An Introduction to the Spaceport Industry

Runways to Space

Janet K. Tinoco, Chunyan Yu, Diane Howard, Ruth E. Stilwell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351165822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Aviation
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This book provides a contemporary look at spaceports, not only from relevant technological drivers, policies, and legal perspectives, but also from impacts associated with airspace use and aviation stakeholders. Economic, business, financial, and environmental considerations; issues facing airports transitioning to air and space ports; and spaceport planning are discussed.

Through case and event studies, research and analysis, along with information obtained through professional experience, this book provides an overview of the many benefits, unique challenges, and issues facing commercial spaceports and spaceport operators. Each chapter is a standalone key topic such that the reader can focus on the most compelling issues relevant for them or can view the book as an integrated whole for a full perspective. While examples and case studies come largely from the United States, the reader can draw conclusions that are independent of country and situation. Information on other nation-state policies and advancements, among other topics, is provided to give a global perspective, further expanding the relevancy and benefits of the book to both domestic and international audiences.

An Introduction to the Spaceport Industry: Runways to Space fills a gap in the literature, providing professionals, government officials, researchers, professors, and students deep insights into the fast-growing commercial spaceport industry.

1 Spaceports

Definitions, History, and Policy

United States (U.S.) Senator Gore Sr. said, “Outer space is not a new subject, just a new place where old subjects come up” (cited by Hughwey 1963, p. 150). This is somewhat true of spaceports, the still-terrestrial element of space transportation. What precisely is a spaceport? Is it a futuristic construct, designed only to launch adventurous souls into the great unknown? Is it simply a property suitably distanced from dense populations potentially impacted if something goes awry with a launch? Could it be as simple as a parking lot under the stars?

The answers come with futuristic vision with a course set with challenging goals, bounded by safety for all, while acknowledging and preparing for the inevitable failure as well as success. History plays a role, but as the reader advances throughout this book, it is clear that we learn from history yet improve and modify based on the unique environment of space and the ecosystem in which spaceports operate to be successful and sustainable.

To start, this chapter delves into the definitional aspects of spaceports, as well as their history and relevant space legislation using past and present U.S. policies as the foundation of our in-depth discussion. As the reader will see, the connection to early aviation, the birth of airports, regulation thereof, and the commercialization of flight are highly relevant and the perfect place to start our book on runways to space.

1.1 Spaceport Definitions

Definitions of spaceports are in flux, largely because requirements for launch are changing as spaceflight technology moves forward and flight profiles continue to change. A case in point is the ability to reenter and reuse parts of a launch vehicle, long considered a Holy Grail in rendering spaceflight more affordable and therefore more accessible. Another is the growing number of launches performed in the air. These technological developments underpin the recalibration of launch and launch site regulations currently underway in the U.S. as well as in countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia.

Currently, U.S. regulations define a launch site as “the location on Earth from which a launch takes place … and necessary facilities at that location” (14 U.S. Code of Federal Regulations 405.1). Launch sites and reentry sites are licensed separately in the United States, but, more often than not, are located in the same place. But the statutory definition falls a bit short. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2019) expands the definition a bit, including testing as well as launching at the spaceport. That said, spaceports involve a great deal more than a slab or runway and are home to activities far beyond testing and the actual launch. They represent a portion of the entire ecosystem of spaceflight itself.

Launch sites and spaceports have been around for some time, first emerging in the U.S. in the 1940s when the federal government began building and operating launch ranges (U.S. Federal Aviation Administration 2011). In fact, the first time the term “spaceport” shows up in literature is in 1930 in a science fiction tale called The Birth of a New Republic by M. Breurer with J. Williamson (spaceport, technovelgy.com).

The past few years have shown significant activity in the modification of existing facilities and the siting and build-outs of new ones all over the world. The topography of spaceports is undergoing an enormous shift, moving from strictly federal facilities used by the Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to public private partnerships (e.g., Adams and Petrov 2006), bistate partnerships (cf., Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority 2012), and even thoroughly private endeavors (e.g., David 2006; Foust 2010; Sprague 2010). Dr. Kurt Debus first began setting up Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) as a federal launch site in the early 1950s (Heiney 2002). However, the Air Force station and adjacent NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) are very good examples of the ever-evolving shifts in use and operations at a spaceport. The Kennedy Space Center Master Plan (U.S. NASA 2017) allows the site to continue to adapt to the changing demographics and requirements of launch providers, including purely commercial, private sector operators.

For all these changes, and the raised awareness and visibility of spaceports among the mass citizenry, spaceports still show up in literary statistics at a relatively low rate – in the bottom 20% of words searched online as of this writing (statistics for spaceport – Google Books Ngram Viewer 2019; Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2019). Further, Figure 1.1 shows the pattern of growth in frequency of use of the terms, spaceport and space port. The vertical axis represents the percentage of hits of these terms out of the total scanned words. The reader is cautioned that this analysis, using Google Books Ngram Viewer which searches for these terms in a large body of books, does not include all literary works and uses data limited by date to 2008. Regardless, the frequency of the occurrence of the terms is quite low.

Figure 1.1 Frequency of Use over Time “Spaceport” (1940–2008).

Source: Google Books Ngram Viewer [Accessed: 8/15/19]

Since 1996, the United States Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) has granted site licenses to 12 nonfederal launch sites serving both commercial and government launch operators: Mojave Air and Space Port; Spaceport America; Cape Canaveral Spaceport (at CCAFS and KSC); Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska; Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at Wallops Flight Facility/MARS; California Spaceport at Vandenberg Air Force Base (AFB); Oklahoma Spaceport at Burns Flat; Houston Spaceport at Ellington; Midland International Air and Space Port; and Cecil Spaceport (Active Launch Site Operator Licenses, U.S. FAA 2019). Midland International Air and Space Port in Midland, Texas is the first Part 139 airport serving commercial aviation carriers that has been licensed as a spaceport. Three licensed spaceports are co-located with federal facilities: California Spaceport, Cape Canaveral Spaceport and MARS.

Internationally, federal and multinational spaceports are located in Australia (Woomera Test Range), Brazil, China, French Guyana, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, North Korea, the Pacific Ocean (Sea Launch), Russia, South Korea, Sweden, and, of course, those in the U.S. (e.g., Space Foundation 2017). Proposals for spaceports, offering at least some level of launch capability, are currently in the works in Abu Dhabi, Canada, Italy, and the United Kingdom (U.K.), among others (e.g., Space Foundation 2017). The list is growing. But, in actuality, at this point in time, almost any entity with an airport could market their facilities as a spaceport. This becomes increasingly clear throughout the book, but particularly in Chapter 5 where we discuss common business models of commercial spaceport.

1.2 History and Policy: Airports and Spaceports

Interestingly, jurisdictions discussing spaceport licensing and regulation around the globe, do not even house spaceports at present. Further, most jurisdictions do not directly regulate spaceports; much less, do they clearly set forth policy goals such as those in the U.S. Looking at some overarching goals for transportation law, intermodality, and early U.S. laws pertaining to airports provides some insight into some of the high-level objectives found in U.S. policy. The history of early U.S. airport construction and financing can serve as a cautionary tale for spaceports now in use and in development. Airports, like spaceports, are on the ground but house the operations necessary to prepare for flight and landing, as well as navigation. One early author noted, “Public airports form a part of the navigation facilities along public airways” (Blaine 1954, p. 270). In similar fashion, spaceports are the terrestrial element of the launch and, sometimes, reentry, and it is contemplated that they will also participate in the navigation of vehicles.

Speculators and investors, looking to capitalize on the sensationalism resulting from Lindbergh’s early aviation accomplishments, developed early U.S. airports (Blaine 1954). They were built in a one-off fashion, piecemeal, apparently without consideration of anything beyond adventure and certainly without benefit of a cohesive master plan. Early legislation carved airports out of the U.S. federal regulatory scheme. Control was given to local bodies with exceptions made for airways under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Postmaster General, emergency landing fields, and navigation facilities. Airports themselves were expressly excluded.

Despite this, during the mid-1930s, federal funds were often used to build and improve airports as part of the government initiative to manage mass-scale unemployment.¹ These airport projects were constructed without consideration of the current or future needs of the air transport industry. Often, they were built to accommodate only one type of aircraft, quickly rendering them obsolete.² Eventually, the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 973, Section 302(a) Proviso (United States Congress 1938) broadened the reach of the federal legislation to include “air navigation facilities at and upon any municipally owned or other landing area approved for such installation, operation, or maintenance by the Administrator”. This Act also directed the Administrator to survey the existing system of airports and to make recommendations to Congress dealing with the construction, improvement, development, operation, and maintenance of a national system of airports. Ultimately, the resulting report found that development of an adequate system was worthy of federal funding, and preference should be given to projects essential to the maintenance of safe and efficient air transportation if they met a number of specified requirements. These findings helped articulate the early regulatory policies applied to airports in the U.S. The report recommended the National Airport Plan (NAP) (Blaine 1954), which took a backseat during World War II.

After the war, this plan returned to the Administrator’s focus. The Federal Airport Act of 1946 first established the requirement that a five-year NAP be formulated and that it be revised annually. This mandate is ongoing although it has evolved. The NAP and its funding were first replaced by the Airport and Airway Development Act of 1970 which established requirements for a coordinated National Airport System Plan (NASP) and an aid program. Subsequent legislation has amended this federal requirement for an ongoing systemic plan, now called the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS). These requirements are found in Title 49 of the United States Code Chapter 471. There we find the policies that drive the legislation governing airports in the U.S.

The highest priority is given to safe operation. Responsive development, taking into consideration the needs of the surrounding communities, is emphasized. 49 United States Code (USC) 47,101 (a)(5) states that it is the policy of the U.S. “to encourage the development of intermodal connections on airport property between aeronautical and other transportation modes and systems to serve air transportation passengers and cargo efficiently and effectively and promote economic development”. This statement represents treatment of the airport as a part of a larger system, not just of airports, but integrated with other modalities, a position hinted at in the system of capabilities discussed in the U.S. National Space Transportation Policy.

The regulatory goal of integration is further expanded in section (b) of the same statute, which states that the development of a national intermodal system that coordinates with other complementary modes of transportation is an express goal, allowing the U.S. to compete in the global marketplace. Intermodality is implicit in the U.S. National Space Transportation Policy use of the term “regions of space” when discussing access to space (See 49 USC 47101 (2)). Additionally, U.S. leadership in the world economy is considered at stake if this goal is not met and a complete overhaul of the existing airport infrastructure is contemplated as a potential necessity. “Intermodality and flexibility are paramount issues in the process of developing an integrated system that will obtain the optimum yield of United States resources” (See 49 USC 47101(b)(6)). In keeping with this prioritization, integration of the National Airspace System (NAS) into imminent space transportation coordination and management is an issue now in implementation at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) (Murray 2014).

The reshaping of U.S. infrastructure in the 2013 U.S. National Space Transportation Policy is presented in mandatory terms to allow the country to compete in the global economy, referring to airports, not spaceports, but they contemplate several issues that are pertinent.

The first issue is that transportation is intermodal and the second is that in order to engage with the global economy, airport systems must be reshaped in order to be integrated.

Recently, the United States Congress (2018) recognized the importance of spaceports in the grand transportation scheme and established a policy office within the FAA, the Office of Spaceports, to bring spaceport policy forward. The functions of the office include supporting the licensing activities for operations at launch/reentry sites, developing policies promoting infrastructure improvements, providing technical assistance and guidance to spaceports, promoting U.S. spaceports within the larger Department of Transportation, and strengthening competitiveness and resilience of the commercial space transportation infrastructure (U.S. FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018).

In the National Space Transportation Policy of the United States of America (2013), space launch ranges are given a subsection. The discussion focuses upon interagency coordination and cooperation with the private sector, rather than coordination among different modes of transportation. Spaceport infrastructure is acknowledged as a component of the space transportation system but not a focus of the policy.

In the airport statutes, the United States Code states that the Secretary of Transportation shall consider the needs of each segment of civil aviation and the re...