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posted by martyb on Sunday July 01 2018, @04:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the and-on-the-left-side-of-the-plane-you-will-see-a-launch-of-the... dept.

The Billionaire Space Race Is Making Life Difficult for Airlines

On Feb. 6, Elon Musk's SpaceX launched its largest rocket into the blue Florida sky. Onboard was "Starman," a dummy strapped into the billionaire's cherry red Tesla roadster. Minutes later, fans cheered as Musk topped himself by nailing a simultaneous landing of the Falcon Heavy's boosters. It was arguably a turning point for the commercial space age.

Airlines were somewhat less thrilled. On that day, 563 flights were delayed and 62 extra miles added to flights in the southeast region of the U.S., according to Federal Aviation Administration data released Tuesday by the Air Line Pilots Association, or ALPA.

America's airspace is a finite resource, and the growth of commercial launches has U.S. airlines worried. Whenever Musk or one of his rivals sends up a spacecraft, the carriers which operate closer to the ground must avoid large swaths of territory and incur sizable expenses.

Most of the commercial activity to date has been focused on Cape Canaveral, the Air Force post on Florida's Atlantic coast, where Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin LLC base their stellar operations. It is one of 22 active U.S. launch sites, and a number of other locales—including Brownsville, Texas; Watkins, Colorado; and Camden County, Georgia—are pursuing new spaceport ventures to capitalize on commercial space activity.


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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday July 01 2018, @09:38AM

    by anubi (2828) on Sunday July 01 2018, @09:38AM (#700918) Journal

    Usually I am not impressed with Disney, mostly because of their exercise of their financial power to buy off politicians to usurp existing copyright and patent law.

    My belief is that the law as it was is quite reasonable. And as far as their creations go, they can have them as long as they support them as far as I am concerned. But I am miffed that my Congressmen did not insist on provisions concerning making abandonware public along with copyright extension. Disney owns Mickey Mouse until Hell freezes over as far as I am concerned, but when I see corporations send "end of support" notifications, to me that should be a clear flag that the thing no longer supported is now public.

    As much as Disney is on my shitlist, I did like it that they did put a stop to this airplane annoyance, even though I am quite aware it was their business that attracted all these "horseflies" in the first place, and their ban on them certainly was not just to benefit me, rather I was just one who benefitted from their own battle with shooing the "horseflies" out of their park. That constant overhead drone of noisy aircraft engines was annoying the crap out of everybody.

    Almost as if some kid took to running a running lawnmower up and down the local shopping mall to get attention to a banner he was dragging, while he tells everyone "I'm a Business! I have a Right to run my lawnmower in here! If you don't like it, tough!!", and "worked with" lawmakers to back up his business model.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]