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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.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday July 02 2018, @06:55AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @01:57PM
Correction, 10 minutes. But the point still stands. Bitching about 10 minutes an an air sector that flys millions of passenger seat miles per year is rediculous. Second, takeoff delays often happen because arrival aiports are backed up. So to suggest that Cape Canaveral has anything to do with it, is just silly. More likely the ORL delays reflect problems in CHI or DUL.