I worked on a research project that tried to do automated parsing of NOTAM, GIS and hazard maps into a easy to consume format. We ended up writing a giant honk of regex and still had trouble pulling them apart in a usefull way. Each agency does them a little different. German and US NOTAMs ... very structured, French... meh, it's okey. Italian? They just yeet anything in there, suprised I didn't come across someones lunch order 😂
@@snower13 Before that, seems like a great application for component-oriented development. Before that, seems like a great application for object orientation. Before that, seems like a great application for modular programming. Before that, seems like a great application for pretty much every generation of software design which claimed to answer all the ills of the world (but didn't).
Yep, there's a whole bunch of people out there working for aviation software companies manually inputting notams into systems or checking that input because no one cracked it to a certifiably safe level yet!
Sadly as a commercial pilot, we don't get graphical NOTAM information. Just the raw text, filtered by routing and time. That said, i don't have time to parse enroute NOTAMs, and it is ATCs duty to keep me clear to begin with. I parse departure and destination aerodrome NOTAMs, and if i have to divert and have the time i take a quick peak at the alternate NOTAMs, but even there ATC is there to help me and gives me further information by D-ATIS which we can get via ACARS. The NOTAM system is currently just a huge wall of text, and in general quite useless. Around 80% of all airport NOTAMs are cranes or other temporary things, usually just with a coordinate, sometimes with a street adress. All in all the NOTAM system is in serious need of a complete revamp and doesn't really serve its original purpose anymore.
@@scottmanley Ah yes, sadly FIS-B is a pure GA service as it relies on the internationally not standardized 978 MHz ADS-B channel. Internationally 1090 MHz is the standardized version and does not support FIS-B as far as i know. Everyone who flies above 10.000ft need the latter one.
You must read and parse all NOTAMs which may impact your flight. That is your job and responsibility. That means reading all of them on every flight. Blaming the Notam system are just excuses.
@ In theory. However, officially i am only allowed to use the certified EFB apps and nothing else. And i would have to carry a second iPad for that, as the company iPad doesn't allow third party app installation and Foreflight is not part of our EFB suite (we use the LIDO eRoute Manual).
In January 2003 I was sailing south down the Florida coast. In the early hours, we heard Range Control at Cape Canaveral announcing a restricted area near Port Canaveral due to a shuttle launch. We were buzzed by an Air Force helicopter, and called on the radio, and just managed to leave the restricted area in time. We watched the launch of the ill-fated Columbia shuttle from about 5 miles away.
@@edmoore3910 they weren't in the restricted area when it came into effect, you think anyone who sailed through that area prior to launch restrictions should be jailed?
Crazy to think that just maybe if you were a little slower, there may have been a hold in the launch and the resulting temp changes may have just changed exactly which foam chunk detached from the tank and it could have been different. It obviously couldn't be known either way, but just a curious butterfly effect thought stream.
Scott! An Amtrak train once entered the keep-out zone during a launch at Vandenberg. I heard about it from train staff who said they were right next the pad when they were bathed in bright light, shaken and deafened by a launch.
@ I don't know the history of the region, but I'm guessing the railroad was there long before the launch pads. I have wanted to ride that particular Amtrak train, the Coast Starlight, for a while but haven't had the pleasure yet.
I have been one of those "captains of wayward boats" We were moving a boat down the coast (takes a week) and were far enough offshore that there was noting to be heard on the VHF. All of a sudden there's a C130 circling overhead and having a "chat" with us. Based on our speed (or lack thereof) they gave us a heading that would get us out the fastest, and who were we to argue... that was it. No letter from the coast guard later or "inspection from the military.
What altitude was your boat at that it proved an obstacle to an orbital rocket? I will never understand what those sadsack mouthbreathers think a boat which is 12 mi instead of 15 mi away is going to do to a rocket going mostly straight up.
@JustPlainRob That's because nobody thinks the boat is doing something to the rocket - they think the rocket might be doing something to the boat (if it fails somehow).
Drunk RUclips safety: I just did a select all - copy-paste before clicking the button. Result is less than ideal, but seems so far to be safe against drunk RUclips.
The developer side of me yearns to modernize NOTAMs. This may sound weird, but US laws are not actually stored in any formal way, it's just a bunch of documents. Right now, the U.S. Legislative Markup (USLM) project is working to: 1. Stardarize Legal Documents - into an XML format (for consistency, and a way machines can understand). 2. Facilitate Access - make it easier for the public to access laws. 3. Enable Interoperability - seamlessly integrate these legal documents into technology platforms. The USLM project is taking a very long time. But, it feels like NOTAMs could use a similar treatment. A criticism I've heard from also watching Blancolirio is that there is not an obvious priority of messages in a NOTAM. It's easy for a "runway closed" message to get buried in a NOTAM.
"Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P., shouldn't we keep the P.C. on the Q.T.? 'Cause of the leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A., and then we'd all be put out in K.P."
@pauldzim what's wrong with XML? The point here is of taking a structured approach to information. I honestly don't care if it's XML or something else, the benefits are the same, but I'd be curious what you would prefer over XML.
Btw, the timing of all of this is pretty interesting because only very recently an Eclipse 500 started flying the first FAA-approved commercial use of the eXtensible Flight System (XFS). XFS is an open, modular approach to your aircraft's Flight Management System (FMS). It's a lot like how modern PCs are built, you can use different parts from different companies because they share the same protocol. It's a similar example of modular, open-source software ideas making their way into commercial flight.
Good point of the not-everything-is-visible on the ADS-B data! Being an ATCO myself, I do appriciate that you take up this topic @scottmanely, because a LOT of stuff are not visable on these sites and cause speculation. DRA, Debris Response Area, will be the daily future with more space launches and more air traffic (also in Europe). Air Traffic (not the pilots maybe but the companies) don't want the old big closed airspace, so they might have been an advocate for this DRA to be the norm. It is highly probable the ACC's in the area did get the information about the Starship DRAs and when to activate them as you state, but the pilots are not really a privy to this information, I guess. Then again the amount of NOTAM information a longhaul pilot (or any) must read and digest might not help in the situation. The BIG issue for the ACC and pilots is to know how LONG this DRA will be active (i.e. how long will it take to have the debris to clear the airspace). I know the math here is very difficult and it would A LOT simpler if all debris would be spherical and of same material.
@@lolmao500Boeing's failures are clear enough that the FAA won't be destroyed. Regulations just need to be changed to adapt to how fast rocket development is going.
I haven't seen any overseas reports, but BEFORE Starship 7 flight, there was a number reports in the Australian media about Qantas delaying flights up to six hours on the Sydney-Johannesburg route due to " last-minute changes in coordinates for the location and timing of re-entry of rockets from Elon Musk's space technology firm". "While we try to make any changes to our schedule in advance, the timing of recent launches have moved around at late notice which has meant we've had to delay some flights just prior to departure," said Ben Holland, the head of Qantas's operations centre." "We're in contact with SpaceX to see if they can refine the areas and time windows for the rocket re-entries to minimise future disruption," Holland added." At the time (note again, BEFORE Starship 7 flight), I thought this was a bit of an overreaction by Qantas. But, in hindsight, it now seems a prudent safety measure.
Presumably they would be talking about Qantas flights from Sydney to LA because I don't think any other of their routes would be affected by Elon Musk.
@@aspzx Ahh, no. The Sydney-Johannesburg route. This time of year, the prevailing westerlies at FL300 means that west bound flights from Sydney at going a long way north to avoid the winds. So far north that it is crossing into the Starship's landing zone in the Indian Ocean. Qantas' grip isn't that the proposed landing zone is so big in the Indian Ocean, the gripe is about the last minute changes that are affecting scheduled flights. It takes just one look at the map to understand just how far from land those flights are.
Speaking on the maritime side - There's the (USCG) promulgated NTMs ahead of time (published on the NGA site), but there's also broadcasts on VHF 16 by the local CG communications centers. Which, all boats are supposed to monitor but I can't say that they actually do, tbh. And to enforce that sort of thing, you'll basically need a boarding from a patrol craft. Also, only certain high traffic ports have the equivalent of ATC (Vessel Traffic Service), and even then it's only for big commercial boats to coordinate to make sure that they're aware of each other. There's also an equivalent to ADSB .. AIS, but it's not required carriage on anything small or most state registered pleasure craft. Basically, when it comes down to it, the maritime side runs a lot closer to VFR rules than IFR ones. Lower consequence, after all - boat starts sinking/doing stuff, you have way more response time in general than if a plane runs into a problem. Generally, the marine side only sends out patrol craft if there's a high vis/high impact event, and even then you might end up chasing yahoos off (see the people approaching Demo-2, for instance). Plus, you start losing authorities outside of the maritime boundary lines (12/24 miles) where a lot of these warnings start becoming advisory, vs enforceable regulations.
I basically left the same comment before reading yours... To elevate on your idea of a boarding party: That stops at the 12nm line. In international water we handle "exclusion zones" based on mutural respect witch is something the US seemingly never heard of. So pretty much every incedend of a vessel entering a warning area causing problems for US Navy is self inflicted and a natural reaction to arrogant bully behavior.
@ Not wholly true - the US has jurisdiction worldwide over US flagged (and stateless) vessels, as do other countries over their own flags. Otherwise, yes, a boarding will need to have the consent of the flagging country.
A number of years ago I was at a local beach waiting for an airshow by a military flight demonstration team to start. The planes were on the way, but they almost had to scrub due to a private boat in the exclusion area. There were radio calls, loud speaker calls, and a police helicopter buzzing this boat, and it seemed like nothing was going to get their attention. At the last moment they did realize that something was going on and they moved.
There's been a number of space shuttle launches delayed by this kind of thing, too, boats and private planes. There's astronaut memoirs full of narratives on these kinds of delays and the intercom channels were filled with astronauts calling to "torpedo his a$$" and "shoot the f**ker down". Mike Mullane describes one such plane excursion as "the pilot finally pulled his head out of his a$$ and flew away. When the all-clear was given, we all wished him wind shear and engine failure."
According to my sources, the Delta was the one that offended, because it swung around the exclusion zone too tightly. It strictly speaking didn't clip the posted zone, but apparently the range safety officer was operating on a different map.
5:00 Having tried looking through ADS-B data to try to identify low-flying jet aircraft in my neighborhood before, I can appreciate the frequent inability to pin things on any one plane :)
Get a radio and listen to them. Sometimes one will report a UFO or LASER attack. I had a couple hot spots where I could expect to look for the callsign on the flight tracker. If you listen to as much of the air traffic as you can receive from your spot, I've personally heard maybe 5 or 6 within a couple of years. I'm of the impression that a certain venue in the more reported area has been releasing mylar balloons from outdoor birthdays/weddings/etc.. The LASER attacker is on that same air road, or whatever they call them. I think it's mostly just that the route takes them straight over several small and very-small towns, so there's a lot of population and transportation for that hundred or so miles. If you just want to hear the planes that are buzzing your house, get a scanner with "Close Call" feature. It will let you know and start playing anything that's transmitting nearby.
Hell, as he showed that data over the map of aircraft, I couldn't help but notice the aircraft whose transponder was blinking on and off a ton _(or at least their signal was spotty, or perhaps GPS related)._ *One of them* seemed to be circling and as it was randomly blinking another flew right through where it had been going.... which was also blinking lol _(hence my suspicion of maybe signal strength or GPS related)_ So depending on the cause, I imagine that would indeed make trying to find the culprit in your situation even harder 😕
13:39 That was for the Cosmo Skymed 2 mission in January 2022. I was in Florida for my 30th birthday and this was scheduled to fly the day after I arrived. I was waiting on Cocoa Beach for liftoff when they announced it was scrubbed. I came back the next day and spent all morning and afternoon nerding out at the KSC before I drove back to Cocoa Beach to watch the launch. It was worth the wait for sure and something I'll never forget. I was blessed with a RTLS too which was the icing on the cake. I was so pumped to get up witness my first ever launch in person. There was Starlink mission a few days later that I saw from all the way in Orlando. That batch of Starlink sats were lost a few days after launch because of geomagnetic storm effects on the density of the upper atmosphere. The was also the ill-fated Astra Rocket 3 launch that had a RUD which i also caught a glimpse of during ascent.
I was very close to your viewing location for a F9 launch in January 2024. I had forgotten what day the launch was, and we had left Cocoa Beach to return to our hotel on Canaveral (the Hampton Inn near the city welcome sign). We heard the launch noise through our vehicle and got back to the hotel parking lot in time to watch the RTLS descent. We could not see it land due to trees and landscaping....but the sonic boom startled us, even though we knew it was coming. It was LOUD!
Nice Scott! thank you for taking the time to show us all that and educate us. I found it to be very informative and entertaining. Always love your show and look forward to it. You always do a wonderful job..
Really awesome to see Scott, blancolirio, VAS, and others all sort of feeding off one another to bring attention to this problem - before a tragedy occurs. Thanks for getting out in front of this one. Excellent reporting Scott!
Great update, Scott! The Airspace Management Plans should be on an FAA public database (at a minimum) and communicated broadly - can't imagine (well, inertia of course) why they haven't. Ran across that Flight 7 plan on NSF and went down the rabbit hole...
I first came to this channel through Scott's Elite: Dangerous videos - I'm so glad I stuck around! Scott's coverage of real-life space events is fantastic!
Thanks very much, Scott. Very fascinating and I really love your graphics and videos as well. I’ll definitely support that fellow who provided the detailed maps. Fly safe too!
Love the deep dive into debris hazard zone communications. I was wondering if the exclusion zone stripe over Turks and Caicos shown in your previous video was just an estimation from the ADS-B data or an actual ATC/FAA warning zone ... and now I know!
So... Great work covering all the bases of this one Scott. I was a tad peeved, shall we say, when I first thought that the TFR just wasn't big enough and the debris was coming down beyond or off-track of the allotted area, but seeing it's mostly just an information dissemination issue due to the relative unknown quantity of the DRA's? Well - I can't see any reason why they don't just publish the DRA's alongside the TFR's. Seems like a simple solution - getting info out to folk who need it is more than half the battle, then at least the dispatchers/pilots will at least have the chance to be warned that there's a potential delay/risk along their route when things go sideways again. The alternative I suppose is to go back to the extended range of the initial TFR's to cover the DRA areas, but as you point out, that would have massive knock-on impacts for a vast number of flights, even without the rampup of rocket launches already planned/expected - far more than the issue of occasionally having to hold for a while and maybe divert or declare a fuel emergency. In either case, they should probably work on a system to segment the DRA areas a bit better so once there's confirmation that debris has passed that point, another area can be opened up & free up all those planes all the sooner. That at least would cut the annoyance down to a minimum.
The problem is more fundamental. You can just stop all airtraffic over a large region whenever a rocket launches. Its not even the 'US jurisdiction, maybe even right to do so. Especially when the idea of Starship is to have an extremely high launch cadence. I suspect one solution might be to use launch sites that are more directed towards the open ocean.
Those of us who enjoy high power (amateur) rocket launches know that we have to engage the FAA to get time and date and location and altitude restrictions. I've flown under a 14000 "above ground level" (AGL) several times, and with (much) higher ceilings on other occasions. If you're not familiar with amateur high power rocketry, I think you might be surprised at how powerful an engine we can (legally) fly.
My brother and I once fit a C motor in an Estes rocket that was designed for an A motor. On a clear night you can still see that rocket orbiting the moon to this day.
@@animegod1281 It's a little difficult to answer this, but several people have managed to clear 100,000 ft. I believe that there is one "amateur" flight that cleared 300,000 ft. There's a RUclips guy "BPS Space" who has interesting content about large amateur rockets. A price point: a few years ago I flew a two stage K+K engine to about 14,000 ft, hitting Mach 1.5 along the way. It would probably take about $2000-$3000 in components to duplicate that effort from scratch (I had dual (redundant) electronics on that flight, by the way). If I had built a "minimum diameter" rocket, it would have gone significantly higher and faster; my rocket was more of a "city bus" than a high performance rocket. The problem with flying big rockets is that you might have hours and hours of work to find it when it comes down. I flew GPS radios on both stages of my rocket...
@@animegod1281 I’ve heard that Friends of Amateur Rocketry in California have a 200k ft waiver. Spaceport America Cup in White Sands get at least a 30k one every year. I know of a spot in Ontario that sometimes gets up to 50k
Ellie in Space did an interview with a pilot who said that as the break up/debris was at such a high altitude there would be an extremely low probability/low risk of any debris hitting an aircraft at around 35000 ft. That got a lot of negative comments against the FAA as usual for having rules, and Scott for his FT7 review vid because he dared to suggest danger to aircraft!
Unless that pilot has extensive metallurgical knowledge, and also intimate knowledge of Starship's makeup, it is my opinion that he really is in no position to make such a claim. Now, it's very possible he might've been a former employee of the space industry that transitioned to being a pilot and DOES have the requisite knowledge, but I dunno about that... heh
The breakup may have been in space, but at suborbital velocities, so it's *all* going to come down ballistically. In this case, the system worked, and it all validated what the FAA is doing. Effected aviation interests should send Space X bills for the costs of their diversions. I'm sure in Elon's mind the fact that his crap didn't hit any airplanes proves the FAA overreacted and they just pick on him and should be DoGE'd out of existence.
Fascinating stuff Scott. Thanks once again for concisely describing a very complicated system. I learned a lot that makes the complicated world a better place
I didn't mind Juan's take. Yes, he was speaking from the viewpoint of a pilot, which, though different from the opinions of a spaceflight enthusiast, is perfectly valid.
@1:40 Wondering what the oddly straight/right angle lines are on the seabed north of Crown Haven...sensor artifacts? The Bermuda Triangle's polygonal cousin?
Rectifying satellite imagery for open ocean is difficult due to the lack of surface features, they probably don't try too hard to composite images off the coast of the islands. There's a pretty good Half as Interesting video on it.
As a licensed dispatcher who plans airline flights, we do see these quite often (I'd say mostly on our ETOPS flights over the Pacific as they head toward or away from the Socal area, like Vandenberg launches. Gotta avoid stage drops (or reentry vehicles) from bonking us on the head!
Tbh I think that kind of safety culture is awesome. Yeah, it might be sometimes annoying, impractical, expensive and many other things, but in the end all of that is put down to protect people, because their life and health is valued higher.
For the DRA - the assumption is there is a low probability of them needing to be activated. It's considered more information for controllers to know in case it's 'turned on', but it's not expected to be. FAA has a hotline with the range and/or launch provider so they are told immediately if one needs to be kicked in. That's why the quick announcements in those ATC sectors it was kicking in. Honestly, even if flight planners were aware - they probably are not getting the go-ahead to upload extra fuel for those vs for handling the actual TFR areas. Fun thing with the mariners is if there is good fishing in the zone - they'll hang around as long as possible until being chased away by coast guard or whomever is sent out to shoo them. They know what they're doing - just don't want to give up the good fishing.
I'd like to see a time synced depiction of those videos from the ground and when the flight restriction was actually declared. I understand abundance of caution and all but based on how fast that stuff exited the frames I'm almost certain those bits were already in the ocean by the time they made planes circle for 90 minutes.
Question about your PFP, was it animated at one point? I've seen it before and IIRC it's someone repeatedly smashing their head against the keyboard, and your account seems old enough that it could have an animated PFP before YT blocked them
Thin panels can fall ludicrously slow. Had some experience with this in my amateur rocketry days. Rocket had some deployable panels that were ~ 1m long, 15cm wide, curved 1mm thick aluminium. First launch test we just cut them loose, expecting them to just fall down sideways. Bad idea. Those panels would actually enter a stable spin, at which point they fell at something ridiculous like 3m/s. Significantly slower than the actual rocket on its parachute (15m/s). Further launches ended up tying those panels to the rocket to make them descend faster, to ensure they stayed within the range. now of course the falling speed is proportional to the inverse square root of air density, so higher up stuff does fall faster. But at 10km altitude that'd still only be like 6m/s. At that speed it'd take almost half an hour to fall down to sea level from 10km altitude. And these parts are falling from much higher. Thin plate material from such a launch could reach terminal velocity at 40 km high (of course, at that point that speed'd be more like 50-100m/s), and it'd be losing a km of altitude in 20 seconds, but at 20km altitude it'd already be only ~10-20m/s. requiring more than a minute to descend a kilometer.
@@CensoredUsername_ Bingo, all this has made it very clear to me that people online really do just take a single glance and assume they know best, rather than actually working out actual physics, probability, and risk. I fear for if/when any of them get into safety regulation!
I'm a big fan of "making things right", if i have inconvenienced sb. But if i were to accidentally paddle into a Rocket launch area and they have to scrub for the day. That would probably be multiple times my annual salary, maybe even decades of salary. Unimaginable.
I think an interesting question is at what point will space launches take precedence, making air travel and shipping lanes forever secondary considerations. Like many things, it’s both a long way off and quickly approaching.
@@gordonrichardson2972 The upper stage also experienced a RUD before it could complete its ascent during flight 2. It was different because it happened much earlier compared to flight 7 and hence the debris was contained in the TFR/NOTAM region, not requiring the triggering of a DRA.
According to several reports, including VAS, indicated that both SWA and Delta were actually in the range safety area, but there was a some miscommunication where the southern end was and the airway they were on was actually included in the NOTAM but ATC didn't think they were.
I remember all of these problems when I was an air defence gunner twenty five years ago. You got boats and microlights constantly violating the range space at Manorbier in Wales, but it was less of an issue at Benbecula.
The telemetry indicated the entry burn started quite low; but there's no official word yet. The speculation that came from this is more interesting... of the telemetry is to be believed, there was apparently a potential that the entry burn startup altitude could've been caused by a unit conversion between miles and km. But that's just speculation.
@@JoelSapp Yeah, there's been a lot of grumbling about the idiot corporate-types running the presentation feeling the need to translate engineering-units into "proper American units that the audience will understand". No idea who they thought their audience might have been...
@@simongeard4824 the weird thing is that for Americans only used to imperial, the actual numbers convey little. 4000mph at 200,000ft is so far beyond human norms it becomes meaningless, just like the units being in metric would be for them, all they see is a big number. For anyone interested in rocket launches the numbers gain context through other launches, you are familiar with numbers like 150km and the velocity to enter stable orbit. The numbers are still beyond normal comprehension but gain meaning through comparison. Their footage switching at ~320,000ft to miles was so confusing, I was trying to internally convert the number and the change broke my brain.
I would not play down these emergencies. Those flights have been told multiple times by the controllers that they can only move on on their own risk without being told what that risk was. I think there is a major oversight with the DRAs: it‘s easy to know when to activate them but it‘s hard to assess when to deactivate them because it‘s hard to predict how long debris can fall down. The long duration of the event led to the emergencis because aircrafts being in the air already for 9 hours could neither reach their destination nor their alternate.
There is no doubt about it. We will need an administration, focusing solely on exit and reentry into the atmosphere. I’m not so sure people understand what the launch cadence is going to be and very soon. There definitely needs to be a lot more resources.
I'm not up to date with US ADSB rules but is it possible some lad in his Piper who always goes flying in Class G and never bothers talking to anyone gave them a primary radar return they had to abort for?
Possibly. The area around Vandenberg does not require ADS-B out. But if that happened, he probably would have also been violating restricted airspace. The FAA can trace those radar returns and try to find who was flying there at the time. All the data is recorded.
@@bbgun061 They can trace the location but altitude is more difficult if I'm not mistaken. When you have a primary return you have no idea what altitude it's at initially.
We were returning to Port Canaveral on Carnival's Mardi Gras and clocking 22-23 knots, which is close to her max speed. Turned out that we HAD to get into the port very quickly or we'd have been in the range safety area during the launch of the Lucy probe. We made it, and the launch took place just after we had entered the approach channel. It looked great from the ship, an unexpected bonus for us after a bouncy, bumpy run into the port.
It might be ok for them to not know the areas, but if you encounter a suddenly closed airspace you should look for your options immediately including possible alternate fields you can (safely!) reach without flying through those areas and then calculate your time to do so without having to declare an emergency - of course there might be cases where you can't do so (e.g. you're on approach and it cuts you off from most near airfields), but having to declare an emergency because of things that might've been your fault you can be pretty certain to get investigated - so it's really not good and pilots know that and especially commercial pilots will prevent this at all cost, so they probably did check for alternatives, but figured they're unsuitable.
Btw, no. These are not shared for a reason. Pilots have to deal with too much information. This would be another useless information. You don't see the 1000 of times this isn't coming into effect. Just the one time it does, it makes the news. You can easily remove the workload of pilots by making this only available in due course when the DRA becomes operational
1. Keep Ship intact for controlled re-entry. If FTS was used, it just scatters debris. Max alt was 124km, and looked like they had enough data when raptors began to shut down, so shut the rest down and skip the FTS and use thrusters for orientation. It does require a different way of thinking about range safety. 2. If plasma trails are overhead, that suggests debris is 30km up so not going to hit the ground until further down range. Did any land on "land" or was it all washed ashore? Aircraft directly under plasma trails should be safe.
Yeahhh, no, I'm not sure you can reliably say that. Low density debris that fell off the trails and stopped burning might still be a hazard. There's something to be said, maybe, for doing an (un)controlled, non terminated reentry, though, if it keeps everything in one place, doesn't risk lives, and lets them pare down the DRAs into smaller and more manageable chunks.
As space flights increase the work of enforcing no flight or ship traffic gets much more complicated. Considering what's involved they do a marvelous job. The public often over reacts and the media doesn't help things. The dangers from this flight were minimal at best.
Scott, THIS is how to do it! Congrats for admitting the error of your original post on X, kinda correcting it, and now this very comprehensive and informative explanation. Some thing a "little white mountain lily" never, ever does. Proud of you, dude! So to all the conspiracy and exciting headline folks out there who want to cancel the two airlines you originally mentioned: STFU! Could have been just a whale surfacing, mistaken to possibly be a boat, and an overly cautious RSO causing the scrubbing.
Thanks for the explanation. I am curious about the gap in the debris response area. That seems to be between Cuba and Florida. Who is controlling that air space?
When areas are 'hot' IFR traffic is not allowed in...so no commercial airliners. However VFR GA traffic is a different thing, they may not be talking to anyone, they may not have ADS running etc.
"...scrubbed at the last minute..." 11 SECONDS TO LAUNCH!!! I was all set with my binoculars, waiting to run outside and watch it go up. I was not happy.
Yay! Well, here from NSF channels who mentioned _Scott_ Manley so was wondering if he really is Scottish, and accent gave it away before Wikipedia article confirmed it. Brilliant, more space enthusiast Brits to follow now lol🤣
13:32 To be fair to the cruise ship, it by itself was likely carrying five times as many people as have been to space in the entire combined history of human spaceflight, it’s larger and more complicated than any piece of equipment ever put in space, it’s responsible for more economic activity than any SpaceX launch, and the dates and times that it will be sailing are published months in advance. It’s not unreasonable for the captain to assume that NASA would have checked the sailing schedule before scheduling a launch.
Larger yes, definately not more complicated than any piece of equipment ever put in space. What a bold claim that is. One spaceX launch generates about 67 million dollars for spaceX. I'd like to see the random cruiseship compete with that.
@michaelimbesi2314 Many of the launches - not SpaceX satellite sprinkles, but interplanetary missions etc. - are dictated in time by positions of many celestial objects. As planetary fly-bys are calculated decades ahead, to the accuracy of less than a second, it should not be unreasonable for the ships captain to check the position of e.g. Jupiter eight years from now - to the second, before casting off from the pier. Or perhaps check from the NASA web site, when the next summer's Saturn mission launch is scheduled, before planning next year's port schedules. You see, those launch schedules are given to a second's accuracy. So easy to avoid.
I'm curious how long it took for the debris to clear out of the area. My expectation before was that it would be cleared very long, but listing to some of the ATC communications it was definitely significantly longer. Was it the heat tiles being so light taking longer to reach the ground?
@@JM_2019 This is the problem. It's only the heavy solid chunks that glow like meteors and leave a trail. Lighter material and even large thin metal panels can flutter down incredibly slowly and cannot be seen from a distance.
Build a spaceport at. Malden or Starbuck Island. Or on Johnston Island because it still has a landing strip and the residual plutonium kind of makes it useless.
No fresh water supply on any of those islands. The tank farms needed to store the Lox and Methane would be prohibitively expensive. I think all of those locations are in sensitive marine habitats.
The answer to your question would be, "we don't shoot rockets where the aircraft are going to be...", but I guess that begs the question, "how do we know where those vehicles will be?". When I followed my dad into the world of amateur radio and (to a lesser extent) navigation, I became very interested in ATC and other radio aids to aircraft and even maritime vessels. More recently with smartphones and apps like "flightradar 24" we can take advantage of ACARS and other more modern systems. For me it's quite exciting that we can monitor the aircraft flying above - we happen to live below an USAF air refeuling track (which if you have the frequencies can be monitored also as the pilots discuss their flight envelope environment, etc) Not long ago I heard a U2 check in with ATC not too far from here (the thing was up around 60,000 feet, so it would have been tough to see). Pretty cool .....
Rockets are very limited in the direction they can launch, based on both the orbit they're aiming for and land they need to avoid dropping debris on, and their ability to turn in flight is very limited because it takes a lot of fuel to turn when you don't have wings. And there are simply too many aircraft to draw a straight line a thousand miles long that doesn't cross any flight paths, when rockets generally launch from coasts, and coasts tend to be higher traffic areas.
@@Br3ttM If its really that hard to guarantee safety without constantly disrupting airlines, then you just cannot have a super high launch cadence like Spaceship is supposed to have. Mind theres even populated islands in this debris corridor. That said, using boca chica as a launch side might just be a terrible idea. If you launch from the US east coast, or just Florida, youre gonna disrupt a lot less air traffic.
Hi Scott on the NASA spaceflight feed back on the starship 7 launch, the commentators said about 90 seconds before takeoff that the holddown clamps were released??? Is this something new as I always saw the clamps being released at the moment of launch once the engines were lit.
Great video, Scott. Just one request - please don't have the channel volume so low compared to the end music. Or tell us to turn down our volume to not scare the house, lol.
To shine some light on the maritime regulations: There is no such thing like a "restricted area" or "exclusion zone" in international water. There is no legal way to force a ship not to sail any where. Best you can do is to politely and respectfully ask ask a vessel to pretty pleas change course (and usually vessels will do do so). But the US not known for being respectful or polite! So many mariners will tell US to f off if commanded by US outsite US water. (Look up the incident where a US aircraft carrier commanded a Spanish lighthouse to get out of there way). As a captain in the Northern sea I had some very bizarre conversation with US range officers during NATO exercises. In general it is the responsibility of the one who likes to "resevate" space to informe every one else. Not the captain's to look up if some billionaire likes to drop a rocket some where!
@@xiano1336 As someone who knows people in the Navy, Yeah, they are quite rude on the waters at times. But your example of The Aircraft Carrier with the lighthouse didnt happen. It was a joke in the 1930s that has been altered and changed in MANY different ways over the years. And for example, A lighthouse doesnt look anything like a ship, unless its extremely foggy, and most versions of the story doesnt even mention fog - As a lighthouse from far away is a fixed white light that flashes at a set number of seconds, while ships are moving, smaller, and multi-colored lights for determining the front from the back. Its quite difficult to mistake it. Hell this particular source has a whole wikipedia page dedicated to this urban legend of an incident.
@ good to know. Was not aware of this. But since I have been part of some rather hilarious situations with US (and to be fair; French) Navy Vessels in the Norther and Baltic sea, I just took it for real.
Nav rule 0, rule of gross tonnage (and firepower). :P Kidding, mostly. But prudent mariners follow the IMO colregs which defines the standards of conduct all vessels should follow, and just about every country out there is signatory to SOLAS. As for 'telling the US off', I'll note that countries (not just the US) often declare warning, safety or exclusion zones for the purposes of military exercises, and that willingly entering a hazardous zone isn't likely in a mariner's best interest. Also, you might want to consider that in a joint (NATO) exercise, if your flag stage is a partner in that exercise, even though the words may be coming out of a US vessel, the overall command reflects all the nations involved, including that flag state.
Scott you missed one, ALTRVS. I know many people who work in the office of commercial space and you did pretty well. Sine I used to work for CARF the correct name is Central Altitude Reservation Function not facility.
Mostly, rockets go too fast for that to be possible, and SpaceX is trying to solve that problem . With this one, we don't know whether the tumbling rocket pushed itself off course causing the termination system to trigger, or whether it entered the atmosphere uncontrolled and broke up aerodynamically. From what I'm seeing, I think it was the latter, but I don't know.
But then if it does hit anything, it's way too catastrophic. That's why they came up with FTS, it was assessed that many small pieces are less dangerous, even though it's impossible to track them all. Especially when the things at risk are things that cannot realistically avoid (buildings planes that cannot see up, cars, people etc.), even if they are perfectly informed about the trajectory.
Any thoughts about Elon Musk tossing Nazi salutes? I mean the US space effort has always relied on Nazis, but I wonder if you have any views on the matter?
How do they decide what question to apply the 1 in 10 million rule? Do they break the region up into equally sized chunks? If not why can't you always say that if the risk over the whole earth is below 1 in ten million you are good to go? If I did a compelling analysis showing that the chance of collision was always less than this would they just eliminate the exclusions for rocket launches?
All very well trying to minimise the chances of debris hitting an airborne target moving at several hundred knots, but the debris seemed to be flying over static, inhabited islands - sitting targets if the rud had happened a few seconds earlier?
"an engine problem"? Musk claimed that: "Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity", not that one can rely on anything the fascist says.
@ That makes for an extremely peculiar question (because it shouldn't be a question at all). Musk has a long, well documented history of lying, granted that there doesn't seem to be a likely motivation for him having done so here. The point, of course, is that if what he says is true, IFT-7 seems to have been done in by something other than "an engine problem".
Please check the volume levels of the video vs your outro. I usually watch your videos to fall asleep, and it works greay. Except I have to see them live ten times to understand everything. But then I always wake up from that really loud outro. Thank you. Love the content.
SpaceX has a very narrow launch corridor from Boca Chica to avoid overflying islands. There’s a lot of aircraft traffic in that area, so a Starship breakup will shower the aircraft with junk. The only solution is to stop SpaceX from using Boca Chica. The other problem is the airspace where the starship debris fell is multinational. Does the FAA have any ATC authority there?
fun fact: CARF is the same agency used by Air Mobility Command to create a moving altitude reservation for air refueling, primarily during aircraft movement of fighters
Like playing baseball on a busy street. There are way too many civilian aircraft flying in this area to operate a rocket launching facility. Boca Chica is also very poorly placed. Move out into the Pacific
You 'd have to move past the Caribbean. 1.Logistically very expensive 2.These are international waters 3.The amount of reduced risk is astronomically small.
@ He probably hasn’t done much research into why people choose the launching positions that they do. For anyone else reading that sees this, practically all nations with a space program have their rockets launch in an eastern direction because it is much easier to reach orbital velocity thanks to the spin of the earth. If they were to launch in a Western direction, they would have to contend with reversing their default orbital velocity and spend extra Delta V (energy) to get going the other way. If we were going to launch rockets into orbit from the Pacific, the rocket would either be going into orbit with a hazard are covering most of the continent, or they would have to be from islands on the west side of the pacific.
Great video as always. I would love to see New Glen launch DRA4 marked area and how it responded & how much Airlines or maritime authorities noticed it as the booster definitely exploded or breakout. Whatever it caused debries in path.
Honestly, if you go into an area you aren't supposed to be, either on purpose or accident, that's your lookout. I don't GAF if a boat wanders in where it isn't supposed to be, or an aircraft is flying where it isn't supposed to be. Launch anyway. The people piloting these vehicles need to take responsibility for not knowing where they are or not knowing where they can go. Ignorance is no excuse.
I agree, but the problem is that if something bad happends to someone who wasn't supposed to be in the area, the general public will take it out of contest out of stupidity or agenda. As a company you don't want a mob that tries to sabotage everything you do.
It's hard for me to believe that Starship hasn't automatic control law that would activate the FTS under certain conditions; it activated on an earlier flight due to lack of comms, IIRC. So losing telemetry may be grounds to terminate. Hopefully we'll get some more details.
The engineers keeping track of starship probably knew right away something went wrong which will trigger the FTS. The communication to the public is much slower because they prioritize informing the FAA and give a more thought trough answer to the public. Losing telemetry can happen but is quite rare. The data we get during the livestream is only a representation of the real much more elaborate data the engineers actually have of starship. If the video cuts off there is absolutely no guarantee there's no telemetry.
I worked on a research project that tried to do automated parsing of NOTAM, GIS and hazard maps into a easy to consume format. We ended up writing a giant honk of regex and still had trouble pulling them apart in a usefull way. Each agency does them a little different. German and US NOTAMs ... very structured, French... meh, it's okey. Italian? They just yeet anything in there, suprised I didn't come across someones lunch order 😂
Except for assurance in a safety environment, seems like a great application for LLMs.
that made me chuckle a bit 😂
Yes, the French and moreso the Italians value food…gourmet food can be had in service stations / truck stops
@@snower13 Before that, seems like a great application for component-oriented development.
Before that, seems like a great application for object orientation.
Before that, seems like a great application for modular programming.
Before that, seems like a great application for pretty much every generation of software design which claimed to answer all the ills of the world (but didn't).
Yep, there's a whole bunch of people out there working for aviation software companies manually inputting notams into systems or checking that input because no one cracked it to a certifiably safe level yet!
Sadly as a commercial pilot, we don't get graphical NOTAM information. Just the raw text, filtered by routing and time. That said, i don't have time to parse enroute NOTAMs, and it is ATCs duty to keep me clear to begin with. I parse departure and destination aerodrome NOTAMs, and if i have to divert and have the time i take a quick peak at the alternate NOTAMs, but even there ATC is there to help me and gives me further information by D-ATIS which we can get via ACARS.
The NOTAM system is currently just a huge wall of text, and in general quite useless. Around 80% of all airport NOTAMs are cranes or other temporary things, usually just with a coordinate, sometimes with a street adress. All in all the NOTAM system is in serious need of a complete revamp and doesn't really serve its original purpose anymore.
I get the graphical versions in Foreflight and in my Garmin GPS unit that gets FIS-B
@@scottmanley Ah yes, sadly FIS-B is a pure GA service as it relies on the internationally not standardized 978 MHz ADS-B channel. Internationally 1090 MHz is the standardized version and does not support FIS-B as far as i know. Everyone who flies above 10.000ft need the latter one.
@@Soordhin Huh TIL. You can still use Foreflight on an iPad right?
You must read and parse all NOTAMs which may impact your flight. That is your job and responsibility. That means reading all of them on every flight. Blaming the Notam system are just excuses.
@ In theory. However, officially i am only allowed to use the certified EFB apps and nothing else. And i would have to carry a second iPad for that, as the company iPad doesn't allow third party app installation and Foreflight is not part of our EFB suite (we use the LIDO eRoute Manual).
In January 2003 I was sailing south down the Florida coast. In the early hours, we heard Range Control at Cape Canaveral announcing a restricted area near Port Canaveral due to a shuttle launch. We were buzzed by an Air Force helicopter, and called on the radio, and just managed to leave the restricted area in time. We watched the launch of the ill-fated Columbia shuttle from about 5 miles away.
Any time there's any form of high powered rocket launch there's a NOTAM out for the flight path of the rocket.
Irresponsible you. You should have been jailed!?
@@edmoore3910 they weren't in the restricted area when it came into effect, you think anyone who sailed through that area prior to launch restrictions should be jailed?
Crazy to think that just maybe if you were a little slower, there may have been a hold in the launch and the resulting temp changes may have just changed exactly which foam chunk detached from the tank and it could have been different. It obviously couldn't be known either way, but just a curious butterfly effect thought stream.
Scott! An Amtrak train once entered the keep-out zone during a launch at Vandenberg. I heard about it from train staff who said they were right next the pad when they were bathed in bright light, shaken and deafened by a launch.
Best train ride ever!
@RCAvhstape They said no one at VBerg thought to tell them.
I work there and I've always thought it was crazy that the amtrak train goes right though vandenberg, very close to slc-4.
Where do I sign up?
@ I don't know the history of the region, but I'm guessing the railroad was there long before the launch pads. I have wanted to ride that particular Amtrak train, the Coast Starlight, for a while but haven't had the pleasure yet.
I have been one of those "captains of wayward boats" We were moving a boat down the coast (takes a week) and were far enough offshore that there was noting to be heard on the VHF. All of a sudden there's a C130 circling overhead and having a "chat" with us. Based on our speed (or lack thereof) they gave us a heading that would get us out the fastest, and who were we to argue... that was it. No letter from the coast guard later or "inspection from the military.
Man Im envious, Ive never had my own personal C-130 warning system to tell me theres some very minor risk of space debris falling on my head!
talking about overkill 😂😂
What altitude was your boat at that it proved an obstacle to an orbital rocket?
I will never understand what those sadsack mouthbreathers think a boat which is 12 mi instead of 15 mi away is going to do to a rocket going mostly straight up.
@JustPlainRob That's because nobody thinks the boat is doing something to the rocket - they think the rocket might be doing something to the boat (if it fails somehow).
Drunk RUclips safety: I just did a select all - copy-paste before clicking the button. Result is less than ideal, but seems so far to be safe against drunk RUclips.
The developer side of me yearns to modernize NOTAMs.
This may sound weird, but US laws are not actually stored in any formal way, it's just a bunch of documents. Right now, the U.S. Legislative Markup (USLM) project is working to:
1. Stardarize Legal Documents - into an XML format (for consistency, and a way machines can understand).
2. Facilitate Access - make it easier for the public to access laws.
3. Enable Interoperability - seamlessly integrate these legal documents into technology platforms.
The USLM project is taking a very long time. But, it feels like NOTAMs could use a similar treatment. A criticism I've heard from also watching Blancolirio is that there is not an obvious priority of messages in a NOTAM. It's easy for a "runway closed" message to get buried in a NOTAM.
Start working at the FAA? Or maybe even DOGE wil allow you to do that.
XML? Ugh
"Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P., shouldn't we keep the P.C. on the Q.T.?
'Cause of the leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A., and then we'd all be put out in K.P."
@pauldzim what's wrong with XML? The point here is of taking a structured approach to information. I honestly don't care if it's XML or something else, the benefits are the same, but I'd be curious what you would prefer over XML.
Btw, the timing of all of this is pretty interesting because only very recently an Eclipse 500 started flying the first FAA-approved commercial use of the eXtensible Flight System (XFS). XFS is an open, modular approach to your aircraft's Flight Management System (FMS). It's a lot like how modern PCs are built, you can use different parts from different companies because they share the same protocol.
It's a similar example of modular, open-source software ideas making their way into commercial flight.
Good point of the not-everything-is-visible on the ADS-B data! Being an ATCO myself, I do appriciate that you take up this topic @scottmanely, because a LOT of stuff are not visable on these sites and cause speculation.
DRA, Debris Response Area, will be the daily future with more space launches and more air traffic (also in Europe). Air Traffic (not the pilots maybe but the companies) don't want the old big closed airspace, so they might have been an advocate for this DRA to be the norm.
It is highly probable the ACC's in the area did get the information about the Starship DRAs and when to activate them as you state, but the pilots are not really a privy to this information, I guess. Then again the amount of NOTAM information a longhaul pilot (or any) must read and digest might not help in the situation.
The BIG issue for the ACC and pilots is to know how LONG this DRA will be active (i.e. how long will it take to have the debris to clear the airspace). I know the math here is very difficult and it would A LOT simpler if all debris would be spherical and of same material.
The pilots may not be able to parse the DRAs but would it help to provide DRAs to dispatch so dispatch can plan extra fuel for contingency purposes?
Scott Manley for FAA Administrator.
I second that
That would mean no more videos...
Please the FAA will be abolished by trump because it cuts into profits
@@lolmao500Boeing's failures are clear enough that the FAA won't be destroyed. Regulations just need to be changed to adapt to how fast rocket development is going.
@@lolmao500I'm sure he'll say that at some point, but like most of his ideas, nothing will come of it.
I haven't seen any overseas reports, but BEFORE Starship 7 flight, there was a number reports in the Australian media about Qantas delaying flights up to six hours on the Sydney-Johannesburg route due to " last-minute changes in coordinates for the location and timing of re-entry of rockets from Elon Musk's space technology firm". "While we try to make any changes to our schedule in advance, the timing of recent launches have moved around at late notice which has meant we've had to delay some flights just prior to departure," said Ben Holland, the head of Qantas's operations centre." "We're in contact with SpaceX to see if they can refine the areas and time windows for the rocket re-entries to minimise future disruption," Holland added." At the time (note again, BEFORE Starship 7 flight), I thought this was a bit of an overreaction by Qantas. But, in hindsight, it now seems a prudent safety measure.
Presumably they would be talking about Qantas flights from Sydney to LA because I don't think any other of their routes would be affected by Elon Musk.
@@aspzx Starship lands in the Indian Ocean between Africa and Australia, that's why the flight between the two was affected.
@@aspzx Ahh, no. The Sydney-Johannesburg route. This time of year, the prevailing westerlies at FL300 means that west bound flights from Sydney at going a long way north to avoid the winds. So far north that it is crossing into the Starship's landing zone in the Indian Ocean. Qantas' grip isn't that the proposed landing zone is so big in the Indian Ocean, the gripe is about the last minute changes that are affecting scheduled flights. It takes just one look at the map to understand just how far from land those flights are.
Does Qantas still have the perfect record touted in Rain Man?
@ Ah! That makes sense. Thanks.
Speaking on the maritime side - There's the (USCG) promulgated NTMs ahead of time (published on the NGA site), but there's also broadcasts on VHF 16 by the local CG communications centers. Which, all boats are supposed to monitor but I can't say that they actually do, tbh. And to enforce that sort of thing, you'll basically need a boarding from a patrol craft. Also, only certain high traffic ports have the equivalent of ATC (Vessel Traffic Service), and even then it's only for big commercial boats to coordinate to make sure that they're aware of each other.
There's also an equivalent to ADSB .. AIS, but it's not required carriage on anything small or most state registered pleasure craft. Basically, when it comes down to it, the maritime side runs a lot closer to VFR rules than IFR ones. Lower consequence, after all - boat starts sinking/doing stuff, you have way more response time in general than if a plane runs into a problem.
Generally, the marine side only sends out patrol craft if there's a high vis/high impact event, and even then you might end up chasing yahoos off (see the people approaching Demo-2, for instance). Plus, you start losing authorities outside of the maritime boundary lines (12/24 miles) where a lot of these warnings start becoming advisory, vs enforceable regulations.
I basically left the same comment before reading yours...
To elevate on your idea of a boarding party:
That stops at the 12nm line. In international water we handle "exclusion zones" based on mutural respect witch is something the US seemingly never heard of. So pretty much every incedend of a vessel entering a warning area causing problems for US Navy is self inflicted and a natural reaction to arrogant bully behavior.
If you need an example (and some giggles), search:
US Navy vs Lighthouse CLEAN
I wish there was a tool that cleanly combined AIS with ADSB data.
@ Not wholly true - the US has jurisdiction worldwide over US flagged (and stateless) vessels, as do other countries over their own flags. Otherwise, yes, a boarding will need to have the consent of the flagging country.
@ watchkeeper has it. Not public, though..
A number of years ago I was at a local beach waiting for an airshow by a military flight demonstration team to start. The planes were on the way, but they almost had to scrub due to a private boat in the exclusion area. There were radio calls, loud speaker calls, and a police helicopter buzzing this boat, and it seemed like nothing was going to get their attention. At the last moment they did realize that something was going on and they moved.
There's been a number of space shuttle launches delayed by this kind of thing, too, boats and private planes. There's astronaut memoirs full of narratives on these kinds of delays and the intercom channels were filled with astronauts calling to "torpedo his a$$" and "shoot the f**ker down". Mike Mullane describes one such plane excursion as "the pilot finally pulled his head out of his a$$ and flew away. When the all-clear was given, we all wished him wind shear and engine failure."
According to my sources, the Delta was the one that offended, because it swung around the exclusion zone too tightly. It strictly speaking didn't clip the posted zone, but apparently the range safety officer was operating on a different map.
5:00 Having tried looking through ADS-B data to try to identify low-flying jet aircraft in my neighborhood before, I can appreciate the frequent inability to pin things on any one plane :)
Get a radio and listen to them. Sometimes one will report a UFO or LASER attack. I had a couple hot spots where I could expect to look for the callsign on the flight tracker. If you listen to as much of the air traffic as you can receive from your spot, I've personally heard maybe 5 or 6 within a couple of years. I'm of the impression that a certain venue in the more reported area has been releasing mylar balloons from outdoor birthdays/weddings/etc.. The LASER attacker is on that same air road, or whatever they call them. I think it's mostly just that the route takes them straight over several small and very-small towns, so there's a lot of population and transportation for that hundred or so miles.
If you just want to hear the planes that are buzzing your house, get a scanner with "Close Call" feature. It will let you know and start playing anything that's transmitting nearby.
Hell, as he showed that data over the map of aircraft, I couldn't help but notice the aircraft whose transponder was blinking on and off a ton _(or at least their signal was spotty, or perhaps GPS related)._
*One of them* seemed to be circling and as it was randomly blinking another flew right through where it had been going.... which was also blinking lol _(hence my suspicion of maybe signal strength or GPS related)_
So depending on the cause, I imagine that would indeed make trying to find the culprit in your situation even harder 😕
@@DUKE_of_RAMBLEAn ADS-B receiver can pick up signals from about 250NM, so I can see transmissions getting stomped on when the signal is weak.
13:39 That was for the Cosmo Skymed 2 mission in January 2022. I was in Florida for my 30th birthday and this was scheduled to fly the day after I arrived. I was waiting on Cocoa Beach for liftoff when they announced it was scrubbed.
I came back the next day and spent all morning and afternoon nerding out at the KSC before I drove back to Cocoa Beach to watch the launch. It was worth the wait for sure and something I'll never forget. I was blessed with a RTLS too which was the icing on the cake.
I was so pumped to get up witness my first ever launch in person. There was Starlink mission a few days later that I saw from all the way in Orlando. That batch of Starlink sats were lost a few days after launch because of geomagnetic storm effects on the density of the upper atmosphere. The was also the ill-fated Astra Rocket 3 launch that had a RUD which i also caught a glimpse of during ascent.
I was very close to your viewing location for a F9 launch in January 2024. I had forgotten what day the launch was, and we had left Cocoa Beach to return to our hotel on Canaveral (the Hampton Inn near the city welcome sign). We heard the launch noise through our vehicle and got back to the hotel parking lot in time to watch the RTLS descent. We could not see it land due to trees and landscaping....but the sonic boom startled us, even though we knew it was coming. It was LOUD!
@@teebob21 Yeah those sonic booms catch you by surprise even when you know they're coming 😅
Glad you were able to catch at least part of the launch.
Nice Scott! thank you for taking the time to show us all that and educate us. I found it to be very informative and entertaining. Always love your show and look forward to it. You always do a wonderful job..
Really awesome to see Scott, blancolirio, VAS, and others all sort of feeding off one another to bring attention to this problem - before a tragedy occurs. Thanks for getting out in front of this one. Excellent reporting Scott!
Great update, Scott! The Airspace Management Plans should be on an FAA public database (at a minimum) and communicated broadly - can't imagine (well, inertia of course) why they haven't. Ran across that Flight 7 plan on NSF and went down the rabbit hole...
I first came to this channel through Scott's Elite: Dangerous videos - I'm so glad I stuck around! Scott's coverage of real-life space events is fantastic!
Thank you for covering this topic..... Absolutely fascinating ✈️
Thanks very much, Scott. Very fascinating and I really love your graphics and videos as well. I’ll definitely support that fellow who provided the detailed maps. Fly safe too!
Love the deep dive into debris hazard zone communications. I was wondering if the exclusion zone stripe over Turks and Caicos shown in your previous video was just an estimation from the ADS-B data or an actual ATC/FAA warning zone ... and now I know!
Thank you Scott, very educational. All the stuff we take for granted.
Scott, very interesting and not something I'd ever really thought about. Thanks for explaining it! 🙂😎
So... Great work covering all the bases of this one Scott. I was a tad peeved, shall we say, when I first thought that the TFR just wasn't big enough and the debris was coming down beyond or off-track of the allotted area, but seeing it's mostly just an information dissemination issue due to the relative unknown quantity of the DRA's? Well - I can't see any reason why they don't just publish the DRA's alongside the TFR's. Seems like a simple solution - getting info out to folk who need it is more than half the battle, then at least the dispatchers/pilots will at least have the chance to be warned that there's a potential delay/risk along their route when things go sideways again.
The alternative I suppose is to go back to the extended range of the initial TFR's to cover the DRA areas, but as you point out, that would have massive knock-on impacts for a vast number of flights, even without the rampup of rocket launches already planned/expected - far more than the issue of occasionally having to hold for a while and maybe divert or declare a fuel emergency.
In either case, they should probably work on a system to segment the DRA areas a bit better so once there's confirmation that debris has passed that point, another area can be opened up & free up all those planes all the sooner. That at least would cut the annoyance down to a minimum.
The problem is more fundamental. You can just stop all airtraffic over a large region whenever a rocket launches. Its not even the 'US jurisdiction, maybe even right to do so. Especially when the idea of Starship is to have an extremely high launch cadence.
I suspect one solution might be to use launch sites that are more directed towards the open ocean.
Those of us who enjoy high power (amateur) rocket launches know that we have to engage the FAA to get time and date and location and altitude restrictions. I've flown under a 14000 "above ground level" (AGL) several times, and with (much) higher ceilings on other occasions.
If you're not familiar with amateur high power rocketry, I think you might be surprised at how powerful an engine we can (legally) fly.
What's the highest you can get, legally?
My brother and I once fit a C motor in an Estes rocket that was designed for an A motor. On a clear night you can still see that rocket orbiting the moon to this day.
@@animegod1281 It's a little difficult to answer this, but several people have managed to clear 100,000 ft. I believe that there is one "amateur" flight that cleared 300,000 ft. There's a RUclips guy "BPS Space" who has interesting content about large amateur rockets.
A price point: a few years ago I flew a two stage K+K engine to about 14,000 ft, hitting Mach 1.5 along the way. It would probably take about $2000-$3000 in components to duplicate that effort from scratch (I had dual (redundant) electronics on that flight, by the way). If I had built a "minimum diameter" rocket, it would have gone significantly higher and faster; my rocket was more of a "city bus" than a high performance rocket.
The problem with flying big rockets is that you might have hours and hours of work to find it when it comes down. I flew GPS radios on both stages of my rocket...
@@animegod1281
I’ve heard that Friends of Amateur Rocketry in California have a 200k ft waiver.
Spaceport America Cup in White Sands get at least a 30k one every year.
I know of a spot in Ontario that sometimes gets up to 50k
@@RustyorBroken
😄
This video is so intriguing! I was captivated throughout watching it. Thank you Scott for another banger
Ellie in Space did an interview with a pilot who said that as the break up/debris was at such a high altitude there would be an extremely low probability/low risk of any debris hitting an aircraft at around 35000 ft. That got a lot of negative comments against the FAA as usual for having rules, and Scott for his FT7 review vid because he dared to suggest danger to aircraft!
It's far easier for people to over exaggerate in service of fear or political agenda, then to watch a video of an actual 747 pilot on the topic.
Unless that pilot has extensive metallurgical knowledge, and also intimate knowledge of Starship's makeup, it is my opinion that he really is in no position to make such a claim.
Now, it's very possible he might've been a former employee of the space industry that transitioned to being a pilot and DOES have the requisite knowledge, but I dunno about that... heh
@@wouter12wpp , don't be ignorant, because right now Ur ignorant..
her point was that the several kilometers in vertical spacing was more than enough time for all plane to vacate the projected debris zone.
The breakup may have been in space, but at suborbital velocities, so it's *all* going to come down ballistically. In this case, the system worked, and it all validated what the FAA is doing. Effected aviation interests should send Space X bills for the costs of their diversions.
I'm sure in Elon's mind the fact that his crap didn't hit any airplanes proves the FAA overreacted and they just pick on him and should be DoGE'd out of existence.
Fascinating stuff Scott. Thanks once again for concisely describing a very complicated system. I learned a lot that makes the complicated world a better place
Thank you for a properly researched report. Getting tired of unsubscribing pilots with clickbait headlines and bias opinions
Indeed - Blancolirio was one such channel - I expected better from Juan, I must say.
Did you also unsubscribe from Scot after his amateristic statements in his previous video?
I didn't mind Juan's take. Yes, he was speaking from the viewpoint of a pilot, which, though different from the opinions of a spaceflight enthusiast, is perfectly valid.
What the heck is a bias opinion? Do you maybe mean biased?
After watching your AZ5 video and subsequently getting spammed with your videos in my reccomended this is quickly becoming my new binge watch
Whenever I'm about to head out to the old Tuna patch, I always check the space weather. You never know if the rain will be caliente or verde.
Thank you, Scott, for that very detailed look at AH😃A and DRAs and LS/MFTs
@1:40 Wondering what the oddly straight/right angle lines are on the seabed north of Crown Haven...sensor artifacts? The Bermuda Triangle's polygonal cousin?
Yeah, it's data from different sources that don't blend together perfectly so it stands out.
Rectifying satellite imagery for open ocean is difficult due to the lack of surface features, they probably don't try too hard to composite images off the coast of the islands. There's a pretty good Half as Interesting video on it.
As a licensed dispatcher who plans airline flights, we do see these quite often (I'd say mostly on our ETOPS flights over the Pacific as they head toward or away from the Socal area, like Vandenberg launches. Gotta avoid stage drops (or reentry vehicles) from bonking us on the head!
I am a fan of the FAA. Boeing is a case study when the FAA is circumvented.
Tbh I think that kind of safety culture is awesome. Yeah, it might be sometimes annoying, impractical, expensive and many other things, but in the end all of that is put down to protect people, because their life and health is valued higher.
@@termitreter6545 As they say, safety regulations are written in blood.
For the DRA - the assumption is there is a low probability of them needing to be activated. It's considered more information for controllers to know in case it's 'turned on', but it's not expected to be. FAA has a hotline with the range and/or launch provider so they are told immediately if one needs to be kicked in. That's why the quick announcements in those ATC sectors it was kicking in. Honestly, even if flight planners were aware - they probably are not getting the go-ahead to upload extra fuel for those vs for handling the actual TFR areas.
Fun thing with the mariners is if there is good fishing in the zone - they'll hang around as long as possible until being chased away by coast guard or whomever is sent out to shoo them. They know what they're doing - just don't want to give up the good fishing.
Very well documented! Thanks, Scott!
I'd like to see a time synced depiction of those videos from the ground and when the flight restriction was actually declared. I understand abundance of caution and all but based on how fast that stuff exited the frames I'm almost certain those bits were already in the ocean by the time they made planes circle for 90 minutes.
Question about your PFP, was it animated at one point? I've seen it before and IIRC it's someone repeatedly smashing their head against the keyboard, and your account seems old enough that it could have an animated PFP before YT blocked them
Thin panels can fall ludicrously slow.
Had some experience with this in my amateur rocketry days. Rocket had some deployable panels that were ~ 1m long, 15cm wide, curved 1mm thick aluminium. First launch test we just cut them loose, expecting them to just fall down sideways.
Bad idea. Those panels would actually enter a stable spin, at which point they fell at something ridiculous like 3m/s. Significantly slower than the actual rocket on its parachute (15m/s). Further launches ended up tying those panels to the rocket to make them descend faster, to ensure they stayed within the range.
now of course the falling speed is proportional to the inverse square root of air density, so higher up stuff does fall faster. But at 10km altitude that'd still only be like 6m/s. At that speed it'd take almost half an hour to fall down to sea level from 10km altitude.
And these parts are falling from much higher. Thin plate material from such a launch could reach terminal velocity at 40 km high (of course, at that point that speed'd be more like 50-100m/s), and it'd be losing a km of altitude in 20 seconds, but at 20km altitude it'd already be only ~10-20m/s. requiring more than a minute to descend a kilometer.
@@CensoredUsername_ Bingo, all this has made it very clear to me that people online really do just take a single glance and assume they know best, rather than actually working out actual physics, probability, and risk. I fear for if/when any of them get into safety regulation!
Appreciate the overview. Thanks. I am curious about the boats caught in the debris zone. Does the Coast Guard give any mariner warning?
I'm a big fan of "making things right", if i have inconvenienced sb.
But if i were to accidentally paddle into a Rocket launch area and they have to scrub for the day. That would probably be multiple times my annual salary, maybe even decades of salary. Unimaginable.
I think an interesting question is at what point will space launches take precedence, making air travel and shipping lanes forever secondary considerations. Like many things, it’s both a long way off and quickly approaching.
They already do. The space companies don’t compensate anyone for the delays and re routes caused by their launches.
Why wasn't this a bit thing on flight 2, where the ship did a RUD very close to the same stage in flight? I wonder what changed since then.
The flight 2 issue was a booster failure, totally different from an upper stage failure.
@@gordonrichardson2972 The upper stage also experienced a RUD before it could complete its ascent during flight 2. It was different because it happened much earlier compared to flight 7 and hence the debris was contained in the TFR/NOTAM region, not requiring the triggering of a DRA.
According to several reports, including VAS, indicated that both SWA and Delta were actually in the range safety area, but there was a some miscommunication where the southern end was and the airway they were on was actually included in the NOTAM but ATC didn't think they were.
Did you also look at which Restricted and Warning areas were active at the time?
I remember all of these problems when I was an air defence gunner twenty five years ago. You got boats and microlights constantly violating the range space at Manorbier in Wales, but it was less of an issue at Benbecula.
Curious where the Blue Origin booster ended up. Was it on its track but not able to land?
The telemetry indicated the entry burn started quite low; but there's no official word yet. The speculation that came from this is more interesting... of the telemetry is to be believed, there was apparently a potential that the entry burn startup altitude could've been caused by a unit conversion between miles and km. But that's just speculation.
@ prob came from people seeing mixed units on their telecast. But that’s kinda funny.
@@JoelSapp Yeah, there's been a lot of grumbling about the idiot corporate-types running the presentation feeling the need to translate engineering-units into "proper American units that the audience will understand". No idea who they thought their audience might have been...
@@simongeard4824 the weird thing is that for Americans only used to imperial, the actual numbers convey little. 4000mph at 200,000ft is so far beyond human norms it becomes meaningless, just like the units being in metric would be for them, all they see is a big number. For anyone interested in rocket launches the numbers gain context through other launches, you are familiar with numbers like 150km and the velocity to enter stable orbit. The numbers are still beyond normal comprehension but gain meaning through comparison. Their footage switching at ~320,000ft to miles was so confusing, I was trying to internally convert the number and the change broke my brain.
As a meteorologist, we use METAR and it's a bit similar to NOTAM, more complicated, focused on weather information
I would not play down these emergencies. Those flights have been told multiple times by the controllers that they can only move on on their own risk without being told what that risk was. I think there is a major oversight with the DRAs: it‘s easy to know when to activate them but it‘s hard to assess when to deactivate them because it‘s hard to predict how long debris can fall down. The long duration of the event led to the emergencis because aircrafts being in the air already for 9 hours could neither reach their destination nor their alternate.
There is no doubt about it. We will need an administration, focusing solely on exit and reentry into the atmosphere. I’m not so sure people understand what the launch cadence is going to be and very soon. There definitely needs to be a lot more resources.
I'm not up to date with US ADSB rules but is it possible some lad in his Piper who always goes flying in Class G and never bothers talking to anyone gave them a primary radar return they had to abort for?
Possibly. The area around Vandenberg does not require ADS-B out. But if that happened, he probably would have also been violating restricted airspace. The FAA can trace those radar returns and try to find who was flying there at the time. All the data is recorded.
@@bbgun061 They can trace the location but altitude is more difficult if I'm not mistaken. When you have a primary return you have no idea what altitude it's at initially.
We were returning to Port Canaveral on Carnival's Mardi Gras and clocking 22-23 knots, which is close to her max speed. Turned out that we HAD to get into the port very quickly or we'd have been in the range safety area during the launch of the Lucy probe. We made it, and the launch took place just after we had entered the approach channel. It looked great from the ship, an unexpected bonus for us after a bouncy, bumpy run into the port.
That seems like a damned important question to be asking! Excellent.
It might be ok for them to not know the areas, but if you encounter a suddenly closed airspace you should look for your options immediately including possible alternate fields you can (safely!) reach without flying through those areas and then calculate your time to do so without having to declare an emergency - of course there might be cases where you can't do so (e.g. you're on approach and it cuts you off from most near airfields), but having to declare an emergency because of things that might've been your fault you can be pretty certain to get investigated - so it's really not good and pilots know that and especially commercial pilots will prevent this at all cost, so they probably did check for alternatives, but figured they're unsuitable.
Seems like you can put out every kind of notice you can think of, and someone will fail to read it, or fail to follow it.
Honestly, these DRAs are motivating. This is how the current system slides into the future.
Btw, no. These are not shared for a reason. Pilots have to deal with too much information. This would be another useless information. You don't see the 1000 of times this isn't coming into effect. Just the one time it does, it makes the news. You can easily remove the workload of pilots by making this only available in due course when the DRA becomes operational
1. Keep Ship intact for controlled re-entry. If FTS was used, it just scatters debris. Max alt was 124km, and looked like they had enough data when raptors began to shut down, so shut the rest down and skip the FTS and use thrusters for orientation. It does require a different way of thinking about range safety.
2. If plasma trails are overhead, that suggests debris is 30km up so not going to hit the ground until further down range. Did any land on "land" or was it all washed ashore? Aircraft directly under plasma trails should be safe.
I don‘t think it‘s that easy tp assess whether the ship remains in control and you will be able to terminate it at a later point.
Yeahhh, no, I'm not sure you can reliably say that. Low density debris that fell off the trails and stopped burning might still be a hazard. There's something to be said, maybe, for doing an (un)controlled, non terminated reentry, though, if it keeps everything in one place, doesn't risk lives, and lets them pare down the DRAs into smaller and more manageable chunks.
8:50 the change in jurisdiction being Cuba?
As space flights increase the work of enforcing no flight or ship traffic gets much more complicated. Considering what's involved they do a marvelous job. The public often over reacts and the media doesn't help things. The dangers from this flight were minimal at best.
Scott, THIS is how to do it! Congrats for admitting the error of your original post on X, kinda correcting it, and now this very comprehensive and informative explanation. Some thing a "little white mountain lily" never, ever does. Proud of you, dude!
So to all the conspiracy and exciting headline folks out there who want to cancel the two airlines you originally mentioned: STFU! Could have been just a whale surfacing, mistaken to possibly be a boat, and an overly cautious RSO causing the scrubbing.
Thanks for the explanation. I am curious about the gap in the debris response area. That seems to be between Cuba and Florida. Who is controlling that air space?
Please lower the volume of your outro music as it's much louder than both the intro as well as your speaking volume.
Wow, you are right.
Wow, great video! Thanks, Scott!!
Scotty ur too cool!! You're also too Manley. You need to run for California governor...😂😂😂
When areas are 'hot' IFR traffic is not allowed in...so no commercial airliners. However VFR GA traffic is a different thing, they may not be talking to anyone, they may not have ADS running etc.
"...scrubbed at the last minute..." 11 SECONDS TO LAUNCH!!! I was all set with my binoculars, waiting to run outside and watch it go up. I was not happy.
Wow
Yay! Well, here from NSF channels who mentioned _Scott_ Manley so was wondering if he really is Scottish, and accent gave it away before Wikipedia article confirmed it. Brilliant, more space enthusiast Brits to follow now lol🤣
13:32 To be fair to the cruise ship, it by itself was likely carrying five times as many people as have been to space in the entire combined history of human spaceflight, it’s larger and more complicated than any piece of equipment ever put in space, it’s responsible for more economic activity than any SpaceX launch, and the dates and times that it will be sailing are published months in advance. It’s not unreasonable for the captain to assume that NASA would have checked the sailing schedule before scheduling a launch.
Larger yes, definately not more complicated than any piece of equipment ever put in space. What a bold claim that is. One spaceX launch generates about 67 million dollars for spaceX. I'd like to see the random cruiseship compete with that.
@@wouter12wpp Any random cruise ship is more important than a SpaceX launch.
@michaelimbesi2314 Many of the launches - not SpaceX satellite sprinkles, but interplanetary missions etc. - are dictated in time by positions of many celestial objects.
As planetary fly-bys are calculated decades ahead, to the accuracy of less than a second, it should not be unreasonable for the ships captain to check the position of e.g. Jupiter eight years from now - to the second, before casting off from the pier.
Or perhaps check from the NASA web site, when the next summer's Saturn mission launch is scheduled, before planning next year's port schedules. You see, those launch schedules are given to a second's accuracy. So easy to avoid.
A larger ship means more people whose job it is to check all these things.
@@wouter12wppIsn't the space shuttle considered one of the most complicated man made objects ever made?
I'm curious how long it took for the debris to clear out of the area. My expectation before was that it would be cleared very long, but listing to some of the ATC communications it was definitely significantly longer.
Was it the heat tiles being so light taking longer to reach the ground?
I think the major point is that nobody knows if everthing is down.
@@JM_2019 This is the problem. It's only the heavy solid chunks that glow like meteors and leave a trail. Lighter material and even large thin metal panels can flutter down incredibly slowly and cannot be seen from a distance.
Build a spaceport at. Malden or Starbuck Island. Or on Johnston Island because it still has a landing strip and the residual plutonium kind of makes it useless.
That will never happen. Need roads. Cost to deliver everything on boats is very high.
No fresh water supply on any of those islands. The tank farms needed to store the Lox and Methane would be prohibitively expensive. I think all of those locations are in sensitive marine habitats.
The answer to your question would be, "we don't shoot rockets where the aircraft are going to be...", but I guess that begs the question, "how do we know where those vehicles will be?".
When I followed my dad into the world of amateur radio and (to a lesser extent) navigation, I became very interested in ATC and other radio aids to aircraft and even maritime vessels.
More recently with smartphones and apps like "flightradar 24" we can take advantage of ACARS and other more modern systems.
For me it's quite exciting that we can monitor the aircraft flying above - we happen to live below an USAF air refeuling track (which if you have the frequencies can be monitored also as the pilots discuss their flight envelope environment, etc)
Not long ago I heard a U2 check in with ATC not too far from here (the thing was up around 60,000 feet, so it would have been tough to see). Pretty cool .....
Rockets are very limited in the direction they can launch, based on both the orbit they're aiming for and land they need to avoid dropping debris on, and their ability to turn in flight is very limited because it takes a lot of fuel to turn when you don't have wings. And there are simply too many aircraft to draw a straight line a thousand miles long that doesn't cross any flight paths, when rockets generally launch from coasts, and coasts tend to be higher traffic areas.
@@Br3ttM If its really that hard to guarantee safety without constantly disrupting airlines, then you just cannot have a super high launch cadence like Spaceship is supposed to have. Mind theres even populated islands in this debris corridor.
That said, using boca chica as a launch side might just be a terrible idea. If you launch from the US east coast, or just Florida, youre gonna disrupt a lot less air traffic.
Whoops! Despite your efforts to explain NOTAM correctness, "Notices to Airmen" managed to slip through (7:21)
First they changed "position and hold" to "line up and wait". And then came this "missions" abomination...
Dont want to offend the women? Really? Is that what that garbage is about?
Hi Scott on the NASA spaceflight feed back on the starship 7 launch, the commentators said about 90 seconds before takeoff that the holddown clamps were released??? Is this something new as I always saw the clamps being released at the moment of launch once the engines were lit.
Evidently it's harder to keep boats and aircraft away from rockets, than otherway round 😅
Great video, Scott. Just one request - please don't have the channel volume so low compared to the end music. Or tell us to turn down our volume to not scare the house, lol.
To shine some light on the maritime regulations:
There is no such thing like a "restricted area" or "exclusion zone" in international water.
There is no legal way to force a ship not to sail any where. Best you can do is to politely and respectfully ask ask a vessel to pretty pleas change course (and usually vessels will do do so). But the US not known for being respectful or polite!
So many mariners will tell US to f off if commanded by US outsite US water. (Look up the incident where a US aircraft carrier commanded a Spanish lighthouse to get out of there way). As a captain in the Northern sea I had some very bizarre conversation with US range officers during NATO exercises.
In general it is the responsibility of the one who likes to "resevate" space to informe every one else. Not the captain's to look up if some billionaire likes to drop a rocket some where!
If you need an example. Search:
US Navy vs Lighthouse CLEAN
@@xiano1336 As someone who knows people in the Navy, Yeah, they are quite rude on the waters at times. But your example of The Aircraft Carrier with the lighthouse didnt happen. It was a joke in the 1930s that has been altered and changed in MANY different ways over the years.
And for example, A lighthouse doesnt look anything like a ship, unless its extremely foggy, and most versions of the story doesnt even mention fog - As a lighthouse from far away is a fixed white light that flashes at a set number of seconds, while ships are moving, smaller, and multi-colored lights for determining the front from the back. Its quite difficult to mistake it.
Hell this particular source has a whole wikipedia page dedicated to this urban legend of an incident.
@ good to know. Was not aware of this. But since I have been part of some rather hilarious situations with US (and to be fair; French) Navy Vessels in the Norther and Baltic sea, I just took it for real.
Nav rule 0, rule of gross tonnage (and firepower). :P Kidding, mostly. But prudent mariners follow the IMO colregs which defines the standards of conduct all vessels should follow, and just about every country out there is signatory to SOLAS. As for 'telling the US off', I'll note that countries (not just the US) often declare warning, safety or exclusion zones for the purposes of military exercises, and that willingly entering a hazardous zone isn't likely in a mariner's best interest.
Also, you might want to consider that in a joint (NATO) exercise, if your flag stage is a partner in that exercise, even though the words may be coming out of a US vessel, the overall command reflects all the nations involved, including that flag state.
Scott you missed one, ALTRVS. I know many people who work in the office of commercial space and you did pretty well. Sine I used to work for CARF the correct name is Central Altitude Reservation Function not facility.
Keeping the rockets in 1 piece would be a huge help.
Mostly, rockets go too fast for that to be possible, and SpaceX is trying to solve that problem .
With this one, we don't know whether the tumbling rocket pushed itself off course causing the termination system to trigger, or whether it entered the atmosphere uncontrolled and broke up aerodynamically. From what I'm seeing, I think it was the latter, but I don't know.
But then if it does hit anything, it's way too catastrophic. That's why they came up with FTS, it was assessed that many small pieces are less dangerous, even though it's impossible to track them all. Especially when the things at risk are things that cannot realistically avoid (buildings planes that cannot see up, cars, people etc.), even if they are perfectly informed about the trajectory.
Straight forward, no nonsense explanation for things. Good video.
Any thoughts about Elon Musk tossing Nazi salutes? I mean the US space effort has always relied on Nazis, but I wonder if you have any views on the matter?
How do they decide what question to apply the 1 in 10 million rule? Do they break the region up into equally sized chunks? If not why can't you always say that if the risk over the whole earth is below 1 in ten million you are good to go?
If I did a compelling analysis showing that the chance of collision was always less than this would they just eliminate the exclusions for rocket launches?
You can't. There will always be a risk. The best we can do is to mitigate the risk and keep flying.
And fly safe.
Classy. There was some sass flung at you, not even mentioned 😎
Scott may be the goat
Well done! *By Far* the most informed and responsible content I've read on the subject in the last several days.
Did everyone see Elon Musk perform the Nazi salute at the presidential inauguration today? What could this mean for space and space journalism?
It means anyone who still supports and promotes SX and musk is a nazi supporter.
It means the frog will be boiled a little more, with incrementally less veiled denial and sophistry. Business as usual.
You might want to watch that again. That's not what he did at all.
@@waterfallhunter634 if it salutes 3 times like a nazi, it's a nazi. If you defend Nazis, you're a nazi.
@@waterfallhunter634how do the boots taste? 👅
All very well trying to minimise the chances of debris hitting an airborne target moving at several hundred knots, but the debris seemed to be flying over static, inhabited islands - sitting targets if the rud had happened a few seconds earlier?
"an engine problem"? Musk claimed that: "Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity", not that one can rely on anything the fascist says.
Yes, because he has a track record of being deceptive about such things?
@ That makes for an extremely peculiar question (because it shouldn't be a question at all). Musk has a long, well documented history of lying, granted that there doesn't seem to be a likely motivation for him having done so here. The point, of course, is that if what he says is true, IFT-7 seems to have been done in by something other than "an engine problem".
So are all reservations the area contained in the shape drawn by four points? Or can you do arbitrary polygons?
New Glenn reaching orbit before Star Ship is still astonishing
what ever happened to their booster? Did we ever hear?
@@DB-zp9un - RUD I think
Bit of a technicality though isn’t it, several starships could have entered orbit if they wanted to
Not surprised at all.
@@Jason-gq8fo - indeed - but they did not
Please check the volume levels of the video vs your outro. I usually watch your videos to fall asleep, and it works greay. Except I have to see them live ten times to understand everything. But then I always wake up from that really loud outro. Thank you. Love the content.
SpaceX has a very narrow launch corridor from Boca Chica to avoid overflying islands. There’s a lot of aircraft traffic in that area, so a Starship breakup will shower the aircraft with junk. The only solution is to stop SpaceX from using Boca Chica.
The other problem is the airspace where the starship debris fell is multinational. Does the FAA have any ATC authority there?
They should have built their test launch site in Florida...
@@Rob2 Yes, doing these launches from Texas is really dumb.
Puerto Rico is a US territory, with jurisduction over most of the airways east of Cuba.
fun fact: CARF is the same agency used by Air Mobility Command to create a moving altitude reservation for air refueling, primarily during aircraft movement of fighters
Like playing baseball on a busy street. There are way too many civilian aircraft flying in this area to operate a rocket launching facility. Boca Chica is also very poorly placed. Move out into the Pacific
Launching from the Pacific means they have to launch over the mainland. Move to Florida.
You 'd have to move past the Caribbean. 1.Logistically very expensive 2.These are international waters 3.The amount of reduced risk is astronomically small.
Move it out into the pacific? Are you detached from reality?
@ He probably hasn’t done much research into why people choose the launching positions that they do.
For anyone else reading that sees this, practically all nations with a space program have their rockets launch in an eastern direction because it is much easier to reach orbital velocity thanks to the spin of the earth.
If they were to launch in a Western direction, they would have to contend with reversing their default orbital velocity and spend extra Delta V (energy) to get going the other way.
If we were going to launch rockets into orbit from the Pacific, the rocket would either be going into orbit with a hazard are covering most of the continent, or they would have to be from islands on the west side of the pacific.
Great video as always. I would love to see New Glen launch DRA4 marked area and how it responded & how much Airlines or maritime authorities noticed it as the booster definitely exploded or breakout. Whatever it caused debries in path.
Scott, please check and lower the volume on the outro music! It is startling! 🫨
Honestly, if you go into an area you aren't supposed to be, either on purpose or accident, that's your lookout. I don't GAF if a boat wanders in where it isn't supposed to be, or an aircraft is flying where it isn't supposed to be. Launch anyway. The people piloting these vehicles need to take responsibility for not knowing where they are or not knowing where they can go. Ignorance is no excuse.
I agree, but the problem is that if something bad happends to someone who wasn't supposed to be in the area, the general public will take it out of contest out of stupidity or agenda. As a company you don't want a mob that tries to sabotage everything you do.
It's hard for me to believe that Starship hasn't automatic control law that would activate the FTS under certain conditions; it activated on an earlier flight due to lack of comms, IIRC. So losing telemetry may be grounds to terminate. Hopefully we'll get some more details.
The engineers keeping track of starship probably knew right away something went wrong which will trigger the FTS. The communication to the public is much slower because they prioritize informing the FAA and give a more thought trough answer to the public. Losing telemetry can happen but is quite rare. The data we get during the livestream is only a representation of the real much more elaborate data the engineers actually have of starship. If the video cuts off there is absolutely no guarantee there's no telemetry.
FTS systems are largely automated these days.
Starship (and Falcon 9, for that matter) has AFTS.
Scott did you see Elon’s salute? Not good…😬
Very curious how much/little apologism/denial we'll see
As usual, the media covering spacex will just ignore it.
It's feels good to hear that flight dispatcher's got mentioned 🎉