We can’t rely on them for commercial spaceflight. It’s truly appalling that we’re going to have a multi-week delay at the Cape because the infrastructure lacks robustness. Unfortunately, the incentive structure for government expenditures allows this to happen.
17 thoughts on “Government Ranges”
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Launch out of Kodiak. Cheers –
That’s an option that I’m actually involved with, but you can’t get below 57 degrees from there. This is one of the reasons that SpaceX wants to go to Brownsville.
Will browncoats emerge from Brownsville? Govt. will always take the sky away. It’s what governments do.
I wish I could say that this is a new problem but it isn’t. I worked on military space systems most of the years between 1986 and 2012. Over 10 years ago, Air Force Space Command was saying how expensive it was to operate the old ranges, how inflexible they were, how long it took to reconfigure the range between launches, etc. In all that time, they did essentially nothing to address any of those problems. The ranges are even older now. They’re harder and more expensive to maintain. And in the end, they’ll likely do nothing but complain about it for years to come. The USAF’s unofficial motto is “Lip Service to Leadership” and AFSPC’s is “God Forbid Anyone Make a Decision.”
A non-fiction article at Baen that seemed informative and nearly even on topic on launch windows, rendevous, etc.:
http://baen.com/rendezvous.asp
Sounds like a market for Rand’s Rocket Range.
Government ranges are also subject to petty politics. I bet everyone who launches at one of those sites has at one time or another been bumped or delayed by an aerospace rival.
nothing prevents you from getting some money together, building a range, and getting it licensed
by the FAA.
Who said anything prevented that? Why is that my job, you moron?
Nothing prevents you from making intelligent, relevant comments at this blog, either. Except your obvious lack of intelligence.
If you want to complain about a problem, you can sit and whine, or you can
work on a solution.
That’s just called being an adult.
There are ways of coming up with solutions that don’t involve you personally doing the whole thing yourself, you moron.
nothing prevents you… getting some money… licensed by the FAA
Rand, I think if money is nothing for DN-guy, then he probably has enough to start his own blog and post idiocy there. He won’t even need the FAA to provide him a license, so you might consider sending him on his way. A gentle nudge, if you will.
I second the nudge, if we are taking a vote…
Why is availability of that particular radar critical for launch? A range-safety thing?
it says it’s a down range radar, so i’m guessing it for tracking of the corridor.
it would seem that ADS-B or GPS tracking would help but it’s quite tedious getting that
qualified. The range people are pretty stuck in their ways.
Yes.
What do people think? Is SpaceX’s manifest just PR, or were they actually going to be able to send all those flights up this year? And what about now?