NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 33

"If you are a local fire marshal or
authority having jurisdiction (AHJ)
trying to understand and figure out
how to build a spaceport, how to make
it safe, and how to respond and do
emergency planning, I feel for you,"
said Jason Scott, the program manager
for fire protection at NASA and head
of fire protection at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Alabama. The same concerns exist for
emergency operations, he added. "If
you're building a commercial spaceport
today, you have to pull in some things
from NASA or the Air Force, or things
the FAA has published. Some of these
codes conflict, where one tells you it
should be green and the other says it
should be red ... There isn't really any
good guidance out there."
PUT IN SIMPLEST TERMS, spaceports are to space travel what airports
are to air travel-a place to fuel, store,
and prep rockets, then blast them into
orbit and, increasingly, to land them
safely back on earth, as the company
SpaceX did to much fanfare with its
Falcon Heavy flight in early February.
Each spaceport varies slightly in configuration, but all have the basics one
might expect: tanks of powerful fuels
and propellants; lengthy runways for
horizontal launches, or large reinforced
concrete launch pads and service
structures for vertical ones; an array
of sophisticated electrical and communications equipment; water tanks to
deluge launch facilities during take-off
to reduce possible fire spread and to
muffle the vast acoustical energy that
could damage the rocket and launch
area; and all the pipes, outbuildings,
equipment, and machinery needed to
operate such a facility. Today, there
are 10 licensed commercial spaceports
scattered across the United States,
according to the FAA-up from three
a decade ago-and at least four more
are in the pipeline under FAA licensing
review.
Some believe the recent surge is the
beginning of things to come. Once the
exclusive domain of federal governments, space travel has evolved rapidly
in the last decade into a commercial
money-making venture for companies

looking to scoop up lucrative government research and supply contracts,
and to meet a burgeoning corporate
demand. Television, communications,
imaging, research, global positioning
systems, academic interests, and more
are looking to private firms to help
them get equipment into orbit.
Spurred by these and other prospects,
such as recently passed legislation that
allows companies to keep resources
harvested from celestial bodies, the
private space industry has attracted
unprecedented levels of investment
funding in recent years. The private
sector has invested about $10 billion

If you're building
"
a commercial space-

port today, you have
to pull in some things
from NASA or the Air
Force, or things the
FAA has published.
Some of these codes
conflict, where one
tells you it should be
green and the other
says it should be red
... There isn't really
any good guidance
out there.

"

into the commercial space industry
over the last two years, more than doubling investment totals in the previous
eight years combined, according to the
Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an
industry advocacy group.
Not surprisingly, leaps in innovation
have followed. Large and well-funded
companies, such as Elon Musk's SpaceX
and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, have
successfully launched, landed, and,
in the case of SpaceX, reused rockets,
drastically reducing per-launch costs.
Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has
taken more than 700 deposits for space
tourists to experience low Earth orbit
flights-short-duration flights at an
altitude of 2,000 kilometers or less-at
$250,000 per flight, which could begin
as soon as this year. Dozens of other

companies such as Boeing, Orbital
ATK, Sierra Nevada Corp., Stratolaunch, Vector, and others have moved
forward aggressively with new rocket
testing and research.
Much of this growth has been aided
by NASA, which as policy has been
actively trying to grow the commercial
space industry for more than a decade.
The U.S. government's stance since at
least 2006 has been that a more robust
commercial space industry will spur
innovation, advance U.S. interests, and
will result in cheaper access to space
for industry and taxpayers. Already,
NASA has largely handed off to private
companies more routine low Earth
orbit missions, such as supply runs to
the International Space Station, freeing
up NASA for more ambitious deepspace exploration projects and manned
missions to Mars.
"It is no different than what NASA
did with aeronautics many years ago,
back when it used be only the government flying airplanes-ultimately, we
got to a place where it made sense for
commercial entities to do that," Scott
said. "We feel like we are there now
with space. It is beginning more and
more to be smart business for companies to provide services in low Earth
orbit, especially with the development
of smaller, cheaper satellites."
As was the case with the commercialization of the commercial air travel
industry, the supporting infrastructure
is essential for growth. Today, almost
all of the nation's commercial spaceports, such as Space Florida at the Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station or the Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority
at Wallops Flight Facility, piggyback on
existing government-built Air Force or
NASA flight facilities. Spaceport America in New Mexico became the nation's
first commercial space facility built
without existing government infrastructure when it opened in 2008. The
proposed Spaceport Camden would be
another. Other hopeful future launch
facilities in Colorado and Florida are
currently undergoing FAA review.
AS MORE "FROM-SCRATCH" commercial facilities like Camden are
licensed and built without assistance
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - March/April 2018
