The airplanes will have to get used to sharing airspace with the largest rocket in the world. Especially when Elon Musk’s starship disembark in Florida in a few months.
Starship’s double landing. The arrival of Starship to Cabo Cañaveral promises to revolutionize a region that, although it is accustomed to rocket launches, has not lived anything the same. The key is the planned launch frequency and the double landing of the system: first that of the Super Heavy propeller, more than 70 meters high, and then that of the ship itself, more than 50 meters.
Although the public debate has focused so far In the sonic boom That produces each of these rockets when returning from space, the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States has put on the table the possibility that Spacex’s plans to launch 120 starship a year delay between 8,800 and 13,200 commercial flights a year.
Where those figures come from. According to him FAA reportthe launches and landings of the two stages of the rocket would force to divert the airplanes from the south of Florida to avoid the rocket trajectory. This could suppose delays for airports as important as those of Orlando, Miami, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale.
Each launch would require the closure of airspace in periods ranging from 40 minutes to two hours, which in times of traffic could affect between 133 and 400 flights. The landing of the Starship ship, which would happen hours later, would cause a new closure of the airspace between 40 minutes and one hour, affecting another 400 or 600 commercial airplanes.
Spacex’s posture. Spacex insists that these estimates are too conservative. The company has published A statement in which he affirms that the areas of danger for the planes defined in FAA studies “are extremely conservative by nature and are destined to capture a compound of the entire range of the worst possible scenarios, not an operation in the real world.”
Spacex argues that, as happened with their Falcon 9 rockets, the areas of aerial and sea exclusion will be reduced as data of the launches accumulate and the reliability of Starship is demonstrated. In fact, the airspace that Falcon 9 forces to close for Starlink missions have been reduced by 66% since 2022.
A future of shared skies. Although Starship is a special case, it is only the last new generation rocket that reaches the Florida space coast. Other companies like Blue Origin and ULA have already launched His new New Glenn rockets and Vulcan From Cabo Cañaveral.
According to a Ornaldo Sentinel analysisFlorida could approach the 400 rocket releases a year by the end of the decade. But that democratized access to space may require patience at the airport terminal.
Image | Spacex
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