. Some future headlines 🙂
“Launch accident contaminates National Park with toxic debris.”
“Historic Cumberland National Seashore will to be closed for months for a clean up that will cost millions.”
“Congress promises to hold hearings to better regulate commercial launch to prevent future disasters…”
And a beautiful one at that, I love Cumberland and Jekyll Island I used to go camping there but it’s been a few years since I’ve been back there though.
I hope they don’t put this park in jealousy because some ignorant politicians were looking to help some people and themselves out and ignored the basic rules of space launch.
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I like that only a minute phrase. Almost like, “a bullet passes through your body in a millisecond, so what’s the problem?”
I’m no fan of tax-supported, spec-built, white elephant spaceports, but I think the bullet analogy is a bit much anent the flight termination problem for space launches. Big launch vehicles are usually not going much faster than the better WW2 fighter planes after a minute of flight. Smaller vehicles may accelerate faster, I don’t know. But bullets, they ain’t.
If this proposal actually contemplates allowing overflight of dwellings, I’m afraid I’m with the NIMBY’s.
The EIS indicates that there are indeed a number of homes that will have to be evacuated for each launch, up to 12 times a year. Folks forced to leave for 2-3 days about every month and not knowing if they will have a home to return to. It is insane.
It will also greatly increase the insurance costs of each launch, not counting what they will have to pay each family that must leave their home and the businesses that will suffer when the National Seashore is closed a dozen times a year to the thousands of tourists who visit it. I am sure they will do a class action for compensation for the negative impact it will have.
It is no wonder why SpaceX rejected the site and no other space launch firms have any interest in it. The only ones who will make any money will be the real estate folks leasing/selling the land, the consultants doing the EIS and the engineers that will build what will be an instant ghost facility.
#tumbleweedlivesmatter
Wrong part of the country, and tumbleweeds are a weed…
There are plenty of tumbleweeds in OK.
Actually if you read the draft EIS it is targeted directly at launching F9R size vehicles, 12 flights a year. The link is here.
https://www.faa.gov/about/o…
While the wording is targeted directly at SpaceX that doesn’t mean that SpaceX, BO or ULA will have any interest in this site. Camden was also trying to push this site a few years ago as the new SpaceX launch site before SpaceX selected Brownsville. I have a feeling that is where most of this wording originally came from.
Either way BO already set their sights on KSC for at least the next decade when they started construction on the manufacturing plant. ULA isn’t in any position to be able afford building a third launch site. SpaceX is too busy with new pads, F9 upgrades, FH, Red Dragon, MCT/BFR and Mars program to even care about what Camden wants. And no one else, to my knowledge, has announced any serious plans for a new medium lift rocket to come around in the next 5-10 years so if they are going to have rockets operating here it’s going to be rockets like the Electron, Alpha, LauncherOne (to start flying next year of course) class launchers or sounding rockets.
They may be targeting medium/heavy lift but they aren’t going to get it and it appears they read the market wrong
Launcher One requires a runway, this site is being licensed only for VLVL. Electron and Alpha are too marginally funded to work with a spaceport with such high potential legal costs associated with it. The will go to an existing facility.
They have indeed read the market wrong. Actually there is no market for them, not at that site.
Branson will find a way to convince GA that they can launch from there….
Sorry meant the Electron and Alpha class rockets I’ll fix it above. Exactly no launch provided will tough this with 100′ pole because of the liability, no insurer will cover launches that have that kind of liability either. Which is why I will refer to this site as Exhibit B, the second example of how to waste tax payer money on a spaceport without properly considering all requirements and provider options
They can’t even operate a NS, the only successful suborbital vehicle on the market, since the capsule would most likely come down in the swamps, inter coastal or on Cumberland all of those are bad news for the crew and
No doubt they did that while they were “thinking big”, and their advise was to scale the project for the largest practical vehicle, and I bet because they didn’t dream that the naysayers would crawl out of the woodwork screaming “NIMBY!!!!” over an old industrial site out in the swamp.
If you think its such idea why not trade your house of one of those in the overflight zone? I am sure you won’t mind evacuating from it for days every time there is a launch…
NIMBY started because folks like you are so greedy to make a dollar you don’t care who you harm or the damage you do.
Are their any homes or private property in the described overflight zone? I do not think so. There aren’t even any NPS structures or facilities there.
I personally wouldn’t mind living down range of a rocket range. It would be quite awesome and the probability of damage extremely low. I currently live close enough to a military installation where I can regularly hear small arms and artillery fire. My underwear stay firmly unbunched, unlike others.
NIMBY is simply people pursuing their own self-interests, even if its unfounded and a selfish intrusion into other people’s rights. Airports, racetracks, and any other activity that produces noise are constantly under assault by NIMBY whiners, especially in the East where populations are much more dense than out West.
One of the problems with space advocates is the way they just blindly support anything to do with space without thinking about the economics or practical aspects of it. Spaceport Georgia is a very good example. Having followed spaceport developments and proposals for the last 25 years, and having published a number of academic papers on them, it is easy to see what happened here.
Some local real estate developers, having wondered what to do for years with the old polluted Thiokol chemical plant property, site of a large industrial accident in the 1970’s that killed 29 and injured 50, read about the new commercial launch systems and decided why not make it a spaceport since no one else would want it. As a site
full of toxic chemical waste it’s of no use now. But as a sexy new spaceport it
would attract both the new launch firms and government development money. After
all who could resist relocating to Georgia to launch rockets? Especially since
spaceports are the “in” thing now for putting communities on the national map. As for the money to develop it, that will easily come from the state and, federal government as well as local taxpayers by just linking it to the spaceport “fever” that currently exists… And if anyone opposes it we will just call them anti-space/progress or claim it is because they don’t want competition to their spaceports. Yes, just que Harold Hill please 🙂
Of course no one will stop to ask if it makes economic sense given the many other
launch options available. Nor will they bother to see if it makes economic sense given the limited launch azimuths and narrow flight corridors it would be limited to. No, just build the spaceport and the space firms will come magically rushing to it bringing bags of money and creating local jobs… Really the local folks are probably lucky that this law was not passed. And will be even luckier if no money is allocated for the EIS.
Reposted from below because you keep making the same odd argument.
I don’t understand your antithesis here. More spaceports and lower
barriers to companies and people to access space is a good thing.
Perhaps you just selfishly want to keep activity out in the Southwest?
No, you seem to still be viewing this in the same old zero sum game mode.
I am all for more spaceports, but spaceports that are located to operate safely and economically. Every time there is an economic disaster, like Oklahoma Spaceport or the poorly managed Spaceport America, it raises the bar higher to both get public support and financing.
The Tucson Spaceport is a good example with the folks suing against it using Spaceport America and Oklahoma Spaceport as examples.
Spaceport Georgia has all the hallmarks of such a disaster, poor location, unsafe launch corridors, lack of interest by commercial firms. It will just become an other example of a bad spaceport that will make it harder for the good ones to succeed.
And should Spaceport Georgia get built, and should a rocket blow up over a National Park and close it for months while the toxic debris are cleaned up, well I will let you consider the huge negative impact that will have on the industry, especially as the Congress Critters trip over themselves to hold hearings and compete to see who could place more regulations on the industry to prevent it from ever happening again. The feeding frenzy will not be nice…
You worry to much. Rockets are known to blow up. Its not going to surprise anyone and no one except a few tree huggers are going to care about the environmental impact of a few square miles of swamp.
Camden is a much better place than most proposed and built “spaceports”.
What potential spaceports have not gotten built because, “well… look at what (didn’t) happen over there”?
The base story is not accurate about the “FAA’s recommendations to the State of Georgia”. I attended the hearing and the full video transcript is online at http://livestream.com/accou….
The relevant conversation begins around 52:00 and carries through several exchanges. Unfortunately the writer from the Atlanta Business Chronicle must not have reviewed the transcript.
The relevant quotes are from FAA’s Mr. Stout’s testimony, not Mr. Murray’s:
The question was: “The CFLCA of 2015, there is reference to Federal preemption to State Court Law, is that pretty sweeping preemption, or is there a need for States to act to in a tort capacity to address this issue…?”
[Assuming a State Law exists], “anyone can file a claim in Georgia State Courts and it would be up to the Court to decide if it had jurisdiction…”
“The Federal Court would have subject matter jurisdiction over any tort that arose…”
“Complainant can file where ever they want (in either Federal or State Court….).” Federal Law does not prevent anyone from filing in State Court.
“The Federal Law is to prevent jurisdiction shopping…”
The story does not reference Mr. Murray’s detailed answer regarding the risk of a launch-generated LOSS to all parties (participants and third parties) compared to commercial aviation. Mr. Murray advised that an acceptable space launch loss threshold was 100:1,000,000, whereas the commercial airline loss thresh-hold is 1:1,000,000,000, or a factor 100,000 times greater.
News writers should never trust politician interpretations of what they want written without verification.
What is the order of magnitude fewer number of space launch flights compared to commercial airlines? Interpretations indeed.
The draft EIS proposes 12 flights a year of a medium launcher that returns to the launch site or a barge. They are clearly basing it on the SpaceX requirements for the Falcon 9 reusable, although SpaceX has rejected them already.
I’m sure securing a SpaceX F9 launch commitment was their high-end expectation “wet dream”, and definately the visuals they projected in their proposal and web site, but never very realistic.
What would/could be realistic for the site would be as a spaceport for hobbiest and startups on the East Coast to have a range with which to launch model rockets, sub-orbital, and nano-sat orbitals. You know, the kind of ranges that are established and taken for granted out in the wide open West, but are unheard of in the East.
But no, the NIMBY Brigade and the Legion of Its Not Perfect, will doom it to failure and obscurity. Good job.
Awful expensive for supporting hobby rocket scientists. But tell me how of those hobbyists and startups at the Jacksonville Spaceport?
Also I count five licensed spaceports in the east (MARS, Spaceport Florida, Jacksonville, Ellington Field, and South Texas. Compare to Mojave, Oklahoma, Spaceport America and California Spaceport. That is 5 to 4.
But keep twisting the facts, Prof, Harold Hill would be proud of you.
S.Texas is not “in the East”. It is also SpaceX’s private space port. Neither Jacksonville nor Ellington Field will ever launch a spacecraft until Boeing comes out with its anti-gravity spaceliner in a long, long time from now. Both MARS and CCAFS are government spaceports with very high costs, bureaucratic requirements, and wait times measured in years.
Who is twisting here?
It is if you live in the West. But I guest to an East Coaster even Nashville is part of the west.
So? They are all spaceports. As for the type of facility you seek for startups, you basically have to go to west of the Mississippi River as the East is just too crowded for such a facility, something that has been true from the start of rocket development. Recall in the 1920’s the Fire Marshall kicked Dr. Goddard out of Massachusetts for setting a barn on fire. He went to Roswell NM where there was room to launch safely.
Thus is your opinion, and the opinion of the monied NIMBYs who will make it so.
Actually, 100,000X is a very large increase in risk. Think of the 500 year flood that just hit Louisiana that was so far out of possibility that they did not have flood maps for much of the massive area that flooded. That was only 1:500. I live near the spaceport property in a 1:25 year flood plain and have to pay about $800 a year for flood insurance because the flood could come this year and again next year. You don’t launch a rocket 1,000,000 times, then have a scheduled accident. In fact, none except the Atlas has a good enough record to take the risk over people and Wilderness Area that cannot be replaced anywhere on the East Coast. And obviously, ULA is not coming to Camden.
The Venture class rockets are a possibility, but how would you rate their safety for a Hazard Analysis? And as others have mentioned, the small companies working in this area cannot self-insure and cannot afford pricey insurance for Camden when Kodiak and MARS are available, and 39C has been ready and vacant for a year.
There has never been an EIS performed for these circumstances. It will be expensive with a very uncertain outcome. You have implied that we are Troglodites or nimbys, but most of the opposition are just Camden taxpayers who are trying to rein in politicians who have been exposed to stardust.
There ARE unique environmental issues that need to be addressed like the 58 acre Hazardous waste site that is 1.1 miles from the launch pad (in the pad blast zone)and adjacent to a main tributary that will require coffer dams to prevent seismic-caused leakage. SpaceX’s McGregor property required 15+ years to clean up from its prior military pollution. The Camden site has EPD-restricted areas with the remains of Thiokol’s Vietnam explosive development and solid-fuel rocket waste, and residuals from the production by Union Carbide of Bayer of isocyanate-based insecticides (remember Bhopal?). But those might be able to be mitigated, but at what expense if the potential is for Electron or Firefly?
But the waste of TAXPAYER dollars, and that Camden has to BORROW money just to get started, is what we are most worried about. Camden County has not even presented a Business Plan. Allowing Space to wreck our economy for the joy-ride is ridiculous and cannot wait until the next election to remind the politicians who they work for.
That is your right. And if you vote out the county government, yeah you will get your peace and quiet. You will save a few dollars on your taxes a year. But you will also cement coastal Georgia’s reputation as a redneck backwater.
BTW- Remember where you are and whom you are writing to here, the scare tactic of “hazardous waste site!!! Oh Nooo!” does not have any weight when we actually know that the odds of an impact on the contamination are insignificant even for the medium lift vehicles that would never be coming to Camden anyway.
JamesG,
Last message about this:
It’s our drinking water and marsh ecosystem that the EPD has determined is at risk. In fact, the EPD placed protective restrictive covenants on 100% of the 4,000 acres 4 years before the EIS was started. And the risk they are concerned about, in addition to a launch or landing accident, is from seismic destabilizing of a 40 year old, unlined dump with significant bad stuff. By the way, our County hosts Kings Bay Submarine Base, home port of 1/3 of the our Ohio-Class Ballistic and Attack fleet with 4,800 submariners plus 4,000 non-military jobs supporting our nuclear deterrent. Hardly a backwater. Of course, in your opinion, we rednecks are not entitled to the same legal protections as sophisticates when spaceports are concerned.
If your drinking water or ecosystem were are risk, they would have been ruined decades ago from all that significant bad stuff. But yet, there you and it still are…
Yup, you host Kings Bay, which brings in people from across the country, but what about your local folks and kids? Are they supposed to be content with pushing brooms and flipping burgers for Navy personnel and contractors?
Why don’t you admit you just don’t want change/development instead of inventing rationals for it?
News flash. That is what the locals will be doing at the spaceport. The high paying jobs will go to outsiders, migrant engineers and technicians who will be move in for the launches or other tech/administrative jobs at the facility. Few locals will fill those jobs.
And all those transitory workers will be staying in local hotels and eating at local restaurants. You don’t know who will be hired for the local staff or who would move permanently to support the facility. And you don’t think having a spaceport will do anything to promote STEM in the region (besides Kings Bay funnelling recruitment drives)?
Like it did for the students in Kodiak 🙂
Really you more naive then the founders of the SFF in your faith that New Space is easy and will solve all economic problems.
Better than being cynical and carrying around a preconceived bias, and probably more than a bit of conflicting interest.
James, It is clear you don’t have a clue about what seismic risk is.
Its not from a rocket crashing, it is from the soil vibrations caused by the rocket engines firing, both during launch and especially during engine tests.
The vibrations will travel in the soil and shake the moist soil and potential toxic elements. The shaking may be placed in motion towards water sources. It is a cumulative effect and it will need to be monitored by the spaceport.
No but it is clear that you will use any and all fears and hypothetical issues to justify killing this project. Perhaps I-95 should be closed down too since cumulative vibration is such a threat…
JamesG,
Please take a look at the video of the Titan IV A-20 Canaveral accident from 1998. A-20 is at 4:15 or so but the preceding dialog is also dead-on.
https://youtu.be/CEFNjL86y9c
What makes A-20 particularly appropriate for this discussion, is that it would have spread it’s debris field not in the Atlantic or Pacific like at all other US spaceports, but on Cumberland from Sea Camp to the tip of Little Cumberland and from the Intercoastal waterway, across Cumberland, and out into the ocean. Instead of the flaming pieces being quenched by water, we would have a multi-thousand acre forest fire and no means to stop it. Aside from the ecological losses, some of the 30 or so full-time residents and their visitors could be casualties. Plus, there are 8 protected historic districts. Plus the Spaceport would never launch another rocket – a complete loss of investment.
Of course, A-20 was not the first nor the last US rocket to crash. For instance, the Falcon F9 1.1 success rate has been 93% (14:15) and the Electron, FireFly, etc. are completely untested. As for hobbyist and university playthings, where’s the revenue?
We only need to look at A-20 to show that it CAN happen because it HAS happened, and the FAA says it WILL happen again. First launch or 100th, we’ll never know until it DOES happen.
Again, you are taking the worst case of an unlikely scenario (heavy lift launching out of Camden’s tiny little spaceport). Using hyperbolic fear to make your argument.
The reality is that they will be lucky to operate Blue Origin’s New Shepard class of vehicle. They are orders of magnitude less energetic and dangerous.
As for revenues, I’d say ” think about it”, but its apparent you don’t care. Its a moot point. You’ve done a good job and it’ll never happen.
For those who think that this is not a risky site:
Here’s a link you will find instructive comparing Kennedy launches is overlaid on Camden:
https://drive.google.com/op…
And another showing the proximity of homes, private property, National Seashore, and designated Wilderness:
https://drive.google.com/op…
Camden is unlike any other site, and risks cannot be mitigated by wishful thinking and luck.
Ladies and Gentlemen; the “old money” luddite that wants to keep its swamps nice and quiet.
James, It is clear you have not reviewed the EIS. The Department of Interior, Georgia Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines have ALL expressed issues with flights from the spaceport. The “luddite:” U.S. Marines are even requesting the signature authority for each flight scheduled, which would amount to the right to veto a particular launch. The FAA EIS website is here.
https://www.faa.gov/about/o…
But please, continue in your delusion this particular spaceport is a good idea…
How is that any different than WSMR having to be sign off on and give a blessing to any launch out of Spaceport America?
The relationship between Spaceport America and WSMR is the same as between Spaceport Florida and the Eastern Test Range. WSMR needs to coordinate with Spaceport America becomes it provides launch support. In short they are business partners.
By contrast the U.S. Marines provide no support for the launch, they merely want to ensure it doesn’t hamper their activities in the area. The U.S. Marines are just a third party to the launch.
Even if you don’t need any support from WSMR… And no matter where you go, the military can always deny a launch request.
Your hairs are getting mighty thin.
You haven’t a clue about the relationship of Spaceport America and WSMR do you?
Apparently more than you do. Who needs notification and approval before a NOTAM can even be filed for operating out of SA? Even if your intended flight isn’t even going to leave the boundary of the property?