“Any safety risk posed to commercial airline operations is unacceptable,” warned Jason Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, in response to the Federal Aviation Administration’s disclosure of how debris was launched into the Caribbean by the January flight of the SpaceX Starship, prompting emergency action by air traffic controllers. The seventh flight of the uncrewed Starship took off from the company’s Starbase site in Texas, powered by the 33 Raptor methane-fueled engines of the Super Heavy booster, producing 16 million pounds of thrust, which greatly exceeds the Saturn V rocket of NASA’s Saturn rocket family by factor of more than twice, sending the spacecraft into what the company describes as “rapid unscheduled disassembly” within the first ten minutes of flight.
As communications were lost with the towering rocket standing at 400 feet, chunks of debris began to appear in the skies that could be seen from Florida to the Bahamas. According to the incident report submitted by the FAA, about 450 passengers aboard two commercial planes and an errant private jet were placed in danger of damage from the debris-filled skies for close to an hour. A JetBlue flight scheduled to arrive in San Juan was asked if it could continue “at your own risk,” and an Iberia Airlines flight and an errant private flight had to be hastily diverted after coming too close to each other in the ever-enlarging no-fly zone. A pilot low on fuel declared “mayday” three times before making an emergency landing in Puerto Rico.
The FAA had activated their debris response zones in just four minutes after losing telemetry, but SpaceX did not report the incident through their designated hotline with the FAA until 15 minutes after, according to a journal review by the Wall Street Journal. As a consequence, some controllers have only learned of the problem through pilots who had already dealt with descending debris. Delays, especially with high density air traffic, increase the workload and risks associated with dynamic rerouting.
The Starship design makes failures much riskier because of its size. The Super Heavy booster and second stage are fully reusable and are either catcher “chopstick” or landers after an orbital mission. Its payload capacity of 200 metric tons in expendable-launch configuration is dramatically larger than that of today’s heavy-lift rockets and allows lunar landers to Mars cargo deliveries. However, because of its size, disintegration scenarios provide widespread debris patterns that could linger in air space up to 40 to 50 minutes.
The safety procedures in the aviation world involve the pre-coordination of danger zones with the FAA as well as the airlines in order to ensure the area remains clear of airplanes. When deviations happen, the control tower relies on quick communication from the operators in order to update these areas in real time. The January situation in which the no-fly area suddenly increased in the Caribbean reflects the need for quick communication.
Debris tracking systems include the use of radar, optical systems, and modeling. Recommendations by the FAA safety risk management panels include the need for better linkage between the launch operations centers and the airline dispatchers, as well as pre-notification reentry corridors for large rocket parts. These are all put in place before the eighth flight mission of the Starship spacecraft that took place in March, after which it, as before, failed due to an explosion but without the fuel-related hazards due to double coverage of the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos.
SpaceX contradicts the labeling of the January incident as a extreme risk to aviation safety, claiming that “no aircraft have been put at risk and any events that generated vehicle debris were contained within pre-coordinated response areas.” It argues that these regions are “very conservatively large,” and that aircraft were routed in real time around debris. There would seem, however, a mismatch between actual operational practice and any concept of improved aviation security.
With version 3 of the Starship on the drawing board, which will have bigger propellant tanks, Raptor 3 engines, and the ability to fuel in space, the FAA has given permission for up to 25 launches per year in Texas, and is pondering permits for Florida locations as well. However, the impact statements for these locations estimate that up to 13,200 flights per year could be affected during periods of heaviest air traffic, while delays would cost between $80 million and $350 million per year. The incredible feat of the power and reuse abilities in the Starship will have to work in tandem with the unyielding accuracy required for air traffic control.
