NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 37

federal standards, but those existing standards are in some
ways customized for the government's unique facilities with
unique needs ... how to pick and choose how and where
to apply the standards is difficult," said Gollner, the report's
co-author. "That could be very hard for a commercial
spaceport to [replicate], especially if it doesn't have the type
of infrastructure of a NASA launch facility or have experts on
hand all the time."
Operational and design differences between commercial
spaceports and government-built facilities could also make
government codes less than an ideal fit. For one, commercial spaceports serve a distinctly different clientele and
purpose-to cheaply and efficiently get payloads into space
to maximize profitability-than a NASA facility. The U.S.
government, which is its own insurer, is highly risk-averse
and therefore has extraordinarily high safety thresholds in its
standards, which may be too stringent to be economically
viable for private industry, Scott contends.
Commercial and government spaceport facilities may
also have other slight but meaningful differences that could
impact safety best practices. If NASA's famed Kennedy
Space Center in Florida is the spaceport equivalent of New

"There is a large reliance on
AHJs with federal standards,
but those existing standards
are in some ways customized
for the government's unique
facilities with unique needs ...
how and where to apply the
standards is difficult."
York's JFK airport, most commercial spaceports today are
something akin to a municipal airport upstate. They aren't
huge industrial goliaths, but generally barebones and functional, usually built in rural, sometimes outright desolate areas. The Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska, for instance,
consists of a single road, two outbuildings and a launch pad.
The proposed Spaceport Camden will be similar, tucked into
4,000 acres of Georgia woods and consisting of a single
launch pad and just three outbuildings. As a result, the
resources available may not be at the level of a government
facility, nor will the launch volume, staffing, or perhaps even
firefighting capability or techniques.
In the case of a fire or explosion, NASA's suppression
strategy is typically to step back and let all the fuel burn
out on its own, often resulting in a total loss of expensive
equipment and launch infrastructure, Scott said. Firefighters
are used only for clean up and for putting out any remaining
burning debris once the fuels are exhausted.
"That strategy obviously could create some significant
issues as we move into more commercial facilities, because
if your scenario is you're going to lose the entire facility
every time you have a fire that is problematic from business
standpoint-but that is generally how it has been at NASA,"
Scott said. -J.R

move forward to create a new standard on spaceports-the
soonest it would likely consider the request is in August-
the document would likely focus on design and operations,
risk management at spaceports, emergency management
planning, fire protection systems, and firefighter operations, said Brian O'Connor, an engineer at NFPA who has
begun looking into the issue. Most of the guidance would
likely be pulled from existing standards
NFPA.ORG/
that the FPRF study identified as perSPACEPORTS
taining to spaceports. Just collecting
Watch a video of
those in one place for AHJs "is one big
SpaceX's launch
of its Falcon
benefit that could help right away,"
Heavy rocket.
O'Connor said. "As I'm looking at the
Read the Fire Pro- government guidance that's already
tection Research there, much of it is difficult to find and
Foundation report
"Literature Review hard to get access to."
on Spaceport Fire
One related effort to do this has
Safety."
already begun. The Commercial SpaceSee U.S commer- flight Federation recently partnered with
cial space data
ASTM International to launch a comfrom the FAA,
including a list of mittee focused on developing consensus
launches since
standards and recommended practices
1989.
for the commercial spaceflight industry.
The main areas of focus will be the design, manufacturing, and operational use of vehicles used for spaceflight,
as well as human spaceflight standards, according to the
committee's scope. However, the group's subcommittee on
spaceports, for which Nelson is a vice chair, has begun delving into facility standards as well. So far the committee has
drafted a standard guide for storage, use, and handling of
liquid rocket propellants, which references NFPA 30, Flammable and Combustible Liquids; NFPA 55, Compressed Gases
and Cryogenic Fluids; NFPA 59A, Production, Storage, and
Handling of Liquefied Natural Gas; and NFPA 407, Aircraft
Fuel Servicing.
"This is one of those documents that says, 'Hey guys, if
you're going to do this, here are all of the things that are
out there that you should use.' I think eventually, as we get
into it, there will be more need for documents like this," said
Nelson. "We are all engineers and all practical, and we don't
believe in reinventing the wheel. If someone has already
invented a wheel, we should apply it and use it."
Other related NFPA standards may also help, O'Connor
said, noting NFPA 1127, High Powered Rocketry; NFPA 1122,
Model Rocketry; NFPA 409, Aircraft Hangars; NFPA 495,
Explosive Materials Code, and other airport and fueling
codes and standards. None, however, quite hit the mark
on something as complex as a spaceport. "We have a lot of
things that just barely miss it," O'Connor said.
That's concerning to folks like Scott, who aren't sure if
there will be enough guidance to make sure the industry can
grow safely, especially considering the potential velocity of
that growth as more communities like Camden peer into the
future and see dollar signs and rocket ships. Either way, he
is sure that more spaceports are on the way.
JESSE ROMAN is associate editor of NFPA Journal.

N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

| 37


http://www.NFPA.ORG/spaceports http://WWW.NFPA.ORG/JOURNAL http://WWW.NFPA.ORG/JOURNAL

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

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