I feel like I get annoyed enough as is with road closures. Can’t imagine
getting held up because of a friggin CubeSat.
-Matt L.
On Fri, Aug 6, 2021 at 12:57 PM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Fri, 6 Aug 2021, Ed Kelleher wrote:
Bringing it back to rocketry, what do people think about the
ability to do orbital payload launches as a fully road-mobile
operation?... launches that come to the payload customer...
FAA might fuss about all the Environmental Impact Statements.
It would have to wait until rocketry gets a categorical exclusion from the
environmental stuff, like the one conventional aviation has. That'll come
eventually, but it'll have to wait until there is enough experience that
the FAA can say "predictions of no impact have been confirmed" with a
straight face.
Launches that come to the customer will also up the ante on range-safety
issues a whole bunch. Probably has to wait until fully-reusable rockets
have built up a track record of near-aviation reliability. Until then,
full road mobility (as opposed to containerized portability) probably
isn't worth the trouble, because you need to fly from an established
launch range anyway.
Also might have a NIMBY problem. :-)
If nothing else, there will be noise issues.
Henry
