The Role of Economics in Spaceport Safety
Kenneth Button
Chapter Outline
Introduction
Transportation has developed over the years from the days when mankind had to walk to whatever destination was seen as attractive. Today, the cutting edge of transportation is undoubtedly through various forms of telecommunication, and possibly teleporting, but there is still considerable growth and development in older forms that involve the actual movement of people and goods. The use of space travel falls within this latter category. The exploration and subsequent exploitation of space for civil and military uses, while in many ways still at its very early stages, has a certain amount of maturity associated with it. The technology used is still relatively primitive and relies on many elements of older systems. But there is sufficient experience and maturity for us to have a relatively good idea of what is required to deliver space transportation services
In particular, there is the clear need for terrestrial port facilities. In this context, a “spaceport” can be seen simply as a special case within the family of port facilities, akin to seaports, airports, or bus depots. Unlike most other port facilities, the traffic is almost entirely unidirectional1, but in other ways they are similar to other types of port facilities in that they it support a specialized business niche; the payloads, launch vehicles, and equipment are very costly; and environmental and safety considerations are seen as paramount. The unidirectional nature of current space transportation is gradually changing; initially the space shuttle provided some prospects for unidirectional movements of vehicles although the launches and landings are significantly different. The lower orbiting technologies that are being developed mainly, although not exclusively, for manned flight, including space tourism are seeing a movement towards ports more akin to airports, although long-range movements still largely involve separate launches and landing (where relevant) spaceports. Strictly the two types of space vehicles currently in use are expendable launch vehicles (ELVs) and reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) with the former only used once to carry payloads into space, and the latter launched into orbit and returning to Earth, landing on runways like airplanes.
Here we consider some of the economics in spaceport development and operation, and in particular their links with safety, a subject of political, commercial, and social importance. Spaceports are often seen as catalysts for local economic development because of the investments that have to be made, and the employment of skilled labor in their operations. The nature of their activities, in terms of safety, security and noise, also means they are located on land that seldom has potential for alternative uses. But as with other activities, these advantages are offset by high investment and operating costs and a finite demand for space launches. The locating of a port in a region also has a high visibility, and ipso facto kudo factor for local politicians. These are features that have in the past with other technologies, ranging from canals, to railways, to computer software, often seen excess capacity emerge with a consequential bubble and burst in the industry involved. In addition to natural economic forces that can lead to excesses in infrastructure investment, politicians in particular often have favored locating spaceports in their constituencies, again leading to overcapacity as the result of beggar-thy-neighbor effects. There is some evidence that this is taking place regarding spaceports.
In looking at some of these aspects of spaceport safety from the perspective of an economist, much of the attention will be focused on the United States. This provides a focal point, but also the United States has, over the years been the major player in space launches. The emphasis is also very much on the economic dimension of safety; there are of course many aspects, but economics is an important force influencing the nature of space exploitation and exploration, and economic debates, explicitly and implicitly, affect the degree of safety that the public demands. The account is also not comprehensive, but takes a piecemeal approach, focusing on the more important economic issues involved.
The Economics of Spaceports
The economic analysis of spaceports is limited, and what has been conducted is often stymied by bias and political overtones2. Space activities raise a variety of emotions, many reflecting a genuine interest in the larger social benefits that space transportation can generate, but many also reflect personal interests and motivations. The number of professional economists working in this area, as opposed to professionals involved in other areas of spaceport analysis who turn their hands to assessing the economic aspects of spaceports, is extremely limited.
A spaceport (or cosmodrome) includes the facilities, equipment, personnel, and vicinity required to prepare a spacecraft for flight, initiate and manage the flight, and perhaps receive the craft at the end of the flight. For terrestrial spaceports, vicinity refers to the land or sea occupied by the facilities and equipment. For space-based spaceports, vicinity refers to the orbit and operations envelope around the spaceport; in this article we focus less on these facilities because of the limited experiences that we have of them. Like an airport or seaport, a spaceport can be dispersed over several locations, including down-range instrumentation facilities and space-based communications equipment, akin for example to the en route air navigation systems used to control air traffic. In an economic context, this reflects the multiproduct nature of a spaceport with opportunities for enjoying economies of scope.
From an economic perspective the services provided by a spaceport are private goods. Private goods, as defined by the Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson (1954), are those that it is possible to exclude users from access (excludability) and that have a limited capacity (rivalry). Providers of public goods, in contrast, cannot exclude users and there is no limit on the number of potential users; the nuclear defense umbrella is often cited as public good. The point about public goods is that, because one cannot exclude use of them, there is little incentive for the private sector to provide them. This is clearly not the same as saying that facilities like spaceports, even when state owned, are public goods; ownership in this context is political decision and generally has little to do with economic efficiency considerations.
The factor inputs for the various forms of port facilities are dependent on the technologies involved and the demands, including those of individuals not directly using them, place on their services. Spaceport infrastructure includes such things as receiving and processing facilities; laboratories and “clean-rooms” for vehicle and payload assembly, testing, checkout, and integration; fuel storage and fueling sites; specialized transportation equipment; launch pads; and, where RLVs are used, landing runways and support structures are typically required. Facilities are needed for crews and passengers, and for animal, plant, and microbial travelers. Spaceports provide range and weather services in addition to other specialized facilities at or near the launch site. For safety reasons, when RLVs are involved, alternate landing site facilities need to be available.
The technology of a spaceport is costly, largely immobile, and specific, implying significant amounts of sunk costs; this is in line with most forms of port facilities and from an economic perspective makes genuine market competition in their supply of port facilities difficult. The fixed cost nature of the infrastructure, combined with a competitive market involving both public and private sector players for the services offered by spaceports, leads to issues of an “empty core”. An empty core exists when they are large fixed costs associated with each of a number of facility that have to be paid for, but there is competition for the use of these facilities that force the charges that can be collected down to the marginal, operating costs. The result is that none of the facilities, spaceports in this case, can recover their fixed costs.
There are considerable negative externalities associated with a spaceport that can affect non-users of the facility. A rocket launch site is generally built away from major population centers to mitigate risk to bystanders should a rocket experience a catastrophic failure. In many cases a site is also built close to major bodies of water to ensure that no components are shed over populated areas. Typically a spaceport site is large enough that, should a vehicle explode, it will not endanger human lives or adjacent launch pads. The noise of launches, although relatively infrequent, is also intrusive and another reason for favoring a relatively remote location.
For these reasons, many spaceports, especially those in the United States, have been located at existing military installations, such as intercontinental ballistic missile ranges, which is not always ideal for satellite launches3. Rockets can most easily reach satellite orbits if launched near the Equator in an easterly direction, so as to give a good orientation for arriving at a geostationary orbit, although for polar and Molniya orbits this does not apply. This is one reason why satellite launches from the major European spaceport, Guiana Space Centre is in Kourou4, French Guiana, can benefit from the location four degrees north of the Equator. From an international perspective of comparative advantage, geography does matter when considering costs of spaceport services for certain types of space transportation.
Issues of Safety
All human activities have safety implications, either for those directly engaged or for third parties, and often for both. Spaceports, because of the nature of their activities, are inherently dangerous. From an economics perspective, the issues that arise essentially center around matters of what are generally called property rights: basically, who has the responsibility for the actions performed at a spaceport.
If an accident involves damage, injury, or death within the spaceport then normally it is, in economic terms, within the jurisdiction of the owners/operators. It is internal to the organization involved. Incidents involving those physically outside, or unrelated to the direct operation of the spaceport are normally externalties or third party effects5. Spaceport operators would not instinctively take these into their decision-making, other than they may affect their image in the launch market, without public involvement in terms of legal requirements and legal structures that award compensation and give out penalties.
The distinction is important in terms of who bears responsibility, and where the burden of prevention and compensation lay. There is also the issue of the underlying nature of the safety concern; is it one of risk or one of uncertainty (Knight, 1921)? Risk is when it is possible to estimate with some considerable degree of acceptability, the actually probability of an incident. This generally means that there has been a large number of prior incidents upon which to base the calculations, and that there are no feedback loops. These risky type situations can be insured against in private markets because people are willing to bear the risks of others for a fee (a premium).
Uncertainty is when there is no such knowledge of the probability of an incident or its magnitude. These are rare events and ones that may have differed in their intensity when they have occurred. Estimating their probability is virtually impossible and thus they lay outside of the insurance market structure. There are sometimes attempts at getting a handle on their possible occurrence using such methods as Monte Carlo simulations or various forms of expert opinion analysis, but these involve considerable judgment in their application. It is not possible to strictly insure against uncertainty.
In practice, the distinction between risk and uncertainty is often murky. For example, how insurers treat risk often differs because the evidence they have may vary, as can their interpretation of its meaning; for example, this explains why car premiums can vary between companies for identical policies. But the distinction is useful for many of the activities involving space stations. What it means is that, in general, a station’s operator can insure6 against such things as employee accidents because there are plenty of cases that resemble the jobs done at space stations to provide a good idea of the probability of accidents and their effects.
From a policy perspective, a case can be made for the costs of safety uncertainty to be borne by the public authorities, or at least part of them. They are in a way “public bads”, the converse of public goods that cannot be handled completely or efficiently within private markets. There are dangers, in this, however, associated with possible moral hazard problems. Passing the responsibility for handling costs of uncertainty outside of the spaceport reduces the incentive for the operators to act in a fully socially responsible manner; they are freed from the burden of some aspects of safety.
Reactions to Safety Concerns
Operators of spaceports, as with most other entities, have three broad ways of dealing with safety considerations, and in practice use a combination of them.
1 Prevention
Prevention of incidents is the primary concern when addressing safety, and this can involve considerations of spaceport design, location, types of activity, and training of labor. Private sector ports have a commercial incentive to minimize incidents – they damage reputations and, in the risk aspects, can increase insurance cost. But there are wider issues, for example, regarding the types of regulations imposed on spaceport operations that may be tightened after an incident, with associated increases in compliance costs, and a loss of goodwill in the local community that may impede the efficient operating of the spaceport.
2 Damage containment
However thorough prevention measures are, there are always possibilities of material or human failure that cannot be foreseen and may lead to incidents. Recognition of this, akin to appreciating the Titanic is not unsinkable, leads to appropriate damage control measures. These generally embrace response management procedures, back-up facilities, “insulation” of vulnerable communities, both within and outside the port, and so on. The challenge of optimization is that these measures are often costly, and not simply in financial terms.
3 Remediation
If an incident does occur then there is a need to clean up after the event: the ex-post reaction. In some cases where the initial risk of failure could be calculated, this generally involves drawing upon insurance provision. But in other cases, and especially if implications the incident are severe and the magnitude of its impacts of anything that could be anticipated, there may be the need for public support.
Remediation often goes beyond considering the immediate physical and human damage done, and extends to wider matters of reestablishing public confidence in space transportation, and that of the financial stakeholders, including taxpayers, in its viability, whether from the public or private sectors.
Many of the three aspects can be treated in a purely technical way in terms of the types of technology that can reduce the incidents of adverse events, or the best rapid response measures to handle an accident when it occurs; however, this misses the point that it is public confidence that, outside of a dictatorship, determines the acceptability of a spaceport, and public confidence generally differs from technical efficiency. Many security measures, for example, have little impact on security per se but add to the public confidence that a location is safe. The problem with spaceports is that launches are infrequent and failures are rare, especially those affecting third parties. But when there is failure, this is often highly visible and attracts media attention. This induces an “irrational” sense of concern on the part of the public. The result is almost an inevitable sub-optimally high level of safety from a narrow efficiency perspective, with associated high costs.
Demand-Side Design Considerations
Safety is the most important factor in spaceport design. A spaceport can be considered successful if it safely meets its customers’ needs for payload processing and launch services in a safe, reliable, cost-competitive, and user-friendly manner. The factors that largely dictate spaceport size and design cost invite specific questions that must be answered before a particular design can be pursued. For example, will the spaceport support only existing launch vehicle and spacecraft designs? Will the design plan take into account possible unique and innovative launch systems such as those using magnetic levitation? Will the spaceport be designed for RLVs, ELVs, or both? What about human flight versus robotic-only missions? Will payloads be processed onsite or processed elsewhere and transported to the spaceport?
A spaceport requires a clear down-range area where spent launch stages and/or aborted launch vehicles can return to Earth without injuring people or property. Range limitations are usually expressed in terms of launch azimuth, the range safety limits or the ground tracks of a launch vehicle that do not traverse populous land masses and distances down-range.
In most cases, a payload customer will require access to the payload in orbit through the use of available ground facilities. Azimuth constraints at the spaceport will determine whether the payload can be delivered to an orbital inclination with a ground track that reaches latitude acceptable to the customer.
A spaceport should be located to maximize launch efficiency in delivering a payload mass into orbit. The orbit inclination of most United States spacecraft is about 30 degrees, which is where the orbital plane intersects the equatorial plane at 30 degrees. This is why the current predominant launch site is Cape Canaveral at 28.5 degrees north latitude. A due east launch adds the Earth’s surface rotational speed—about 400 meters per second—to the horizontal velocity acquired by that launch vehicle. Similarly, a launch from the spaceport at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, located at about 51 degrees north latitude, adds only 940 feet per second to the horizontal velocity of the launch vehicle. Changing the launch azimuth of the powered flight of launch vehicles can result in higher orbital inclinations, but with a commensurate reduction in the velocity increment from the Earth’s rotation and a related reduction in payload capacity. Achieving an orbital inclination lower than the latitude of the launch site requires orbital plane change maneuvers and additional performance from the launch vehicle. Because the demand is so great for the delivery of payloads to geostationary or geosynchronous orbits in the equatorial plane, a launch capability at or near the Earth’s Equator is favorable. A site at that latitude takes full advantage of the Earth’s surface rotational velocity at that inclination, about 500 meters per second.
The three major orbit inclinations are geosynchronous, geostationary, and polar. All payloads in geosynchronous and polar orbits have significant revenue potential and should be considered in spaceport development. The demand by some customers for other orbits may dictate the location of a proposed spaceport.
• Geosynchronous orbits can be at any Earth inclination and are usually at altitudes where the orbit period directly relates to the period of the Earth’s rotation (12-hour, 24-hour, or 48-hour) in which they may have a repeating ground track (12-hour, 24-hour, 48-hour, or any other). Communication with geosynchronous payloads requires steerable tracking antennas at the ground stations.
• Geostationary orbits are particular types of geosynchronous orbits in which the orbit inclination coincides with the Earth’s equatorial plane and the orbit period coincides with the Earth’s rotation rate. The ground track is a fixed point on the Earth’s surface at the Equator. Communication with geostationary payloads requires only the widely used fixed-orientation antennas at the ground stations. Geosynchronous launches are usually associated with payload launches to low Earth orbit altitude. Subsequent delivery to geostationary Earth orbit then occurs through two or more burns of a propulsion stage associated with the payloads.
• Polar orbits at any altitude are in a plane perpendicular to the Earth’s Equator and pass over the North Pole and South Pole. A polar-orbiting satellite can scan the entire surface of the Earth in one 24-hour period. Satellites in low-altitude polar orbits can obtain enhanced resolution of Earth observations for resource and weather information.
Location factors and the various markets for space product, mean that spaceport developers must decide which part of the commercial space industry to target in their strategic planning. Specific operations will in turn determine the type, size, and possibly the location of the spaceport. A spaceport launching crews and passengers into orbit, for example, requires a more complex infrastructure than a spaceport specializing in robotic launches, and with this come more complex safety considerations. Spaceport developers, therefore, consider each market’s requirements for: launch vehicle sizes and types (expendable or reusable), payload size, weight, orbit, power, and environmental resources, payload operations and/or deployment on-orbit, crew and passenger versus robotic missions, and vertical and/or horizontal launch and landing.
Developers intending to offer multiple services have to evaluate parallel site development or, more likely, evaluate a site’s development over several years. It is not sufficient simply to identify a parcel of available real estate as a future spaceport and expect financiers, entrepreneurs, and prospective customers to commit their resources. The decision to develop a site must be market driven, otherwise the spaceport risks becoming a burden on taxpayers or other investors. This may well conflict with safety considerations that act as a constraint in the financial return maximizing calculus.
Public Interest and Safety
It is within this quasi-commercial technical context that spaceport operators view safety. A spaceport authority is responsible for minimizing any potentially adverse effects on the physical environment surrounding the spaceport and for protecting people in the local and regional areas from potential launch malfunctions and other risks. Safety is paramount, not only from the larger social and political perspective, but also from the commercial perspective; customers and investors are unlikely to want to be engaged with what may be perceived as a dangerous undertaking. Despite the commercial pressures for safety, there are also numerous regulations and laws pertaining to it. In part these are to reduce market failures, but they may also be seen as quasi-public goods that provide reassurance to the population that spaceport facilities are not dangerous.
Spaceport safety ensures that the general population, property, and other resources are properly protected at all times during launch and ground operations. Safety includes providing public and personnel safety; environmental impacts; range safety; compliance with international agreements; risk evaluation; and fire, crash, and rescue services.
In the United States, regulations promulgated by the FAA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), State Department, United Nations (UN), and/or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) govern some of these safety-related activities. Additional factors unique to a commercial spaceport may be established through separate legislation; others may be modified from existing standards or developed specifically for the spaceport. The spaceport’s safety responsibilities include establishing safety requirements, standards, and procedures; overseeing ground operations (e.g., hazardous materials operations); complying with safety requirements and national consensus standards for government personnel and equipment; and complying with EPA regulations. Spaceport master siting plans are affected by the type of launch vehicle and the specific operations to be conducted. The physical site must be large enough to protect the surrounding community and contiguous launch operations in the event of hazardous gas leaks or explosions during launch or landing operations. The master plan siting facilities within the boundaries of the spaceport should ensure that a hazardous operation or storage of hazardous materials at one facility minimally affects parallel operations at other spaceport facilities.
For the existing United States Federal launch sites, the safety responsibilities of arranging the clearing of air and sea routes are distributed among the United States Air Force (USAF), NASA, and the FAA. For commercial spaceports, the FAA has proposed to adopt the explosive safety practices used at Federal launch sites. These criteria, known as Quantity–Distance (Q–D) requirements, serve to separate people and property from potentially explosive sources, and have long been used to mitigate explosive hazards to acceptable levels. They prescribe the minimum distance separating explosive hazard facilities, surrounding facilities, and public locations, based on the type and quantity of explosive material within the area. The FAA must approve an explosive site plan before any facility using explosive hazards can be constructed within the Q–D area. A commercial spaceport developer would be required to develop this plan in compliance with the applicable Q–D requirements. Separate sets of FAA and EPA rules govern other (non-explosive) toxic hazards. A license to operate a launch site is not a guarantee that all launches proposed for the site will be approved. Each launch is subject to individual FAA review and licensing.
US Occupation Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations require each employer (contractor or commercial operator) to be responsible for the safety of its employees and equipment. In addition, a launch site operator is responsible for preventing unauthorized personnel from accessing the site and for properly receiving visitors. The launch site operator also must inform customers of limitations of onsite use; schedule and coordinate hazardous activities conducted by customers; and notify adjacent property owners and local jurisdictions of impending flights. Launch site operators must also keep records, track license transfers, investigate accidents, and monitor the use of explosives on the site.
The Institutional Context
As part of the formal licensing process for spaceports in the United States, a policy review is conducted to determine whether the application presents any issues affecting United States national security, foreign policy interests, or any international obligations of the United States Government. A major aspect of the policy review is an interagency review, in which government agencies examine the proposed licensing of the launch site from their respective interests. The US Department of Defense, the State Department, and NASA typically participate in the review. Interagency reviews also consider relevant agreements made under the UN Charter. Under the 1972 UN Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects, governments are liable for injury or damage to third parties caused by vehicles or payloads launched under their jurisdiction.
To obtain launch site location approval, an applicant must prove to the FAA that a launch can occur from the proposed site without jeopardizing public health and safety. Launches from existing sites are affected by this restriction only when the applicant is new to the site or a different class of launch vehicle is flown. Specific methods are required to demonstrate the suitability of the site for launching various classes of launch vehicles. Each proposed spaceport launch site must be evaluated for each class of vehicle proposed to be launched. This includes orbital, guided suborbital, or unguided suborbital ELVs as RLVs. An applicant can choose the method for developing a flight corridor for each representative RLV, orbital or guided suborbital ELV, and develop a set of impact dispersion areas for unguided suborbital ELVs. If a flight corridor or set of impact dispersion areas exists that does not encompass populated areas, no further analysis is required. Otherwise, the FAA requires a risk analysis.
In addition to normal fire training, flight crews must receive special training in rescue and hazardous conditions unique to spaceport operations. Fire, crash, and rescue facilities must be designed and built to the operational scale of the spaceport for fuels and oxidizers used for the space vehicles and for onsite protection as appropriate. A spaceport must provide adequate personnel and equipment to cover emergency situations ranging from minor mishaps to catastrophic events. Standard fire engine and emergency medical technician equipment must be sized to aid the spaceport workforce and space vehicle passengers in the event of an emergency. The hazardous materials the spaceport uses determine the protective apparel needed for emergency workers. Before flight vehicles can be issued airworthiness and space worthiness certificates by the FAA or other government entity, the spaceport must have a plan for handling potential catastrophes. Since firefighters are not trained in area control, security and fire safety personnel must work together closely. Generic training and certification are sufficient except in areas where special hazardous products are stored and used. Special training must be provided for especially hazardous situations and crew rescue.
A spaceport must pay particular attention to decisions regarding propellants and gases because of concerns about personnel and environmental safety, costs, and the public interest. Customer requirements ultimately determine the launch vehicles to be used and the propellants and gases required. A spaceport must estimate the quantities and identify the sources for required propellants and gases. Many of these chemicals are hazardous, and some are toxic. Compliance with OSHA requirements is necessary. Each chemical product requires a separate system for handling, storage, and distribution. Each product is also subject to specific safety regulations and handling requirements known as quantity–distance radii and toxic vapor corridors. For potentially explosive propellants, a quantity–distance radius is established to define the distance between product storage and the nearest inhabited building. Handling of toxic liquids and gases requires a similar radius but also requires the identification of a potential toxic corridor based on existing wind conditions in the event of an accidental spill or leak. Spill containment is an important consideration in designing storage facilities for these commodities. The spaceport must provide special protective suits for personnel who work near systems containing toxic fuels and oxidizers.
Some Other Considerations
Environmental Impacts
It is not only human safety that is a concern; spaceports can also impinge on the “safety” of the larger environment. US federal law currently requires the FAA to assess the environmental impacts of constructing and operating a proposed launch site. The FAA also has to determine whether launch activities will significantly affect the quality of the environment. Licensing the operation of a launch site is a major Federal action for purposes of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This means an environmental impact statement (EIS) is required for every launch from a Federal launch site, which forces Federal agencies to take a broad perspective when considering the full range of environmental implications. An EIS also provides useful information to stakeholders and decision makers. The requirement for an EIS also applies to non-Federal entities and their actions whenever Federal approval is required. The FAA must prepare an environmental review that considers reasonable alternatives to the proposed site. According to Council on Environmental Quality regulations, as interpreted by the courts, an applicant may not use the purchase of a site or construction at the site to limit the array of reasonable alternatives to that site’s usage. As a result, an applicant must satisfactorily complete the environmental review process before constructing or improving the site.
The FAA assigns flight safety responsibilities almost exclusively to the launch site operator. Abort/destruct guidelines provided to the Range Safety Office vary, depending upon the type of launch vehicle to be flown. Due to current vehicle design and range safety considerations, locating the spaceport at a site remote from major cities and primary aircraft and shipping lanes is ideal. The site also should be accessible to a highly integrated transportation infrastructure. The solution so far has been to locate spaceports in coastal areas or, in the case of Sea Launch7, in the ocean. Real estate ownership is critical to the successful operation of a spaceport. Ownership implies ultimate authority, responsibility, and full liability. This can lead to unyielding attitudes in cases where the owner asserts complete control over the physical site. In these cases, discussions of environmental issues, safety concerns, and launch range support can be contentious, making customer service particularly difficult to deliver.
A sound environmental management program is now a primary concern in spaceport development and operation. Responsible environmental management is necessary to meet legal requirements, preclude operational delays, and satisfy the concerns of the local community. State and Federal laws require the development of environmental impact statements to operate a spaceport. Stakeholders, spaceport operators, and customers must be closely involved in this process. A spaceport can hire contractors to perform comprehensive environmental impact studies and assessments, but will need an in-house environmental management system. The early identification of hazardous operations and waste generation is essential. Facilities, equipment, procedures, and licenses must be developed for identifying, labeling, collecting, and storing materials; containing spills; and treating and disposal of waste and other materials. Environmental monitoring includes air and groundwater sampling and hazardous waste monitoring. A spaceport must develop contingency plans and containment and recovery procedures for hazardous waste spills and accidental releases.
Security
Security provides the necessary protected environment for launching space vehicles and in that sense is another element of safety8. Almost every aspect of access to space has high cost and high visibility, and uses highly explosive propellants and toxic gases. Any perturbation in the handling of these propellants can have catastrophic consequences. Unconstrained access to space provides for national security, a use that elevates a commercial spaceport to the status of both a national and international resource. Just as the FAA assigns the overall responsibility for security to the airport operator, it would be consistent that the local spaceport authority would provide security for the spaceport. Individual space service providers would have to secure areas of the spaceport under their control.
A spaceport security organization focuses its protection on human-made hazards that could interfere with normal operations, ranging in severity from a minor disruption to a full-scale emergency. Reporting to the spaceport authority, the security organization is responsible for security within the physical boundaries of the spaceport. Security measures mitigate malicious damage and hazards to an acceptable level of risk and control innocent intrusions into areas that would cause others to be at risk. In the event of a disaster, the spaceport may call upon the security organization to respond to external damage caused by a space vehicle losing control around or even some distance from the launch facility. Numerous factors must be evaluated to determine the amount and kind of protection a spaceport needs. To determine the degree of risk, relative criticality and relative vulnerability must be analyzed. Hazards can be divided into three broad categories: theft of assets or property, sabotage or human-caused emergencies, and espionage of proprietary or governmental documentary information.
As with all security measures, these hazards need to be continually re-evaluated. A combination of systems comprises primary security. Passive systems consist of some form of barrier, which can be natural and/or artificial obstacles to entry, such as water, fences, concrete barriers, maze-like entry, etc. Intelligent barriers could have remote sensing and/or an alarm capability. Active barriers are usually operated by security personnel, either onsite or remotely via electronic means.
Conclusions
Spaceports are an integral part of extra terrestrial transportation but there are significant economics, social and political considerations, as well as technical factors, that influence the number, location, and nature of these ports. The conventional way to view safety is as a constraint on the maximizing of the objective function that may be commercial in the case of private spaceports but wider when they are publically owned. Safety is multi-dimensional and, its nature is, in many ways seen through the eye of the beholder. There is no simple technical definition of a “safe” spaceport. Here we have outlined some of the economic considerations that are pertinent to looking as spaceport safety.
References
1. George Mason University NASA Continuing Education Program. Spaceport Infrastructure Handbook. Fairfax: GMU; 2002.
2. Knight FH. Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. New York: Houghton Mifflin; 1921.
3. L. Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. Competitive Analysis of Virginia’s Space Industry. Richmond: Virginia Commonwealth University; 2011.
4. Samuelson PA. The pure theory of public expenditures. Review of Economics and Statistics. 1954;36:350–356.
5. Sheahan JT, Hoban FT. Spaceports. In: Button KJ, Lammersen-Baum J, Stough R, eds. Defining Aerospace Policy: Essays in Honor of Francis T. Aldershot: Hoban Ashgate; 2004.
6. Winters NJ. Enabling the Commercial Space Transportation Industry at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. Monterey: Naval Postgraduate School; 2011.
1Unidirectional can mean dedicated landing sites as well as launch sites.
2Winters (2011) offers a fairly basic but relatively objective account of some economic aspects of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.
3Currently, there are eight launch sites with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licenses in the United States. They are located in Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Virginia, and two facilities each in California and Florida. Four of these licenses, however, only grant sites the right to launch retrievable launch vehicles into sub-orbit.
4www.cnes-csg.fr/web/CNES-CSG-fr/9754-page-d-erreur.php
5There may be exceptions to this; the delineation is seen as a practical division for expositional purposes.
6This may involve self-insurance for a station if the probability of an accident is small relative to the overall assets of the operator.
8Indeed, the Spanish use the same word for safety and security.