Is the FAA licensing spaceports that are doomed to fail? From a report: The latest launch attempt out of Kodiak, Alaska’s spaceport shows in vivid detail just how quickly things can go sideways. In the video, rocket maker Astra’s 3.3 skids horizontally for hundreds of yards, then shoots some 20 miles upwards, listing off course. Ground crew terminates the flight, and the craft free falls back to Earth in pieces, landing in a fireball. None of Astra’s six test flights from Kodiak’s Pacific Spaceport Complex have made it into orbit, and five have exploded. But, as Jeff Bezos says, failure and innovation are inseparable twins.
Analysts expect the commercial space industry to be worth $1 trillion by 2040, and increasingly, small towns are angling to get in on the action. One such community is Camden County, Georgia, where a group of county commissioners is longing for their own spaceport — and the economic growth and diversification they hope will come with it. There’s one caveat: Spaceport Camden’s sole proposed launch trajectory would, in an unprecedented move, cross two populated islands, as well as a federally protected marshland and wilderness, just a few miles from the toxic brownfield set to become the launch site.
To some residents, this seems like an astronomically bad idea. But failures — even explosive ones — don’t faze Camden County: according to spaceport planners, Astra is a prime launch tenant candidate, and Alaska Aerospace Corporation, which runs Kodiak’s spaceport, could become an operation partner. All they need to get this plan off the ground is an operation license from the Federal Aviation Administration. And to secure that, they aren’t basing their proposal on rockets like the one that blew up in Alaska — instead, they’re using models of rockets that don’t exist.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot