• FAA’s NOTAMs debacle
• Why doesn’t FAA’s new control tower plan include remote towers?
• Fixing the Air Traffic Organization’s culture
• Defending and building upon airline deregulation
• Should the government mandate larger airliner seats?
• News Notes
• Quotable Quotes

FAA’s NOTAMs Debacle

On Jan. 11, I was one of the hundreds of thousands of air travelers affected by the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) nearly two-hour ground stop, which led to more than 11,000 flights being cancelled or delayed. The cause was a failure in FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system. The direct cause was the insertion of corrupt data during an update of the system the previous day. But the underlying cause is an obsolete and dysfunctional system that should have been rethought and replaced decades ago.

Our Notice to Air Missions system is part of an international system (called AFTN), because aviation is international. It is supposed to notify pilots, dispatchers, and others about potential safety hazards at airports and along airways relevant to a planned flight. The international version began in 1920, and the format has remained mostly unchanged since 1924. The world shifted to ASCII (upper and lower case type) in 1963, but the FAA continues to use the teletype-era all-caps format.

The major problem with NOTAMs is information overload. At any given time, FAA NOTAMs may consist of 30-to-100 pages of all-caps text, with no prioritization of what might be a serious hazard and nothing highlighted for a particular air route (e.g., Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to Miami International). According to an aviation group called OpsGroup, the number of NOTAMs reached 500,000 in 2006 but doubled to one million NOTAMs seven years later, as FAA and other agencies continued to add notifications of things like construction cranes that are far from runways and birds congregating at or near airports. The mindset seems to be, ‘We’d better include it, in case something bad happens, and we get blamed.’

In an online aviation discussion group that I’ve been a member of for several decades, pilots and other professionals offered many critiques of NOTAMs following the ground stop. One airline pilot pointed out that the airline dispatcher’s flight plan for a specific flight extracts for the cockpit crew the departure, arrival, and alternate airports for a specific flight, and arranges the airports’ NOTAM information in flight order, but the all-caps information for each airport is a mish-mash of everything someone could think of that might be relevant, with hazard locations indicated by latitude and longitude, loads of cryptic abbreviations, and no emphasis on what might actually be important. “Hence, flight crews can spend a long time sifting through irrelevant trivia about there being a 150-foot crane a mile from the airport, or the MDA [Minimum Descent Altitude] for a particular [visual] approach on an ILS runway being adjusted from 420 ft. to 425 ft.,” the pilot wrote on the message board.

The most startling thing I found in these discussions is that the ground stop was basically unnecessary. To quote the same pilot, “Most of the active NOTAMs will have been issued days or even weeks before, so the pilots could actually have been given the previous day’s NOTAMs and just been updated with any new stuff on that day.”

In subsequent online discussions, estimates of the number of flights that could have proceeded had this decision been made ranged from 80% to 99% of that morning’s flights.

FAA’s NOTAM system is a disgrace, yet there is no announced plan to replace its obsolete computers, its ancient all-caps type, and its failure to highlight relevant safety hazards. The agency’s 2015 “FAA Resiliency Assessment Report” listed 32 air traffic control-related systems that needed change to ensure their resiliency; NOTAM was not included.  In a Jan. 12 Reuters article, David Shepardson noted, “FAA has been trying to modernize the Notices to Air Mission (NOTAM) system,” but so far, the only tangible result has been changing its name to replace “Air Men” with “Air Missions.” That says something about FAA priorities.

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Why Doesn’t FAA’s New Control Tower Plan Include Remote/Digital Towers?

The winter issue of Managing the Skies, the magazine of the FAA Managers Association, includes a lengthy article on the extra money Congress allocated to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) via the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (also often referred to as the bipartisan infrastructure law). One section of the article, “Building a New Generation of Towers,” describes FAA’s plan to replace 30 smaller control towers by 2030. It discusses the agency’s recently launched Sustainable Tower Design Initiative intended to “tap innovative minds in private industry and academia…for new approaches both to design and to rapid construction.”

The article recounts an early 1960s effort that tapped major architectural firms to develop ever-grander monuments. Alas, there is not a word in this article about remote/digital towers, and this concept is also absent from FAA’s description of the program.

Remote/digital towers are certified and in operation in half a dozen European countries. They dispense with towering buildings in favor of using an array of cameras and other sensors at various locations at an airport to feed panoramic displays in a control room either on the surface or securely underground. These facilities cost a lot less to build and maintain. They also provide better performance, for example, with infrared cameras that can see approaching aircraft through low clouds, fog, and rain. They can also electronically tag aircraft viewed on the panoramic screens, and do many other things better than 20th-century “towers.”

For replacing 30 towers at smaller airports, another possibility for low-activity airports is to control several such airports from a single remote tower center (RTC). Such RTCs are certified and in operation in Germany, Norway, and Sweden and are under development in several other European countries. Whether at single airports or for groups of several, installing digital/remote towers would be faster and less costly than constructing new 20th-century towers.

Although Congress in 2018 authorized FAA to start implementing remote towers, no such projects are under way. Two state-funded remote towers have been built and are in partial operation in Leesburg, VA, and Loveland, CO. These projects began in 2015 and 2014 and have been ready for full operation for years—but are still not FAA-certified. The agency has cooperated with the project developers and has loaned some controllers, but the endless delays in certification are beyond comprehension.

Last summer, at the U.S Contract Tower Association meeting, FAA Air Traffic Organization’s (ATO) Jeffrey Vincent told attendees that “remote/digital towers are the future.” At that time, he was ATO’s Vice President for Air Traffic Services. Recently, he was shifted to being executive director of ATO’s Drone Integration Office. The “30 by 30” program would appear to be a good fit for remote/digital towers. It would be more credible if FAA finally certified the remote/digital towers at Leesburg and Loveland. And it might help if Congress, in the 2023 FAA reauthorization bill, imposed a date after which FAA could no longer build towering edifices.

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Fixing the Air Traffic Organization’s Culture

The Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMs) fiasco and the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) continued failure to embrace remote/digital towers are examples of a serious organizational problem. Congress created the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) in 2000, hoping that instead of being a cautious bureaucracy, it would become a “performance-based organization,” operating more like a Silicon Valley tech company to produce the world’s best, most-advanced air traffic control (ATC) system. As two decades of Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Department of Transportation (DOT) Inspector General reports have since documented, U.S. air traffic control has not been transformed. Other developed countries have pioneered remote towers, electronic flight strips, space-based ADS-B surveillance, and much more.

In 2012 the Hudson Institute commissioned me to do a peer-reviewed study of innovation within the FAA’s air traffic control system. My 54-page report was published by Hudson in Jan. 2014 (and is also available on the Reason Foundation website).

In the report, I examined seven case studies of air traffic control innovations (including controller-pilot data link, GPS landing systems, space-based ADS-B surveillance, and remote towers). In each of the seven cases, these innovations were developed and implemented sooner in other countries than in the United States (and some have still not been implemented here).

The report next offered several hypotheses to explain this difference in performance, noting that the peer countries that innovated faster and better had all separated their ATC function from their transportation agency and aviation safety regulator. The hypotheses were the following:

ATO identity as a safety agency, rather than a technology service provider. The hypothesis was that being embedded in a safety regulatory agency, rather than being regulated by it at arm’s length (as all the other aviation participants are) created an overly cautious organizational culture that is slow to implement innovation.

Loss of technical expertise. FAA engineers and software people are paid per standard federal general schedule pay categories, and work in what is, in fact, a very large bureaucracy. It is hardly surprising that many of the best and brightest can (and do) find greater satisfaction and higher pay by transitioning to private industry. This ends up putting the ATO at a disadvantage in dealing with large aerospace contractors, who sometimes design and develop more elaborate and expensive ways of meeting the ATO’s requirements.

Loss of managerial expertise. Despite Congress mandating “procurement reform,” the ATO’s procurement record features many projects that go far over budget and whose delivery extends over many years. As with engineers, the same differences in compensation and working environment lead to the best program managers being hired away by aerospace companies.

Excessive oversight. In conversations with individuals who previously served as ATO chief operating officer, I was often regaled with their frustration of having to pay attention to too many overseers: the Secretary of Transportation, the FAA Administrator, the Inspector General, GAO, Congress’s authorizing committees, Congress’s budget committees, etc. This problem applies to FAA itself as well as the ATO.

The assembled peer reviewers, all with considerable aviation and government experience, judged all four of these causes as significant, and they were generally positive about the reforms that I proposed. They were:

1. Separate the ATO from FAA, putting ATO at arm’s length from the safety regulator, as is now the case in nearly all first-world countries, and has been International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) policy since 2001. The potential for organizational culture change would be greater if the new ATO were located somewhere other than in the FAA building—perhaps across the Potomac in a Virginia suburb.
2. Shift from aviation user taxes to direct funding, similar to airports charging landing fees, rents, etc. This would be analogous to other federal entities that provide services to customers, such as the huge electric utility Tennessee Valley Authority. With its own revenue stream, the new ATO could issue long-term revenue bonds, like airports and electric utilities do, so that large capital modernizations could be financed up-front, rather than being paid for out of annual cash flow, which leads to very long periods to get improvements implemented systemwide.
3. Change the governance model. Whether new ATO would be structured as a government corporation (as proposed by the Clinton administration) or a nonprofit federally chartered corporation is a decision to be debated. Both models exist in high-performance air navigation service providers overseas.

These changes are not an all-or-nothing proposition. In a 2010 article in The Journal of Air Traffic Control, former FAA Administrator Langhorne Bond and I made a stand-alone case for simply separating the ATO from FAA, making the ATO a separate federal entity, located outside Washington, DC, regulated at arm’s length by FAA (as it regulates airports, airlines, etc.). We argued that “a separate ATO would be in a much stronger position to advocate for timely implementation [of new technology] and to carry this out in a timely and cost-effective manner.”

In other words, we think separation has a good chance of leading to a more businesslike organizational culture, consistent with the new ATO becoming a high-tech service business serving aviation customers. That paper, with slight updating, was posted on the Reason Foundation website.

This is not a call to revisit air traffic control corporatization, as was debated in 2017-18 and which failed to get beyond the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee. The coalition that backed the bill no longer exists and shows no signs of being rebuilt. Moreover, someone inserted in the huge year-end budget omnibus bill a sentence saying, “The agreement does not support any efforts to transfer the FAA’s air traffic functions to a not-for-profit, independent, private corporation.”

But as Bond and I argued in the above paper, arm’s-length separation between FAA and the ATO would remove a potential conflict of interest (self-regulation of ATC safety), be consistent with ICAO policy and global practice, and at least offer the possibility of leading to a more entrepreneurial organizational culture. That would be a meaningful reform to include in this year’s FAA reauthorization.

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Defending and Building Upon Airline Deregulation
By Marc Scribner

FAA’s NOTAM system failure (discussed in detail in this issue’s lead article) has prompted a variety of responses, many of which misapprehend the problems faced by the aviation system and would be counterproductive if implemented. One example was an op-ed published in The New York Times by William J. McGee, a former longtime travel reviewer at Consumer Reports who is now employed by the American Economic Liberties Project, a progressive advocacy organization focused on discarding the consumer welfare standard as the lodestar of U.S. competition policy.

McGee argues that the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was a mistake and that the U.S. should return to something closer to the pre-deregulation environment, when interstate air travel was operated as a government-controlled cartel. This runs counter to the evidence on airline deregulation, but McGee is right to suggest that Congress should consider new reforms to improve air travel. However, contra McGee, Americans would be far better served by preserving the gains of the Airline Deregulation Act while also extending deregulation to recognize the global nature of the industry in the 21st century.

In the early 20th century, U.S. aviation policy largely focused on the carriage of mail for the Post Office. After the Postmaster General attempted to cartelize air mail providers in the early 1930s, the resulting national scandal led to a revamp of aviation regulation. This culminated with the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which authorized the regulation of airfares, routing, mail rates, and safety. Soon after, regulators grandfathered the existing 23 carriers into the system, establishing and enforcing a new cartel of long- and medium-haul interstate trunk carriers that were shielded from market entry and price competition.

But the federal cartel did not apply to intrastate air travel. In 1949, Kenny Friedkin founded Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) to operate exclusively within California as a charter carrier. Since PSA did not operate across state lines, it was exempt from the heavy-handed economic regulation of the federal Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and instead operated under the authority of the more-lenient California Public Utilities Commission.

This exercise in regulatory arbitrage led to PSA becoming the first scheduled low-cost carrier. By the 1950s, PSA was offering airfares between Burbank and San Francisco for roughly $10, or approximately $100 in today’s dollars. For comparison, the airfares between Boston and Washington, which were about the same distance apart but served only by CAB-regulated trunk carriers, were more than twice as expensive as PSA’s fares. Friedkin’s success with PSA inspired Herb Kelleher to cofound Southwest Airlines in 1966 as a PSA-style intrastate carrier in Texas.

But it wasn’t just would-be regional carrier entrepreneurs taking notice of PSA’s low-cost model. Academic researchers were growing increasingly concerned that federal economic regulation’s focus on protecting incumbent trunkline carriers from competition was harming the welfare of American consumers.

One of those academics was future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, then a young Harvard Law School professor, who was hired by Sen. Edward Kennedy to advise his Judiciary Committee on airline competition and regulation. Another academic, economist Alfred Kahn of Cornell University, was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to chair the CAB in 1977. Kahn is widely known as the “father of airline deregulation” for leading the Carter administration’s role in developing the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, which ultimately abolished the CAB that he chaired at the time.

The results of the Airline Deregulation Act have greatly benefited U.S. air travelers. Inflation-adjusted average domestic airfares fell 47% between 1978 and 2022, while passenger volumes tripled, rising more than four times faster than population growth. About 50% of scheduled interstate flights are now operated by what remains of the legacy trunk carriers, down from 100% in the pre-deregulation years. The rest are primarily operated by low-cost and ultra-low-cost carriers, which now put most of the downward pressure on airfares through aggressive price competition and route entry that was outlawed prior to the Airline Deregulation Act.

While less competition and higher prices would result from McGee’s prescription, a better approach would be to build on the success of airline deregulation by extending it to foreign carriers. The European Union fully authorized cabotage rights—the operation of domestic routes by foreign-flagged carriers—in 1997. The explosive growth of low-cost carriers such as Ryanair and EasyJet followed the European Union’s liberalization policies, and European air travelers now enjoy far greater access to popular destinations at much lower prices. Freeing the U.S. airline market to evolve to its global potential would likely generate significant benefits for travelers. But for this to occur, policymakers must correctly identify existing barriers to competition rather than resurrecting barriers from the past.

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Should the Government Mandate Larger Airline Seats?

In the 2018 FAA reauthorization act, Congress required the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to “issue regulations that establish minimum dimensions for passenger seats . . . including minimums for seat pitch, width, and length that are necessary for the safety of passengers.” FAA has not issued such regulations, based on its contention that no connection between seat size and emergency evacuation has been demonstrated. But with ongoing litigation over this by FlyersRights.org, the agency is seeking comments on standards for emergency evacuations.

Having grown up in an airline family, I recall hearing about airline employees being recruited for evacuation tests. In those days, the requirements for those tests were less stringent than today’s—there were no requirements for balanced demographics, for example. Today’s Part 25 (of Federal Air Regulations) spells out age and sex requirements, requires dolls to be used to simulate infants, forbids using certain categories of airline employees from playing the part of passengers, and includes requirements such as that only half the available exits may be used and using only onboard emergency lighting.

Yet there will always be problems with such evacuation tests. Those taking part know why they are there (hence, are unlikely to panic), know they will have to jump feet-first into a chute, will not have carry-on bags to worry about (or try to bring with them). The requirement is to evacuate the entire flight in 90 seconds, and somehow the tests seem to show that this is being accomplished in not-totally realistic tests.

There is less empirical data on this subject than we’d like. Back in 1993, the (now-defunct) federal Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) released a background paper, “Aircraft Evacuation Testing: Research and Technology Issues.” The report noted that evacuation tests are costly and “expose participants to significant hazards,” including injuries. They also simulate “only a narrow range of emergency conditions.” Also, the evacuation demonstration criteria “are inflexible, regardless of technologies that could extend the period of survivability within the cabin.”

A significant problem OTA pointed out is that human behavior in an actual emergency situation “cannot yet be reliably simulated,” and then-emerging dynamic simulations would need to be validated via psychological data that “will be difficult to obtain.” The report also noted that survivability is improving, thanks to highly fire-resistant materials and more crashworthy seats, restraints, and overhead bins.

Adding to the pressure for change, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) plans to introduce a provision in the forthcoming FAA reauthorization bill to revamp evacuation standards to include disabled passengers, the hearing-impaired, the young and the old, and non-English speakers. A Politico report on this effort noted that a 2019 FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute study found that current seat dimensions had no impact on evacuations for 99% of able-bodied Americans. But the evacuation tests on which that conclusion was based included only able-bodied adults 18 to 64—no children, older people, or disabled people.

Yet carrying out realistic evacuation tests involving children, the very elderly, and people in wheelchairs raises serious ethical and safety questions. Yet without data, any new policies will be based on good intentions and impose large costs on airlines, which will ultimately be paid for via fare increases.

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News Notes

Skycraft Plans Space-Based ADS-B Service
A Canberra-based company, Skycraft, has reached an agreement with Airservices Australia to launch and operate a 200-satellite constellation to improve ADS-B coverage in Australia and its oceanic airspace. The first satellites are scheduled for launch this month via a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral. The service will include controller-pilot communications in addition to ADS-B surveillance. Skycraft is the first competitor to the pioneer of space-based ADS-B, U.S.-based Aireon.

FAA Issues Airworthiness Criteria for Archer’s eVTOL
On Dec. 19, FAA issued the airworthiness criteria that Archer Aviation’s eVTOL air taxi must meet in order to operate. The company said it hopes to win that certification by late 2024. Archer’s prototype achieved its first transition from vertical to forward flight on Nov. 29. In addition to airworthiness, Archer will also need certification of its manufacturing, which it plans to carry out via auto company Stellantis, which has never built an aircraft.

Two Airport P3 Wins for Turkey’s TAV Airports
TAV, partly owned by Aeroports de Paris, has won a 25-year extension of its concession to operate Ankara’s Esenboga International Airport. The new concession will expire in 2050. TAV has agreed to invest €300 million to add a new runway, control tower, and cargo facilities. The airport served 7.9 million passengers in 2021’s first 11 months. Earlier this year, a consortium led by TAV reached financial close on the new Antalya Airport concession.

Major New Airport Opens in India
Early this month India’s newest greenfield airport opened. New Goa Airport (GOX) has an initial capacity of 4.4 million passengers; its ultimate capacity after several planned expansions will be 13.1 million passengers. It has been financed and developed under a 40-year P3 concession by GMR Group. Three Indian airlines are scheduled to begin service at GOX this month. Goa is one of the largest tourist destinations in India.

Bidders Lining Up for Paris Region Airport Concession
Inframation reported (Jan. 5) that major airport companies Vinci, Eiffage, Egis, and Bouygues are among those considering bids on Paris Beauvais Airport. The 30-year P3 concession has an estimated value of €4 billion. The airport served 4.6 million passengers in 2022. The current 15-year concession expires in June, and the RFP is to be released in February. Beauvais Airport is 80 km north of Paris, and was France’s 10th busiest airport in 2019.

Digital Towers and UTM Partnership Announced
In December, remote/digital tower pioneer Saab and UTM pioneer Altitude Angel announced a joint venture. Saab will integrate Altitude Angel’s Guardian UTM services into Saab’s r-TWR next-generation digital tower. Richard Ellis of Altitude Angel told Air Traffic Management that via the partnership, “Saab will be able to provide Digital Towers which are equipped and ready for our future skies, as the use of drones increases and Urban Air Mobility through eVTOL aircraft becomes a day-to-day occurrence.”

Airbus Plans High-Altitude 5G Service
Rural areas may have an alternative to costly 5G cell towers if Airbus succeeds in offering such service via high-altitude solar-powered aircraft. The vehicle called Zephyr is designed to stay aloft for months at altitudes in the 60,000 ft. range, electrically powered via solar cells. The company’s three prototypes have had several years of high-altitude testing, with the longest duration being 64 days. The concept is called high-altitude pseudo-satellite (HAPS), and Airbus is one of a number of would-be providers. Airbus’s  Samer Halawi told Aviation Week that providing 4G/5G service in rural Mexico would cost less than half as much as using (currently non-existent) cell towers.

Joby Completes Second FAA Review
Last month Joby Aviation completed the second of four FAA system reviews for its S4 eVTOL. This “system review” is aimed at evaluating the “overall architecture of the aircraft and ensure the company’s development process is on track to satisfy FAA’s safety objectives associated with complex aircraft systems.” Joby aims to certify the S4 by late 2024. Since Joby will be manufacturing the S4 itself, its manufacturing system must be certified, in addition to the S4’s airworthiness.

Boom Selects Custom Team to Develop Supersonic Engine
In a surprise December announcement, Boom Supersonic announced that the engines to power its Mach 1.7 aircraft will be designed by Florida Turbine Technologies, a relatively new company formed by former Pratt & Whitney engineers. Manufacturing will be done by GE Additive division of GE Aerospace, while maintenance, repair, and overhaul will be done by Standard Aero, which handles those tasks for military F110 supersonic jet engines. The first flight is now estimated at 2026, with Boom aiming for FAA certification in 2029.

Graves Undecided on User Fees for New Entrants
In a Dec. 14 interview with Politico, Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), who will chair the House Transportation Committee’s Aviation Subcommittee, expressed uncertainty about including some kind of user fee requirement for new users of the airspace, such as drones, eVTOLs, very high altitude aircraft, and space launch and recovery. While agreeing on the subject’s importance, Graves said he is “absolutely not ready” to commit to any specifics prior to discussions with tax-writing committees and subject-matter experts.

Virgin Islands Plans Airport P3s
The U.S. Virgin Islands Port Authority (VIPA) has released a Request for Qualifications for a P3 concession to modernize and operate its airports on St. Thomas and St. Croix, which it describes as having “outdated facilities and unpleasant conditions” in their terminals. Qualifications from potential bidders are due March 16, and VIPA hopes to issue an RFP to a short-list of best-qualified teams by mid-March and a preferred team selected by Jan. 2024. Operators must have experience with airports handling at least 1 million annual passengers.

Bidders Lining Up for Greek Regional Airport
Four teams have submitted expressions of interest for a P3 concession to develop and operate Kalamata International Airport, the first of 23 regional airports to be concessioned. The four teams are headed by Aeroports de la Cote d’Azur, Fraport, GMR Airports, and Corporacion America Airports. Kalamata served 341,000 passengers in 2019, mostly from abroad.

Raytheon Testing Hybrid-Electric Propulsion
For planned testing of hybrid-electric propulsion in a converted DeHavilland Dash 8-100 turboprop airliner, Raytheon has begun ground-testing of its integrated power train. It consists of a one-megawatt electric motor and a Pratt & Whitney turbine powerplant adapted for hybrid operations. While these ground tests are going on, another alternative has begun flight testing at Moses Lake, WA. Universal Hydrogen has installed a one-megawatt powertrain driven by a hydrogen fuel cell, powering a Dash 8-300 aircraft.

London City Airport Seeking OK for Nine Million Passengers
Privately owned London City Airport has asked the United Kingdom’s government for an increase in its annual passenger cap from 6.5 million to 9 million. Final passenger numbers for 2022 are expected to be 3 million, with projected traffic back to pre-pandemic five million by 2024. It could exceed its current 6.5 million cap by the mid-2020s and hit nine million by 2031. Based on survey data from local stakeholders, London City will minimize early morning and late evening flights.

Brisbane Considering a Third Terminal
Australia’s Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) is discussing the addition of a third terminal with its airline customers. The airport handled 23 million passengers in 2019, and its projections show 50 million by 2040. BAC is anticipating the 2032 Summer Olympics to be held in Brisbane. Current plans call for investing $3.3 billion to upgrade its two existing terminals over the next decade, but BAC expects the third terminal will be needed to properly handle 2032 traffic.

Commercial Space Video
My colleagues at Reason TV interviewed me about my recent Reason article contrasting NASA’s method of operation and that of the emerging commercial space launch industry. They produced an excellent documentary, released around the time of NASA’s Artemis 1 launch. You can watch it on Reason TV or on its YouTube channel.

Correction to Last Month’s Article in FAMs
In the Dec. 2022 issue’s article about TSA’s Federal Air Marshals, I erred in stating that the United States and Israel are the only two countries with a program of armed guards on some commercial aviation flights. Reader Tom Windmuller emailed to inform me that Turkey also operates such a program, of which I was not aware.

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Quotable Quotes

“[T]here’s no question in my mind that the ATC system is antiquated and is not taking advantage of new technology. To quote Peter DeFazio, this whole ‘NextGen’ in many cases, we’re implementing technologies from the ‘90s, and Peter calls it ‘NeverGen.’ It’s [about] having a more agile system because technology is just going to move even faster. So how do we have a system in place in regard to training, in regard to procurement, in regard to testing, to where we can continue to take advantage of newer technologies and more-efficient systems.”
—Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), in Oriana Pawlyk, “Politico Pro Q&A: Rep. Garret Graves, ranking member, House Transportation Aviation Subcommittee,” Politico Pro Transportation, Dec. 26, 2022

“The market for 30-seat aircraft is going to be a magnitude higher than the market for 19-seat aircraft. There’s just a lot more utility—and given the constraints that airports are going to face with growing demand—a lot more appetite for 30-seat aircraft. You can fly a lot more routes profitably, and so we were more than advocates—we were insistent that the move up to 30 seats [by Heart Aerospace] was the right decision. Once we laid out the logic to Anders [Forslund] and his team at Heart, they were all in.”
—Mike Leskinen, United Airlines VP, Corporate Development, in Ben Goldstein, “United Exec Hints at Stretched Heart ES-30 Variants,” Aviation Daily, Dec. 23, 2022

“Why address this question [airline ownership and control] via ICAO at all? This is a question for like-minded states and groups of states. In 2009 IATA launched its Agenda for Freedom, as a platform for like-minded states to mutually exchange waivers of the requirements. This was fully supported by the European Union, as well as 10 states, including, interestingly, the USA. Those were different times. The USA has been the go-to stop-the-conversation-stone-dead answer whenever this issue has been considered in the past. This was on the back of an unholy alliance of engineers and pilots who saw their jobs disappearing, on the one hand, and the military on the other, which argues that they need the right to requisition [U.S.] aircraft capacity at any time to move troops.”
—Andrew Charlton, “Who Owns Ownership and Control?” Aviation Intelligence Reporter, Nov. 2022

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The post Aviation Policy News: FAA’s debacle, new air traffic control tower plan, and more appeared first on Reason Foundation.

CAPSTONE was not designed, built, or even operated by NASA. In fact, it’s not owned by NASA. It is owned by its developer, Colorado-based Advanced Space. The CAPSTONE launch and development ended up being far cheaper than other lunar launches thanks to the terms of NASA and Advanced Space’s contract.

Historically, NASA has contracted work via cost-plus contracts wherein NASA pays for all the expenses of a project plus a fixed fee to serve as the profit for the contracted company. This approach often leads to cost overruns, as companies are able to spend as much as they want on a project. The CAPSTONE project, however, had a fixed price, ensuring more efficient project design and delivery within set budgetary constraints. This approach mirrors existing contracts between NASA and SpaceX, which help enable the transportation of astronauts to the International Space Station.

Giving Advanced Space ownership and control over CAPSTONE also helped the company cut through the red tape NASA would have otherwise faced. While traditional NASA projects involve a complex government approval process, CAPSTONE only required approval of the initial fixed fee.

This arrangement allowed Advanced Space the breathing room necessary to bring in partners throughout the process. Terran Orbital Corporation helped with designing and producing the hardware that flew on CAPSTONE as well as its assembly. Stellar Exploration provided the propulsion system design, testing, and manufacturing. Rocket Lab gave CAPSTONE a rideshare of sorts; they flew the CubeSat on an Electron Rocket flight to put it on its path toward near-rectilinear halo orbit.

Due to the nature of the contract and Advanced Space’s ownership, the company was also able to innovate freely on the CAPSTONE satellite as long as it remained within budget. And if costs went over, it would be the company’s responsibility, not NASA’s—or taxpayers—to pay for it.

This type of private sector control can also lead to innovations. For example, when Advanced Space decided to add an atomic clock to the CubeSat, without needing to go through a lengthy NASA approval process, the company gained the ability to compare the time on the atomic clock with what was broadcast from Earth so that Advanced Space could more easily pinpoint the satellite’s location in space.

CAPSTONE stands out financially in two ways. First, compared to other lunar orbit launches, CAPSTONE turned out to be far cheaper. CAPSTONE’s development cost $13.7 million, and the launch of the satellite cost $9.95 million, bringing the project’s overall costs to roughly $23.65 million. In comparison, NASA’s 2018 Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite launch, which sought to also to orbit the moon, had a far bigger overall price tag of $87 million to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9. Beresheet, an effort to land on the moon spearheaded by SpaceIL—an Israeli nonprofit—cost nearly $100 million and failed.

Second, CAPSTONE’s fixed-price contract was less expensive than its cost-plus alternatives. While CAPSTONE reached the finish line for $23.65 million, the Space Launch System (SLS), NASA’s next moon rocket being developed by Boeing, cost about $20 billion to develop, and NASA far underestimated launch costs which have increased from $500 million to $4.1 billion per launch. The Orion spacecraft, also negotiated under a cost-plus contract, has cost $12 billion.

By contracting out the design, development, and operation of CAPSTONE, NASA and Advanced Space achieved an incredibly cost-efficient project. Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator, gave reassuring signs that this form of NASA contract could be increasingly used by NASA in the future: “It’s another way for NASA to find out what it needs to find out and get the costs down.” In the past, Nelson has also referred to cost-plus contracts as a “plague” on NASA.

We can continue to expand the final frontier without breaking the bank so long as NASA continues contracting with fixed prices rather than rewarding cost overruns. By taking some of the red tape out of space exploration and development, NASA has helped open a promising new frontier for more than just the ongoing Artemis Project but for all of their projects going forward.

The post Fixed-cost contracts save NASA and taxpayers money appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The Space Launch System was developed to replace Constellation, the President George W. Bush-era plan to repeat the Apollo moon-landing program. The giant booster NASA proposed was faulted as far too costly by an expert committee chaired by former aerospace executive Norman Augustine, and the Obama administration planned to terminate it. Senate heavyweights, contractors already working on the Constellation and longtime NASA employees came up with SLS as a supposedly lower-cost replacement by using the same aerospace technology already under contract for Constellation.

By the time this decision was made in 2010, NASA had begun seeking bids from SpaceX and other companies to haul cargo to the International Space Station using privately developed technology, including SpaceX’s Falcon 9 with its first-stage rockets, which can be reused more than 10 times each. An internal NASA study found that if NASA had developed an equivalent launch vehicle using its normal procurement system, it would have cost three times as much as what SpaceX spent.

SLS and its Orion capsule have been developed using old technology and NASA’s traditional cost-plus procurement process, in which contractors get reimbursed for design changes and cost overruns. Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver writes in her new book, “Escaping Gravity,” that the agency is paying the manufacturing company Aerojet Rocketdyne $150 million apiece to refurbish the outdated RS-25 outdated engines—$600 million a flight. It is no wonder that taxpayers so far have put nearly $30 billion into the Artemis moon-launch program before its first launch: $12 billion for the first SLS, $14 billion for two Orion crew capsules, and $3.6 billion for new SLS launch facilities at Cape Canaveral.

Assuming the first unmanned SLS launch is successful, NASA would have to spend at least $4 billion more to produce a second SLS for the first crewed test flight, since not one bit of the launch vehicle is reusable. And to attempt a moon landing, a third SLS would have to be built, as well as a third Orion capsule. This would be a win for NASA’s traditional aerospace contractors, but it would be a loss for taxpayers.

The new space paradigm means NASA should buy services from the rapidly developing competitive marketplace, not through its traditional procurement process.

As with commercial cargo and passenger flights to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA develops performance requirements and invites companies to propose how they would accomplish them. Under the Commercial Crew Program, SpaceX has completed four successful NASA missions and one mission launching space tourists to the ISS. SpaceX owns and operates its rockets and the crew and cargo capsules.

So does its competitor, Boeing. But even though Boeing has a larger contract—$4.2 billion vs. SpaceX’s $2.6 billion—its Starliner has yet to deliver any crews to the ISS (though it recently flew a successful test flight there and back). Last month, NASA announced it is expanding SpaceX’s missions to 14 and cutting Boeing’s to six.

When the International Space Station is deorbited in or before 2031, NASA doesn’t plan to replace it. Instead, it has offered to be a tenant on privately developed and operated space habitats. The best-known of these is the plan by Blue Origin and Sierra Space called Orbital Reef.

NASA’s moon-landing plans, though still reliant on SLS to get astronauts to lunar orbit, now include having SpaceX use its new reusable SuperHeavy booster to transport its new reusable Starship to lunar orbit, and Starship will land the astronauts on the moon. In the near future, new lunar mobility vehicles will be owned by developers and hired by NASA to transport people and cargo on the lunar service. The next generation of space suits will also be developed this way.

The Space Launch System is Congress and NASA traditionalists’ last attempt to preserve the old ways. If SLS fails to meet its mission objectives on its first test flight, Congress shouldn’t continue pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into this 20th-century approach.

This column originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

The post The last gasp of 20th-century NASA appeared first on Reason Foundation.

• Vertiports for Regional Air Mobility
• Congress oblivious to increased airline competition
• 5G and aviation—from bad to worse
• Rethinking airport charges and regulation
• Business jet travel is booming—and subsidized
• New space stations mean lots more launches
• News Notes
• Quotable Quotes

Vertiports and Regional Air Mobility

During the first nine months of 2021, three of the largest eVTOL startup companies (Archer, Joby, and Lilium) spent $326 million on development, as they aim for certification by 2024. Graham Warwick reported this in “AAM Leaders Ramp Up Development Spending on eVTOL Air Taxis,” Aviation Week, Nov. 22-Dec. 5, 2021. But while well-funded eVTOL development continues, investor skepticism is growing.

Clean Technica’s Michael Barnard notes in a recent article that eVTOL developer stocks have lost over $16 billion in 2021, with aggregate market value declining from a peak of $27.92 billion to $11.82 billion in late November. As Aviation Intelligence Reporter’s Andrew Charlton summed up Barnard’s message to investors: “If you are . . . engaged with Urban Air Mobility, be aware that the bloom is off this rose, cut your losses, and pivot to Regional Air Mobility.”

That’s in line with skepticism I’ve expressed in recent issues of this newsletter, expecting that eVTOL air taxis will be too costly for the kinds of commuting and short-haul trips envisioned by many devotees, but that a more viable market may be regional air mobility (RAM): larger vehicles with longer range, able to connect cities over distances of 100 to 200 miles or so. While  I have yet to see a business model put forth for either UAM or RAM, several eVTOL companies appear to be focusing more on RAM than on urban air-taxi service: Vertical, Lilium, Eve, and Blade.

Spanish infrastructure giant Ferrovial has been in the news recently, thanks to opening a new division, Ferrovial Vertiports. It has made a deal with Lilium to develop a set of 10 vertiports in Florida, with the first location secured via a lease agreement with the Palm Beach County government. The company also has an agreement with Vertical Aerospace and Lilium to develop a 25-vertiport network in the U.K.

I spoke with Ferrovial Vertiports CEO Kevin Cox earlier this month to get a better understanding of their view of the eVTOL market. He told me they have spent several years developing a comprehensive demand model to help them make decisions on eVTOL companies to work with and where to focus their vertiport investments.

A competitor to Ferrovial Vertiports was announced in October. Urban Blue was created by Italian and French airport companies (Aeroporti de Roma, Aeroporto di Venzia, Aeroporto Guglielmo Marconi di Bologna, and Aeroports de Cote d’Azur). They are working with Volocopter to develop vertiports for its planned system linking Nice, Rome, and Venice—again regional air mobility. In addition, vertiport developer Skyports is partnering with Milan airport operator SEA Group for a network linking key Italian cities.

These remain early days in the eVTOL and vertiports business. But I’m glad to see the focus starting to shift to regional air mobility as likely to be a more viable business than urban air taxis.

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Congress Oblivious to Changing Airline Competition

Aviation leaders in the House and Senate are beating up on legacy carriers, basically calling them on the carpet for scheduling mishaps and flight cancellations earlier this fall, despite the airlines’ smooth handling of pandemic-record travel over the Thanksgiving weekend. The essential message seemed to be: “We gave you all this money last year; how can you possibly be understaffed?”

I don’t envy the task facing airline planners and schedulers, dealing with the not-really-predictable path of emerging Covid-19 variants, shifting government policies on travel, and trying to estimate how air travelers will respond. But to the extent that legacy carriers are not meeting politicians’ expectations, the best remedy is increasing competition. Fortunately, a sea change is taking place worldwide, as low-cost carriers generally recover more quickly than the legacy airlines.

A recent headline underscores what’s going on. As Aviation Daily reported on November 16, “Indigo Partners, ULCCs Stun Dubai Airshow with 255-Aircraft Deal.” Indigo is a private equity fund that owns majority stakes in four ultra-low-cost carriers (ULCCs): Frontier (U.S.), JetSMART (Chile), Volaris (Hungary) and Wizz Air (Hungary). The massive order is for Airbus A321neo and A321XLR aircraft to be divvied up among these four ULCCs. In recent years, Indigo has ordered a total of 1,145 A320-family aircraft for its four airlines.

In another stunning announcement, highly successful ULCC Allegiant Air announced a planned joint venture with Mexican LCC Viva Aerobus. The JV is subject to antitrust approvals from both governments. Both airlines envision the JV as far less costly than each developing its own large trans-border route system. Allegiant points out that there are about 239 routes that have no nonstop service between U.S. airports it now serves and leisure destinations in Mexico.

Also of interest is the potential success of the two newest low-cost carriers, Avelo and Breeze. Avelo’s east coast base at Tweed New Haven Airport (HVN) has previously lost the small amounts of service it used to have from American, United, and U.S. Airways, thus offering Avelo an open airport in a region with poor service. Its initial flights focus on Florida, offering Connecticut residents new nonstop flights to Ft. Lauderdale, Ft. Myers, Orlando, Sarasota, Tampa, and West Palm Beach. The airline’s west coast base, operating separately, is Burbank (BUR), with routes primarily to northern California and the Pacific Northwest, some of which have legacy-carrier competition.

Much larger and better-funded startup Breeze Airways is already operating a number of short/medium routes using Embraer E-jets, and thus far it is the sole airline offering nonstop service on 98% of those routes. Once its larger and longer-range Airbus A220s start arriving, Breeze will begin serving longer routes with them. As of early December it had not announced any A220 routes, but founder David Neeleman noted that the aircraft has 6.5-hour endurance with a full passenger load, opening the door for service to much of Latin America from Florida, as well as long-distance routes within the continental United States. Breeze has 80 A220-300 series on order, with five expected to be in service by the second quarter of next year.

The benefits of airline deregulation continue to be realized. New airlines and new approaches offering numerous routes that bypass hubs seem poised to change U.S. aviation, offering lower fares and more choices for air travelers. Congress should leave well enough alone.

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From Bad to Worse on 5G and U.S. Aviation

Developments since last month’s story about potential interference between new 5G telecommunications activity in the C band (3.7 – 4.2 MHz) and aircraft radar altimeters have not led to a resolution. Spectrum auction winners AT&T and Verizon postponed their date for turning on the new system for only one month, to January 5. And with no sign of any action by either the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or the 5G companies, on December 7th FAA issued airworthiness directives requiring aircraft operators to prohibit flight activity that relies on radar altimeters when in the presence of 5G wireless transmissions.

After back and forth mitigation proposals between aviation and telecommunications groups, a coalition of aviation groups, led by the Aerospace Industries Association, called for a further delay in turning on 5G transmission in the vicinity of airports. The coalition warned of delayed or cancelled flights and cargo shipments due to aircraft being unable to operate legally in potentially many situations. Former DOT official Diana Furchtgott-Roth reported in a recent Forbes.com column that Canada’s Department of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development is restricting 5G services in exclusion zones around 26 airports. The restrictions will be in effect until both domestic and international studies reach a definite conclusion about the scope of the problem.

So what do we actually know about the likelihood of 5G interference with radar altimeters? The most definitive study was organized by RTCA (the nonprofit that advises FAA on technical and communications issues). In 2020 it convened a six-month stakeholder group from both industries “to examine spectrum spectrum coexistence issues with radar altimeters.” As RTCA letters transmitting the study to both FAA and FCC last year explained, thanks to detailed information provided by both industries, it was “able to examine issues of compatibility more thoroughly . . . than were the earlier preliminary analyses submitted to the [FCC].” And the primary finding was as follows:

“The analysis found serious threats of harmful interference to today’s installed radar altimeters from anticipated flexible use licensed deployments, including from spurious emissions into the radar altimeter band.”

The report, with a cover letter from which the above-quoted material is taken, was submitted to both FAA and FCC on Oct. 8, 2020—more than a year ago. My engineering degrees are not in electrical engineering, so I have not attempted to read the RTCA report. But if you are interested, you can find it here.

As far as I can tell, FCC did not pay serious attention to this report. It went ahead with its spectrum auction, not informing potential bidders of the potential problem. FAA and DOT did, as I noted last month, send a letter about the problem to the National Telecommunications Information Administration (part of the Commerce Department), but it apparently did not get transmitted from NTIA to the FCC.

The RTCA report’s finding of a serious potential threat to aviation should have led to postponement of the spectrum auction. That it did not raises serious questions about the inability of our federal government to respond to a serious air safety problem before the only responsible alternative left was for FAA to restrict flying.  

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Rethinking Airport Charges and Regulation

Airports Council International (ACI) is fighting back against allegations from airline trade organization IATA that planned increases in airport charges are unwarranted (see “IATA Berates Airport and ANSP Fee Increases,” Aviation Policy News, October 2021). Last month ACI released “Beyond the Rhetoric: Some Hard Facts on Airport Charges and the Industry”

ACI’s Patrick Lucas begins by reminding the airlines that “airports are businesses in their own right,” and in fact are infrastructure-intensive businesses. When demand shrinks, as it has during the pandemic, although a large airport may be able to reduce operating expenses by shutting down one of several terminals, its capital costs must continue to be paid, mostly in the form of maintaining debt service payments on airport revenue bonds.

For all IATA’s complaints about rising airport charges to airlines, Lucas draws on data from IATA’s own World Air Transport Statistics showing that charges to airlines represent just 4 to 5% of airline operating budgets, and that percentage has actually been trending downward in recent years. On the other hand, these data show that “24% of all airport revenues come from charges that are levied on airlines,” and I will add that this fraction is much higher in the United States, where airports on average lag behind world airports on commercial revenues.

Building on this information, on November 23, speaking at the ACI World general assembly in Cancun, ACI Director General Luis Felipe de Oliveira argued that the time has come for a fundamental rethinking of airport charges to airlines. Given projected capacity needs as air traffic resumes, “airports need to be able to set charges with a commercial focus to attract the level of investment needed and to signal whether users are willing to pay for these investments,” as David Casey reported in Aviation Daily (November 25). Elaborating further, de Oliveira stated that:

“Where there is excess demand for airport capacity and expansion is difficult [e.g., London Heathrow], airport charges should play a critical role in signaling which airline operations would make the best use of the scarce capacity. Charges should signal the scarcity and whether the market is willing to pay for capacity expansion. Where there is a willingness, scarcity-based charges can be used to prefund much [capital expenditure]. On the other hand, where airport capacity is underutilized, there is a role for airport charges to provide incentives for new services to increase regional connectivity and hence maximize the economic and social benefits of air transport.”

This approach would overturn the widespread practice, especially in Europe, of cost-based regulation. It would be replaced by “commercial agreements between airports and airlines,” and even more radically, perhaps by “light-handed regulation,” as has been the mode of regulation in Australia since its major airports were privatized two decades ago.

In the December 2021-January 2022 issue of Aviation Intelligence Reporter, Andrew Charlton calls attention to a report prepared for ACI Europe by Harry Bush and Warren Mundy, “Lessons for Europe from Australia: A Review of Australian Airport Economic Regulation.” The regulatory approach in Australia is based on consumer welfare. If airport behavior is alleged to be anti-competitive (i.e, harming customers—airlines or passengers), government will review the situation to see if any action is warranted. While airlines oppose the policy, it seems to have worked well. Bush and Mundy sum up the lessons for Europe as follows:

“Regulators should avoid being distracted by surface turbulence and focus instead on the underlying economics and incentives influencing the parties. For the airport sector, the Productivity Commission finds that the light-handed monitoring regime (and potential for regulatory intervention if things go awry) is sufficient to safeguard the public and consumer interest, and has indeed delivered good outcomes.”

While European governments have generally accepted the idea that airports and ANSPs are businesses, and that their customers should pay for their services (as with any other utility), they have still imposed cost-based regulation, which is often at odds with sound economic management. Australia represents a working model of a better approach.

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Business Jet Travel Is Booming—and Subsidized

The Wall Street Journal’s Jon Sindreu reported on December 4 that “Plane Rentals Are Really Taking Off.” For example, “Business jet traffic is now up 45% worldwide relative to the start of 2019, compared with a 24% drop in commercial traffic,” per data from FlightAware. In response, “private-aircraft makers’ order backlogs are swelling, and used jet inventories are at record lows.”

Sindreu also reports that companies like Net Jets and Wheels Up are increasingly popular, because they allow corporate moguls and other wealthy people to fly in bizjets with no logos, making their luxury travel less visible. Demand for their business is more than these companies’ capacity, with many such companies putting people on waiting lists rather than signing them up immediately.

There are also pricing innovations. Fractional ownership (the Net Jets model) requires advance commitment for a minimum number of flight hours (say, $500,000 for 50 flight hours). So Wheels Up is now offering a three-hour flight for just $17,000—that’s only $5,667 per hour versus $10,000/hour under fractional ownership.

Sindreu notes that biz-jet travel is starting to come under the same kind of carbon-footprint scrutiny as airline travel. He notes that private jets account for only 4% of passenger air travel, whose global carbon emissions he puts at 2.4% of the global total. That means biz-jets account for less than a tenth of 1% of passenger aviation emissions. But when it comes to emissions per person, a Gulfstream G650 emits 244 kg per hour per passenger—about four times more than a Boeing 787. This is leading to discussions in Europe of per-passenger taxes which, to be fair, would need to be several times higher for business jet passengers.

Of course, when it comes to paying for aviation infrastructure, business jets nowhere pay their fair share. In the vast majority of the world, they pay weight-distance user fees for air traffic control services and weight-based landing fees. This is despite each bizjet requiring just as much ATC service and runway occupancy as a jet airliner. It’s even worse in the United States, where bizjets pay a tiny fuel tax that is half or less than half of what an efficient air navigation service provider charges (see my 2006 Reason policy study, “Business Jets and ATC User Fees: Taking a Closer Look”.

These below-market taxes and charges should be on the agenda for rethinking, as aviation policy makers consider dealing with the industry’s carbon footprint. One step in the right direction would be to scrap the ICAO-blessed weight and weight-distance methods of airport and ATC charges. Airports should charge for both landings and takeoffs, with variable rates as necessary to match demand with capacity. And air traffic control should shift to mileage-based rates that recover the full costs of providing ATC services. Any new carbon-related taxes should be considered only after the cross-subsidies inherent in current charging systems are removed.

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New Space Stations Will Increase Space Launch and Recovery Traffic

For most of the space age, the vast majority of space traffic was one-way: launches to orbit. Only when humans were occasionally on board (as in the Apollo and Space Shuttle flights) were there return trips to terra firma. Two developments are changing that. The first is reusable human-rated launch vehicles, which have dramatically reduced the cost of getting payloads into orbit. And the second, soon to come, will be a proliferation of space stations.

The International Space Station (ISS) is nearing the end of its useful life. It was originally intended to be shut down and de-orbited by 2024, but NASA now hopes to keep it in operation until about 2028. To its credit, the space agency has not proposed spending another $150 billion on a replacement. Rather, it is encouraging the growing space private sector to develop multiple commercial outposts in earth orbit, on which NASA will lease space. The new program is called the Commercial Low-Earth-Orbit Destinations (CLD) program.

In a recent report, “Private Space Stations: Placing Perches in the Sky,” The Economist provided an overview of what is going on. Blue Origin, for example, has announced plans for an outpost called Orbital Reef, to be developed in partnership with Boeing and Sierra Space. Lockheed Martin unveiled a plan for a permanently staffed station called Starlab, that it hopes to launch in 2027. Axiom has a smaller station under development, to be initially attached to ISS in 2024, and after several other modules are launched and added, the plan is to separate Axiom Station into a free-flying habitat with double the volume of ISS (which will then be de-orbited). The project’s estimated cost is $3 billion, not the $150 billion it cost taxpayers to build ISS.

These three are far from the only plans for permanently occupied orbital habitats. They will require far more launches and landings than ISS, and those launches will be carried out by a number of companies using mostly re-usable vehicles, as pioneered by SpaceX. This makes it all the more important for FAA to get its Space Data Integrator and Aircraft Hazard Area Generator fully operational, so as to minimize the aviation delays and flight detours currently required during space launches and recoveries.

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News Notes

Frankfurt-Hahn Airport Open for Bids  
The secondary airport 75 miles from Frankfurt, Germany, entered insolvency proceedings in October. The insolvency administrator last month issued a request for expressions of interest to investors interested in acquiring the airport or various of its assets. The airport is 82.5% owned by bankrupt Chinese firm HNA Group. It served 1.5 million passengers in 2019; Ryanair opened a base there in 1999, but passenger numbers have declined from a peak of 4 million in 2007.

Miami International Gets $1.1 Billion Cargo P3 Proposal
Debtwire reported last month that MIA received an unsolicited public-private partnership (P3) proposal to double the airport’s cargo capacity, consistent with the airport’s 2019 capital improvement objectives. The proposal came from Brazilian infrastructure investor CCR and aviation facility developer Airis. Cargo operations currently use 35% of MIA’s acreage but account for only 6.6% of total airport revenue.

Remote Tower Project Under Way for Budapest Airport
Indra and Micro Nav are joining forces, under a contract with HungaroControl, to develop a digital remote tower for Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport. While Indra is the prime contractor, Micro Nav will use its Beginning to End Simulation and Training (BEST) technology to create a complete simulation of the remote tower’s operation to train the controllers who will staff the new facility. When operational, Budapest will be one of the largest airports to date with a remote tower.

Amazon Air Beats Environmental Lawsuit Over San Bernardino Facility
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a legal challenge to FAA’s 2019 approval of a 660,000 sq. ft. cargo sorting facility located at San Bernardino International Airport in southern California. The suit had been filed by former State Attorney General Xavier Becerra and local “environmental justice” groups, arguing that increased aircraft emissions due to the facility would be harmful, and were not adequately evaluated by FAA prior to its approval of the project. Plaintiffs argued that locating the facility at this airport constituted “environmental racism.” The court judged that FAA’s environmental review was acceptable.

Federal TIFIA Loan Program Expands Airport Coverage
Though used most commonly for surface transportation projects, the low-interest-rate TIFIA loan program has included some airport landside airport improvements. The new Bipartisan Infrastructure Law expands the definition of eligible projects to terminals, gates, noise compatibility, and conversion of service vehicles to low emission standards. Airport projects can account for up to 15% of TIFIA budget authorizations. Eligible project financing must have an investment-grade rating apart from any TIFIA loan.

Airport Authority May Take Over Bridgeport, CT Airport
The City of Bridgeport and the Connecticut Airport Authority (CAA) are discussing the possible takeover of money-losing Sikorsky Memorial Airport. The airport authority was created a decade ago to take several smaller airports off the books of Connecticut DOT. Possibilities include assisting with the airport’s planning or operating it under a lease. The CAA’s executive director was quoted in a news story saying that “commercial [air] service is within reach at Sikorsky Airport.”

Amsterdam Schiphol Plans Electric Tugs
As the first step in a long-term sustainability plan, Schiphol Airport will begin using electric tugs to taxi airliners to and from its newest (of six) runways. The pilot project will use two TaxiBot semi-robotic electric tugs, with the plane’s engines not running during most of the taxi-out time. The project requires new pavement for the tugs to drive back from the runway after towing a plane out and to travel to the runway to connect with an arriving plane. The overall aim is to achieve low-emission taxiing for all six runways by 2030.

Resilient Backup for GPS: Locata and UrsaNav
GPS World (Dec. 8, 2021) reports that two U.S. companies—Locata Corp. and Ursa Navigation Solutions—have joined forces to offer a resilient position, navigation, and timing (PNT) alternative to the GPS system that is vulnerable to interference, jamming, and anti-satellite attacks. Locata has been providing the U.S Air Force, NASA, and commercial firms with precise positioning and timing. UrsaNav offers electronic Loran positioning and timing information in an entirely different frequency band than GPS. The article points out that the recent European MarRINav Report recommended this Locata/UrsaNav combination to protect UK shipping, ports, and other key infrastructure sectors.

Progress on Preventing Contrails in Europe
The first live trial aimed at shifting flights to altitudes with atmospheric conditions less likely to lead to contrails has been completed after 10 months by the Maastricht Upper Area Control Center (MUAC) and German aerospace research center DLR. MUAC and DLR interpreted weather forecasts for ice-super-saturated regions and rerouted 209 flights to avoid them. Among the practical concerns were controller actions, the precision of meteorological tools, and the effectiveness of real-time feedback. The results are still being analyzed, and may lead to somewhat different approaches in the future. Separately, Etihad Airways announced a pilot project on contrail avoidance with atmospheric science firm Satavia.

Electric Aircraft Will Need Better Batteries
A white paper from the U.S. Department of Energy and NASA was released in October, addressing R&D needs for the growth of electric-powered aircraft. As summarized by Graham Warwick in Aviation Week (Oct. 11-24, 2021), a main finding of the study is that to move beyond small, light aircraft will require much better batteries than the automotive batteries being used thus far. The underlying problem is electricity output per pound of battery weight, which is not much of a problem in passenger cars but is a major problem for aircraft, where heavy batteries reduce payload and/or range. One cited example of progress is eVTOL startup Lilium partnering with Porsche-backed Customcells, which is developing “energy-dense silicon-anode batteries” that Lilium hopes to use in its aircraft.

New Terminal Planned for Phoenix Mesa Airport
The secondary airport for the Phoenix metro area now has nonstop jet service to 60 U.S. and Canadian destinations on five airlines. Officials think it’s time to replace the temporary four-gate terminal erected years ago when the airport was converted to passenger service. Plans call for adding a five-gate state-of-the-art terminal, though no cost estimate is currently available. Nor is there a financing plan, but local boosters hope that some of the $25 billion in new federal airport funding (in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) will be available for this project.

New Airport Operations Center at Rome’s Largest Airport
Aeroporti di Roma (ADR), owner of Rome Fiumicino Airport (among others), last month opened a new Airport Operations Center at Fiumicino. The 1900 sq. meters facility includes 112 workstations, so that airlines, airport, and terminal ATC people can interact directly in daily airport operations. The systems have been designed as part of the EU-wide SESAR program to improve air traffic management across Europe.

Miami International to Retain Limits on Retail Prices
After back and forth debate, the Miami-Dade County Commission voted on December 1st to retain limits on the prices of food and other retail offerings at Miami International Airport. The pricing rules require that retail prices at MIA’s various concessions be no more than 10 to 15% more than the same goods or services cost at non-airport locations. Commissioners had been told, incorrectly, that few airports impose such limits. Finding out that this is often common practice appeared to change the vote to favor retaining the limits.

Aviation Week Details Swiss Virtual Centers Plan
Last month’s issue of this newsletter included a News Note about Swiss ANSP Skyguide’s plan to shift to a single “virtual” air traffic center for the whole country, with controllers still reporting to work at the existing Geneva and Zurich locations. A detailed report on this important change is “The Long Winding Road” by Thierry Dubois in the Nov. 22-Dec. 5 issue of Aviation Week.

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Quotable Quotes

“Climate change should be fought with a price for carbon, research and development subsidies, and highly scrutinized public investments; not by rationing flights, promoting green national champions, or enlisting central banks to distort financial markets.”
—Editorial, “The Triumph of Big Government,” The Economist, Nov. 20, 2021

“I spoke with one of the managers from Jacksonville Center recently. He told me that during the pandemic, controllers have been working there only three days/week. The other two normal workdays are administrative (at home with duties, but available to come to work to cover for sick call-ins). He said when called to cover for sick controllers, those on administrative duties usually advised that they are sick as well. He said this arrangement is resulting in extraordinary amounts of overtime.”
—Ed Drury (retired FAA manager), email to Robert Poole, Dec. 7, 2021 (used with permission)

“European governments, unlike governments in most other parts of the world, decided that the users of airports and ANSPs should pay for those [facilities]. From the societal perspective, this is fair. The wealthier in the population, who can afford to fly regularly, should pay for the use of the infrastructure, rather than impose the cost on all of society through general taxation. Running an ANSP or an airport is expensive. A slab of concrete four kilometers long and 50 meters wide, and a building that sees millions of pairs of shoes crossing its thresholds every year, need to be renovated from time-to-time. Nonetheless, at many airports, airlines have managed to pull a quick one on their regulators. They have convinced governments that airport charges should be ‘cost-related’ but then they [airlines] pocket the value of the airport slot. That topic, fascinating and unending, needs to be addressed as a matter of some urgency.”
—Andrew Charlton, “Charges! Knights-Errant Airlines Attack Airport Windmills,” Aviation Intelligence Reporter, December 2021-January 2022

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The post Aviation Policy News: Vertiports for regional air mobility, Congress oblivious to changing airline competition, and more appeared first on Reason Foundation.

August will see several more trips to the ISS and more launches of satellites. Additionally, the Biden administration signed an agreement with the European Space Agency to use more satellites to address climate change through earth science research. This increased space traffic serves a wide array of purposes and represents vast investments by the private space industry and government. But these investments are going to increasingly be jeopardized by the massive amount of space junk already circling Earth.

There’s plenty of room to fly up there, but, believe it or not, NASA estimates there are already 23,000 pieces of debris larger than 10 centimeters and over 500,000 pieces of smaller junk in orbit. This space junk, or orbital debris, travels at high speeds and even a small piece can cause serious damage or destruction if it hits a spacecraft or satellite.

The space debris includes thousands of dead and retired satellites, parts of spacecraft from decades of missions, items exploded in warfare testing, and more.

Dodging space junk is a regular requirement for spacecraft in orbit. The International Space Station had to maneuver 25 times between 1999 and 2018 to avoid collisions, and it had to dodge debris three times in 2020.

Monitoring this debris is going to be a major issue as private space travel and the space economy grow. In 2019, the global space economy amounted to about $366 billion. Of this, $271 billion was in the satellite industry and $123 billion was directly in satellite services. As the world increasingly becoming reliant on satellites U.S. and global satellite businesses bear the brunt of the failure to track and remove orbital debris.

As Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Science and Space, said recently, we need to be proactive on space debris “rather than learning by a terrible accident … but we don’t quite have the sense of urgency we need.”

Urgency means committing to better space traffic management, and tracking and removing orbital debris.

Orbital debris management is not well organized within the government. Right now, the Department of Defense (DOD) does most tracking of space debris for the U.S. out of the need to protect military satellites and national security interests. NASA has its own less advanced systems for tracking debris. However, orbital debris management is not just about tracking debris anymore. It is also about forming collision warning systems and safely managing traffic in space. To do this efficiently, we need a civil repository for all orbital debris components, something that many commercial space companies have already created on their own to stay aware of orbital debris and help protect their satellites in space.

Tracking debris may be a national security priority, but providing space traffic control is not really in the Defense Department’s mission.

We should be utilizing the private sector’s expertise and advancements in this area. For example, Astroscale has contracts with both the Japanese and European space agencies to develop orbital debris removal capability. And responsibility for developing collision warnings and space traffic management would be best suited for the Office of Space Commerce, an office with existing connections to the commercial space industry, NASA and DOD.

Partnering with the debris tracking and removal systems private companies are developing while freeing up DOD to focus on military awareness and NASA to focus on research and development would be the most efficient way forward.

If the government works with private industry through strategic public-private partnerships, the U.S. can best address the threats posed by orbital debris and create sustainable policies for safe space exploration.

A version of this column first appeared in The Hill.

The post As Commercial Space Travel Becomes Reality, Debris and Space Traffic Management Becomes More Important appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Orbital debris is a significant space sustainability problem. Debris particles can cause severe harm if they collide with spacecraft like the International Space Station (ISS) and satellites functioning in orbit. In-orbit collisions jeopardize billions of dollars’ worth of space technology for public and private ventures in space. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) estimates the population of space debris particles between 1 and 10 centimeters (cm) in diameter to be at least 500,000. Space debris will only increase as more actors get involved in space. Due to the real risk space debris generates, it is in this country’s best interest to work toward better tracking of space debris and its removal through improved space traffic management.

To do this, the Biden administration must work to consolidate space traffic management regulatory authority into one federal agency and work with the commercial space industry. This will expand space situational awareness policy to encourage responsible and sustainable practices by both government and commercial space actors.

What Is Orbital Debris and What Are its Dangers?

The more colloquial term for orbital debris is “space junk.” Orbital debris is no longer-useful man-made objects in orbit such as used spacecraft, retired satellites, and debris caused by the fragmentation of space objects. Fragmentation can either be caused by a collision of objects in orbit, other debris hitting objects in orbit, or by anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons that destroy satellites in tests. When space debris collides with a functioning craft in orbit, it can seriously damage the object or render it unusable.

NASA estimates the population of space debris particles between 1 and 10 cm in diameter to be at least 500,000, and estimates over 23,000 particles larger than 10 cm. Space debris will only increase as more actors get involved in space.

With more satellites being launched into orbit, and constellations like Starlink webbing across low earth orbit (LEO), orbital debris is concerning. In LEO, space debris “circles the Earth at speeds of between 4 and 5 miles per second (7 to 8 km/s) [and] the average impact speed of orbital debris with another space object will be approximately 6 miles per second (10 km/s).” Although a 10 cm piece of debris may seem insignificant to us on Earth, at these speeds, orbital debris can incapacitate a satellite. And cascading collisions of orbital debris (called a Kessler Effect) could render a number of satellites useless.

While launch has created orbital debris, such as when rockets discard their upper stages in orbit, orbital debris can also cause many problems for the launch industry. When launching a rocket, the launch provider must be cautious of where the flight path may intersect with orbital debris and additionally make sure the materials used to construct its rockets can withstand the effects of smaller debris. This can get expensive and tedious. With debris increasing, debris-resistant materials will only be more of a concern for launch engineers. For instance, back when the U.S. Space Shuttle was flying, NASA had to constantly replace rockets’ windows because of the damage from orbital debris collision impact on the spacecraft. While orbital debris tracking has allowed for launch providers to map out their flight paths to avoid debris more easily, it is still very much a concern when designing the rockets.

The ISS maneuvered 25 times between 1999 and 2018 to avoid space debris. In 2020, ISS astronauts administered avoidance maneuvers three times. This is extremely concerning compared to the prior average of one avoidance maneuver a year.

Orbital debris has been so abundant in the past, that astronauts have had to hide in the Russian Soyuz capsule to wait out orbital debris collisions with the station. A recent exposure to orbital debris to the ISS was reported by the Canadian Space Agency to its Canadarm2, an 18-meter-long arm on the station that helps maintain tasks. While the robotic arm was unaffected this has created significant and worry for those in space.

Full Policy Brief: U.S. Space Traffic Management and Orbital Debris Policy

The post U.S. Space Traffic Management and Orbital Debris Policy appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The failure took place on Jan. 16 in Alabama, where NASA’s huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s first stage propulsion system began a long-awaited eight-minute test firing. But after little more than a minute, the test was abruptly ended for safety reasons, due to what was reported as a “major component failure” in Engine 4.

NASA says it hopes to run another test this month. If figuring out what went wrong and fixing it takes much longer it would almost certainly mean that the first actual SLS launch will not take place this year, as planned. And, if that happens, there’s a very likely possiblility that the system’s use for a manned flight to the moon in 2024 will not happen by that date.

Meanwhile, four days later, on Jan. 20, SpaceX launched yet another satellite launch using its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. It successfully put another 60 SpaceX Starlink satellites into orbit, part of an eventual constellation of 12,000 that will bring broadband internet access to rural areas and developing countries worldwide. This was the eighth launch for this particular Falcon 9’s first stage, which was once again recovered by landing safely on one of the company’s drone ships.

The contrast between these two launch vehicles is profound and points the way toward increased, and lower-cost, access to space.

The SLS (admittedly much larger than Falcon 9) is a traditional throw-away rocket. It has consumed $17.5 billion of NASA funds in its 10-year development and is years late and billions of dollars over budget. When the design was developed, a key selling point was that it would save money by taking advantage of existing hardware. It would use a modified version of the Space Shuttle’s solid-rocket boosters; moreover, it would use actual left-over RS-25 main engines from the shuttle. It was one of those 30-year-old engine designs that failed on the test stand last week.

In contrast, SpaceX designed Falcon 9 with all-new technology and hardware, starting with a much smaller prototype, Falcon 1, and doing numerous test launches to fine-tune Falcon 9’s design and operation. From the get-go, Falcon 9 was designed with a reusable first stage, the largest and most-vital part of the rocket. Its much larger sister craft, Falcon Heavy, likewise has a reusable first stage, made up of Falcon 9 first stages.

NASA has worked cooperatively with SpaceX and other companies to develop private launch vehicles to resupply the International Space Station with both cargo (SpaceX and Orbital ATK) and passengers (SpaceX and Boeing). NASA engineers and program managers marveled at the unprecedented low cost of SpaceX vehicles. They developed a comparison of what it would have cost the agency to develop Falcon 9 using its traditional procurement approach versus what SpaceX actually spent. The first version found that NASA’s traditional approach would have cost $4 billion, compared with $1.7 billion for SpaceX. A later version, using a somewhat different definition of costs, found that it would have cost NASA $1.4 billion versus SpaceX’s $443 million.

The hugely costly and non-reusable SLS was not NASA’s idea. After the then-new Obama administration pulled the plug on an earlier traditional big booster, powerful members of Congress, led by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), pushed for what became SLS, with the “cost-saving” idea of using left-over shuttle technology.

Critics quickly renamed SLS as the Senate Launch System.  SLS backers routinely cut back NASA’s budget for privately-contracted launch vehicles to resupply the Space Station, evidently seeing what a threat they could be if they demonstrated dramatically lower costs than traditional procurement.

The wisest course for NASA now would be to pull the plug on SLS. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are developing much larger launch vehicles that could provide an alternative way of sending astronauts to the moon. Neither will be ready by 2024, but neither, it appears, will SLS if it is continued. 

The Biden administration should return to the Obama administration’s shift away from traditional cost-plus procurement and toward buying services from innovative space-launch companies. Just-retired NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine opened up portions of the planned moon mission to innovative private providers. The new team at NASA has building blocks in place that could be expanded to include private-sector launches.

With the Democratic gains in the Senate, it is also possible SLS may have lost critical political support. Sen. Shelby will no longer chair the Senate Appropriations Committee. And some GOP House members from Alabama have lost clout due to supporting misguided efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. So the politics of space may have changed enough to support canceling SLS. There is no shame in refusing to pour more money into a loser; all it takes is a dose of courage.

The post A Tale of Two Space Launch Vehicles appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Launch sites and spaceports provide the launch pads and runways that are part of the foundation of space travel. Without the proper security, technology and working equipment at these facilities, space travel would not be possible.

Currently, 19 U.S. launch sites are licensed to host, or have hosted, commercial space launches since 2015. Twelve of these 19 sites have an FAA site operator license and are known as spaceports. As of August 2020, nine additional entities were seeking licenses for 11 prospective launch sites.

While facilities may support current demand, the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation needs to better address future needs, looking at what infrastructure needs will be in the future.

Figure 1: U.S. Commercial Launch Sites That Are Licensed to Host (as of Aug. 2020), or Have Hosted A Launch Since 2015

Source: Government Accountability Office

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) had a very busy 2020 as it worked towards reviewing and finalizing rules for streamlined launch and reentry under the White House Space Policy Directive 2 (SPD-2), which was created to support the growth of the commercial space sector, remove barriers that licensing issues created, and to, overall, make launch easier on launch providers.

These streamlined launch and reentry rules could increase demand for launches. Add in the growing number of commercial space companies developing new launch vehicles, as well as more international and domestic businesses looking to launch payloads into orbit, and you can see how launch demand is expected to increase substantially in the next few years.

To truly support the increased needs of public and private launch providers, the FAA must take stock of the working infrastructure currently provided at spaceports and launch sites.

Congress has instructed the FAA to provide a report every two years through December 2024, with recommendations on how to better facilitate and promote private investment in space transportation infrastructure.

These reviews aim to promote space transportation growth in general, but particularly seek to address the increased demands of commercial launch.

In the draft of its current report, the FAA only focuses on options to address these issues that involve two of the FAA’s existing programs: the Space Transportation Infrastructure Matching (STIM) and Airport Improvement Program (AIP). The FAA decided to take this approach due to limited time and resources, and the belief that changes would be more quickly implemented through these avenues, which it already has administrative authority over.

However, by only directing efforts towards these two existing programs, the FAA limits its scope of analysis and precludes needed improvement in other areas.

The federally funded STIM program was used for spaceports and infrastructure-led projects during the fiscal years 2010-to-2012. It is preferred over AIP because it is authorized to support spaceports. However, the funds they distribute are only eligible for public agencies. This funding stream could create 12 eligible spaceports, but no funding would be supplied for private spaceports. This would target some infrastructure problems, but is only one extremely limited option.

The FAA also proposed expanding the Airport Improvement Program’s funding to include commercial space infrastructure. While AIP currently supports some airports where increased funds could aid some space operations (e.g. runways), the FAA would like to expand AIP statutory authority to include funding for exclusive space operations as well.

A recent Government Accountability Office report, “FAA Should Examine a Range of Options to Support U.S. Launch Infrastructure,” suggests that only looking at these two programs is not enough. The report argues that this approach closes off the FAA from finding potential cost-efficiencies and unnecessary substitution of state,
local, and private sector investment with federal investment.”

While new spaceports may be great for future technologies, some of the current spaceports are not currently being utilized for launch. For instance, out of the 12 spaceports available, seven have not hosted any FAA-licensed launch since 2015, due to a range of issues like the population size near the launch zones, geographic location, or the type of infrastructure available at the site does not suit a company’s launch needs.

For existing spaceports that are being heavily used, like those on the coast and in uninhabited areas, some argue that the FAA should spend more time working with the private sector to expand this infrastructure. While the FAA has agreed to take the recommendation by the GAO to better look at the priority of launch site licenses, it should continue to work with those in the private space industry to better understand their needs and how best to partner with them.

Regarding infrastructure, the GAO report shows how funding for space launches has changed from mostly public to public-private. Many private companies have made significant monetary and developmental changes to existing launch sites to fit their operational needs. For example, SpaceX practically rebuilt the launch pad at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral to accommodate its Falcon 9 launch. Companies negotiate with spaceports to develop further infrastructure to meet their launch needs. Spaceport America in New Mexico has invested with Virgin Galactic to create better launch pads for future space tourism operations and used FAA grants for environmental concerns and for the infrastructure itself.

Private funding saves the taxpayers and FAA money and such partnerships should be encouraged. Since private companies are customizing launch pads, the FAA should prioritize streamlining and approving safety measures that can encourage more of this privately-funded activity.

If the FAA does decide to it needs to federally fund some launch sites and spaceports, the GAO report notes that today’s launch providers need specific alterations that could speed along their launch developments. For example, FAA could fund minor modifications including better internet, fuel facilities, and roads within the launch sites. Such basic infrastructure projects would make launches much easier and more efficient for all customers, plus would come at a minimal cost to taxpayers compared to other aspects of space launches.

To best support spaceports that are not hosting launches at the moment, the FAA should focus its efforts on working with private space companies to better understand the technologies they are developing. The FAA could help current spaceports adapt to the different types of launches as they’re moving forward and making new technological developments, for example.

The difference between the popular vertical launch that needs a classic launchpad compared to a more horizontal launch, like Virgin Galactic’s, which resembles more of a runway, is significant. Additionally, the materials and creation of launchpad infrastructure can differ depending on the weight of the payloads and type of rocket,  shifting structural considerations of launch zones at spaceports. Ideally, the private companies would be funding these facilities. But, if FAA decides it must be involved, it should avoid picking winners and work closely with many companies to ensure taxpayers’ money is being spent in ways that can provide long-term infrastructure to the widest variety of launches and companies.

Some are hoping the FAA will expand its vision regarding commercial space infrastructure. The FAA and NASA recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) expanding funding and support for space transportation infrastructure. The MOU focuses on infrastructure for both government and non-government cargo and payloads for orbital and suborbital space missions. This memorandum pairs with FAA and NASA’s partnership regarding the long-distance commercial point-to-point suborbital flight. Funding from the MOU will also be allocated to selected spaceports and launch sites to support this new form of space travel and is a step in the right direction for the FAA’s support of commercial space.

As the commercial space industry continues to grow and proves to be the future of space exploration, the FAA should seek to minimize its role and move beyond the outdated government funding model for space. It should aim to prioritize its oversight role and empower the private sector in ways detailed in the Reason Foundation study, “The Economics of Space: An Industry Ready to Launch”:

We argue for shifting to an approach based on our current reality of new private launch capability at a fraction of the cost of government procurement, whereby government invests in infrastructure and allows the private sector to innovate to develop efficient transportation and financially sustainable use of space resources.

The private space industry is full of opportunities for innovation and growth, the federal government should remove its regulatory obstacles to those developments.

The post FAA Should Encourage Private Investment to Improve Spaceports appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Despite increased investment in space operations world-wide, space policy was hardly included in President-elect Joe Biden’s policy planning discussions. As The Verge put it, “The Biden campaign has said virtually nothing about how the president-elect would set space policy, other than noting that climate change and Earth science would be a big focus of the upcoming administration.”

We do know that NASA’s current chief administrator, Jim Bridenstine, announced he will be stepping down as the organization’s top executive after Biden takes the oath of office. And some space professionals have predicted Biden will likely look to appoint the first female NASA administrator in replacing Bridenstine.

The Biden administration recently released its National Aeronautics and Space Administration transition team which includes a multitude of experienced and respected space professionals. Not only will this team help advise Biden on who the next NASA chief appointee should be but should also help lay the groundwork for Biden’s NASA policy and transition the agency to fit these goals.

Included in Biden’s transition team is Pam Melroy, who may be a promising fit for NASA administrator for those hoping for an embrace of public-private partnerships and private space operations. As a retired NASA astronaut, Space Shuttle commander, jet pilot for NASA and the Air Force, and now chief executive officer of Melroy & Hollett Technology Partners, her expertise includes both government and private sector space leadership. Melroy’s experience includes serving as deputy director of the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, acting deputy associate administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, senior technical advisor and director of field operations for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, deputy director of Orion Space Exploration Initiatives at Lockheed Martin, and advisor to the National Space Council.

Melroy’s experience developing international relationships during her time as an advisor to the Australian Space Agency would also prove to be beneficial as the next head of NASA tries to navigate the recently signed Artemis Accords—a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and seven other countries, which outline a new set of principles that each nation will apply to future asteroid and comet missions, activities in orbit around the moon and Mars, and the Lagrange Points of the Earth-moon system. The accords are vital to the development of international space law and sustainable space development.

The guidelines in the Artemis Accords uphold and share many of the same values as the Outer Space Treaty set forth by the United Nations. However, because the Outer Space Treaty is soft law there is little enforceability and incentive to commit to safe space practices as an international community. Under the Artemis Accords, nations can elect to take part in a bilateral contract with the United States that can enforce performance standards on both nations to conform to mutually agreed upon common values.

International partnerships not only benefit civil programs but also benefit commercial space development. As a diplomatic extension of the Artemis Accords, the private space industry may find new opportunities to work with foreign governments. This would benefit both the public policy goals of the U.S. and its international partners, but also drive private companies to expand businesses terrestrially in order to drive innovation past lower earth orbit.

Whoever President-elect Biden selects as the next chief administrator of NASA, it is crucial they support commercial space partnerships that have thrived under the Obama and Trump administrations. These partnerships have proven to be beneficial for our nation and their expansion could free up funds for NASA to focus its efforts on research while allowing private space exploration to thrive.

The Biden administration should also look to maintain programs that allow industry feedback on regulations and space directives. This can be done by retaining the National Space Council and facilitating industry working groups. The National Space Council’s directives have been essential in helping guide pro-commercial U.S. space policy and both the National Space Council and other space-involved agencies like the FAA have provided opportunities for industry feedback in these working groups.

The post How NASA’s Leadership and Policy May Change Under the Biden Administration appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Such realities should cue developments in the commercialization of the International Space Station and encourage building commercial space stations.

The ISS has historically been a facility for shared civil and peaceful scientific exploration of space and was intended to be a public facility to promote diplomatic relations through in-orbit experiments. In the past, outside American experiments sent up to the ISS had to show educational purposes and NASA astronauts were prohibited from working on commercial projects at the ISS that could possibly turn a profit. However, in recent years NASA has opened up work on the ISS to commercial businesses.

Commercial endeavors on the ISS currently include projects from companies such as Made in Space sending up 3D printers to help astronauts create tools on the ISS and Nanoracks creating a commercial airlock to deploy satellites from the ISS. Near-term projects include developing a better understanding of microgravity research by companies and private astronauts’ use of the ISS.

But commercial endeavors are not stopping with technical projects. On Northrop Grumman’s recent Cygnus trip to the ISS, the craft carried a payload containing 10 bottles of face creams from cosmetics giant Estée Lauder. NASA entered a contract with the company to facilitate pictures of Estée Lauder’s products with space backdrops of Earth and the space station for the company’s social media marketing campaigns. Unconventional uses of the ISS may also eventually expand to include space tourism.

Why is it important for NASA to be open to commercial activities? Simply put, the ISS is expensive to run and NASA wants and needs out. The ISS, despite being shared with the Canadians, Japanese, Europeans, and Russians, costs the United States $3 to $4 billion a year to operate. For this reason, NASA has expressed a desire to eventually hand over the NASA portion of the ISS to American commercial companies moving forward and to use the federal money allocated to the ISS to pursue new goals in space.

In 2018, President Donald Trump’s budget plan suggested stopping funding the ISS by 2025, but pushback nixed this policy. However, ideas about the future of the ISS need to be revisited. As of now, NASA seems likely to use the ISS as a commercial venture and use the commercial revenue to fund it, thereby freeing up the current ISS budget to go towards newer NASA goals such as the Artemis program and a lunar orbiting station.

Beauty companies and other marketing campaigns on the ISS, although foreign and historically inappropriate to some, could be extremely useful revenue streams in the future that would enable more innovative NASA goals to launch.

NASA’s commercialization of the ISS also aligns with the agency’s plan to encourage a sustainable commercial environment in lower-earth orbit (LEO) from which NASA can purchase services. More opportunities for LEO development would increase interest for commercial companies to branch out on their own.

Recently, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin posted a job opportunity for an “Orbital Habitat Orbitation Lead” in charge of leading the company’s development of commercial space stations in LEO. This role would view NASA as a prime customer and work towards Bezos’ goal of creating a robust environment for humans to live in space.

NASA will need services in LEO as the U.S. looks towards Mars and Venus exploration. It would be much more economically sustainable for NASA to purchase these services already on commercial space stations than try to supply itself with everything.

Some may argue that the ISS is vital to international cooperation and peace in space, and that decommissioning it will be dangerous. For the last 20 years, the ISS has been useful to maintain international relations among many countries, particularly the U.S. and Russia. International partnerships in scientific space exploration are equally important today.

For this reason, NASA is currently working towards a new international space station. NASA currently holds a contract with Axiom Space to build an “Axiom Segment” on the International Space Station that will eventually branch off from the old ISS to create a new outlet for international cooperation as a commercially-run station. This should help maintain old relationships with power players in space as well as open opportunities for new spacefaring nations to enter the mix. With more countries building their space programs, and with Russian and Chinese power increasing in space, having a diplomatic station that NASA plays a major role in will remain important moving forward.

Right now, the ISS is sucking up far too much of NASA’s limited funds. NASA should be focusing beyond LEO toward exploration further into the solar system and funding the outdated ISS is making that difficult. The more companies want to build in LEO, the more NASA should be encouraging these projects. Services in lower-earth orbit by private industry will enable NASA and other nations to move further into space. Terminating the ISS would not be a funeral, but a chance to propel America and the world into a much broader space environment.

Commercialization in space is on the horizon and cannot be squashed. The days of NASA developing products without commercial partnerships are over. With NASA’s help, more startups and innovators will be able to make their debut in LEO and help America remain the leader in space. Policymakers need to stop pushing back on proposals to support these goals.

The post The Commercialization and Decommissioning of the International Space Station appeared first on Reason Foundation.

One of the more-modest bills in Congress—the Serving Rural America Act—would offer $500 million in subsidies over five years. The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act (HEROES Act), which was passed by House Democrats in May, included $5.5 billion for rural broadband. And there is bipartisan support for a Rural Broadband Acceleration Act, which would speed up spending from the Federal Communications Commission’s existing $20.4 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF)

It is sad but true that a digital divide does exist between urban America and parts of rural America. It’s expensive to install fiber optic cable in places where homes and businesses are far apart. Telecom companies are businesses and will look at the costs and benefits of potential internet projects. They can’t be expected to choose projects that would cause large financial losses and where revenues would be few and far between. But throwing billions of taxpayers’ dollars at this issue is not the only way to bring broadband to rural Americans.

Untold millions of people in India, the Middle East, and Africa have received some access to the internet in recent years—in places where laying fiber would also be too costly. The service is provided to people’s inexpensive cell phones by an array of companies that have changed the lives of people who previously didn’t have access to the internet.

Which brings me to SpaceX, the innovative space launch company whose reusable Falcon rockets have slashed the cost of lofting satellites, cargo, and people into space. Twice this month, SpaceX launched large batches of its Starlink satellites into orbit. These were the 10th and 11th Starlink launches since last year, bringing the constellation to 658, thus far. The company’s near-term goal is to have nearly 1,600 in operation by 2021-22, offering broadband internet service to rural customers worldwide. It has received licensing permission from the FCC for up to 12,000 such satellites, eventually.

Space-based broadband is another transformative technology moving beyond the limited internet access now available in Africa and India. And it is not just SpaceX’s idea. An early competitor is OneWeb, whose initial goal is a 648-satellite constellation, with 74 already in orbit. (OneWeb is currently in reorganization but looks likely to survive.) Even more formidable is Amazon’s recently announced plan to compete in this market. The Wall Street Journal puts its planned investment at $10 billion for a 3,200-satellite network called Project Kuiper.

Can these companies actually deliver affordable broadband internet access to the world’s rural customers?

That remains to be seen, but the business model is analogous to that of the cell phone companies now blanketing Africa and India with affordable internet access. The initial costs are large but mostly fixed. The variable operating costs are low, so revenue depends primarily on very large numbers of customers worldwide, which should permit affordable prices. And that is more likely if there are competing providers, including Elon Musk’s Starlink and Jeff Bezos’ Project Kuiper.

And satellite broadband will be at least as good as what the FCC is currently subsidizing on the ground. ArsTechnica reported on leaked test data from Starlink that exceeds the performance required under FCC’s RDOF rural subsidy program:

Beta users of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-broadband service are getting download speeds ranging from 11Mbps to 60Mbps, according to tests conducted using Ookla’s speedtest.net tool. Speed tests showed upload speeds ranging from 5Mbps to 18Mbps.

The idea that federal taxpayers should massively subsidize ground-based rural internet when entrepreneurs are spending billions on space-based systems that will likely be operational years or decades before government-subsidized systems would get built is misguided. It reminds me of what’s going on in space launch itself. Despite the fact that SpaceX’s innovative approach has cut the cost per pound of getting things into orbit by about two-thirds, powerful members of Congress continue to fund NASA’s massively overbudget Space Launch System. Its design is deliberately old-tech; it uses left-over engines from the Space Shuttle Program and is not reusable.

Cooler heads in Congress should resist the temptation to make the same mistake again with rural broadband.

The post Satellite-Broadband Service Is the Best Way to Get Internet Access to Rural America appeared first on Reason Foundation.

• IATA’s attack on space-based ADS-B service
• Challenges to urban air mobility
• Mixed news on FAA’s Data Comm program
• From public to private airport models
• Contrails: aviation’s other climate problem
• New planes and new airline equal more competition
• News notes

IATA’s Attack on Nav Canada’s Space-Based ADS-B Service

Last September, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) filed a detailed appeal of Nav Canada’s new charges for space-based ADS-B surveillance in the North Atlantic Tracks (NAT). Its brief (which a friend provided to me) alleged that the new charges violated the legislation that created Nav Canada, specifically the charging principles. It also made a number of other allegations that struck me as ill-considered and contrary to fact. So I was relieved when the Canadian Transportation Agency dismissed IATA’s appeal on Jan. 23.

The agency has not yet released the details of its reasoning for dismissing the appeal, but in what follows I will note the IATA allegations that struck me as off-base. The most important complaint was that the charge introduced for space-based ADS-B was unwarranted and violated Nav Canada’s charging principles. The agency found that the charging principles were followed, and much of what IATA alleged was irrelevant. For example, it cited ICAO document 9082 on recommended air traffic control charging principles to argue that the new rate was not “cost-related.” In fact, Nav Canada introduced the charge because actual surveillance in oceanic airspace is a new service, with new costs to the company. It has to pay Aireon (the provider) for this service and is passing along that cost via the new charge.

IATA also argued that Aireon is charging more in high-demand oceanic airspace (e.g., NAT) than it is in other portions of the globe where traffic demand is lower, and denounced this as cross-subsidization, also allegedly against ICAO charging principles. Yet as everyone knows, ICAO-recommended weight-distance charges for basic en-route service inherently cross-subsidize business jets and smaller airliners. Aireon is a for-profit company and, it seems to me, has every right to charge market-based prices, just as for-profit airlines do.

The most inaccurate claim in IATA’s brief is that there are no benefits at this point in time from space-based ADS-B in NAT airspace because that airspace has not yet reached “a point of saturation.” This claim is refuted by dozens of studies and articles estimating both safety and operational benefits occurring right now from this new service, over and above coping with projected future congestion in this airspace under status-quo procedural separation regulations. Safety benefits are very real, as both NATS (responsible for the eastern Shanwick oceanic airspace) and Nav Canada (western Gander airspace) have pointed out. ADS-B enables deviations from assigned altitudes and from assigned tracks to be identified by controllers almost instantly, and both air navigation service providers (ANSPs) are collecting data on large safety increases due to this feature.

In addition, the reduced lateral and longitudinal spacing already in place in NAT airspace due to space-based ADS-B is leading to meaningful increases in flights getting their first-choice altitudes and no longer being subjected to mandatory speed controls. Nav Canada reports that between May and August 2019 an average of 1,200 more flights per month operated at their preferred flight level, compared with 2018. The fuel savings alone for these flights averaged C$350 per flight, along with 1,405 kg less CO2 emissions per flight. The C$350 per-flight fuel savings compare with the added charge to airlines of just C$72 per flight. Value for money, anyone? NATS is estimating that once further-reduced separation standards are in effect later this year, the fraction of flights getting their requested trajectory will increase from 60 percent to 90 percent.

Yet another complaint in the IATA appeal was that Nav Canada’s signing up with Aireon for space-based ADS-B was somehow a conflict of interest (since Nav Canada is one of five ANSPs that have invested in Aireon). IATA argued that Nav Canada should have held a competitive procurement for this service, which is absurd for several reasons.

First, Nav Canada and the other ANSPs worked with Iridium to create Aireon so that it could provide them with this service. Eight other ANSPs have subsequently signed up, representing a total of 35 countries that will soon receive Aireon’s service. Second, there are no other providers offering this service (though IATA claims other providers are working to develop such). Third, Nav Canada is not a government agency, and is not bound by any Canadian government procurement regulations, let alone OECD procurement recommendations for governments (which IATA said should apply to Nav Canada).

It’s difficult for me to understand why IATA undertook this quixotic appeal. The rate increase amounts to less than 50 cents per passenger for typical wide-body airliners flying the North Atlantic. And the fuel savings alone are five times the average C$72 per flight cost increase.

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Urban Air Mobility Challenges

How real is the promised urban air mobility (UAM) vision, of electric, autonomous VTOLs delivering people and packages throughout large urban areas in the near future? One recent view comes from NASA. The opening sentence of a recent Aviation Week article by Guy Norris says, “Widely viewed until recently as bordering on science fiction, the age of urban air mobility (UAM) is fast approaching reality and is poised to transform both aviation and society, says NASA.” The article (“Grand Goals”) goes on to summarize the agency’s planned series of ‘Grand Challenges,’ with the first one having begun last month. The agency has carried out two market studies, estimating that there could be 750 million passenger trips in 15 (U.S.) metro areas by 2030.

Honeywell executive Mike Ingram, in an October “Viewpoint” in Aviation Week estimated that the market for electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOLs)  “is likely to be $10-20 billion by 2030.” And indeed, several start-up companies are making what appears to be solid progress.  China’s Ehang claims to have completed over 2,000 test flights of its two prototypes, a single-seat eight-rotor model 184 and a two-seat 16-rotor 216, both autonomous. They have taken place not only in China but also in Austria, the Netherlands, and Qatar. It is pitching service in both Canada and Norway, and has plans for command-and-control centers for UAM vehicles. A 2018 study by Roland Berger projects 100,000 passenger UAM vehicles in use worldwide by 2050. And Uber Elevate says it will begin service in Dallas, Los Angeles, and a third city by 2023.

Look beyond the hype, however, and there are good reasons to question these projections. One is the challenge of achieving safety certification for an entirely new category of passenger vehicles. Another is current battery technology, which imposes serious limitations on their range and turn-round times due to the need for frequent, time-consuming recharging. Then there are all sorts of questions about impacts like noise and safety concerns in urban areas. Who is going to regulate where and when these vehicles can actually fly?

Another potential obstacle is the weather. C. Reiche and colleagues at Booz Allen Hamilton did a study assessing “potentially significant weather impacts on safety, cost, and efficiency of UAM operations.” (“Are We Ready to Weather Urban Air Mobility?” The Journal of Air Traffic Control, Winter 2019)

Their team assembled weather data for 10 large urban areas. Their data showed that adverse weather conditions (rain, snow, fog, heavy winds, etc.) vary by time of day and season of the year, and differ considerably among the urban areas studied. They used the data to calculate, for each area, the overall average number of hours that UAM operations could be significantly affected. The table below shows their estimates of the average number of impacted hours daily, by season, for each of the urban areas.

As the authors note, “In Denver, average weather conditions are unfavorable for UAM operations during most hours and most seasons,” with Dallas being the second-worst impacted. At the other extreme, weather conditions were favorable for UAM in most seasons and most hours in Miami “except for brief thunderstorms occurring frequently during early afternoon in summer and fall.”

These are preliminary findings, but, if they are borne out by more-detailed study, they raise questions about the viability of daily commercial UAM services in most of these urban areas. They also pose questions for FAA certification of regular operations in adverse weather. Large airliner operations are affected by weather, but not enough to impair regularly-scheduled service. That might not be possible for small, lightweight UAM vehicles.

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Mixed News on FAA’s Data Comm Program

As is well known, the first phase of the FAA program to add controller-pilot data link (Data Comm) to the nation’s air traffic control system was successful. That program added the capability to control towers at 62 of the nation’s busiest airports and finished two years ahead of schedule. It enables tower controllers to send departure clearances by text (instead of by voice) to cockpits, as well as last-minute revisions to those clearances.

The other mostly good news is that the first step of phase two—equipping en-route centers with Data Comm capability—has been declared operational at the first two centers: Indianapolis (ZID) and Kansas City (ZKC). This involved adding Data Comm modifications to the ERAM system (used to manage high-altitude traffic at all the centers) at ZID and ZKC.

The bad news is that modifying the others and putting Data Comm into operation there will be a longer process. This is not because it is difficult to do the required installation. Rather, the cause is an operational problem. In order to switch to large-scale use of data communications in the en-route environment, controllers need a large fraction of airliners and business jets to be equipped to use it, and not enough of these planes are equipped.

The DOT Office of Inspector General study on NextGen equipage dated December 18, 2019 (Report No. AV202014) provided some data on the extent of Data Comm equipage. Of the 7,800 aircraft currently equipped, 3,166 are domestic airliners, 1,946 are international airliners, and 2,688 are business jets. The equipped domestic airliners are 72 percent of the domestic fleet “that can be equipped with Data Comm.” Most Boeing and larger Airbus models are equipped, but many mid-size Airbus planes and regional aircraft are not. Other airliners either don’t have a flight management system that can be upgraded or are close enough to retirement that airlines won’t spend the money to upgrade them (e.g., Delta’s ancient MD-80s). Nearly all international airliners, of course, are already equipped with FANS equipage that includes data link.

Aviation Week’s Bill Carey reported (in the January 13-26 issue) that avionics suppliers and airlines are working out plans to upgrade fight management systems in planes that are still not equipped, and FAA is cautiously optimistic about progress on these fronts. But it is not optimistic enough to give us an estimate for when the remaining 18 centers will be able to declare en-route Data Comm operational.

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The Shift from Public to Commercial Airport Model
By Stephen Van Beek

“Because we had to!” — That is how a CEO from one of the nation’s largest airports answered in response to a question of why management procured a large multi-billion-dollar airport capital project through a public-private- partnership (P3) and DBFOM (Design Build Finance Operate Maintain) concession model. Over the last five years, the growth in P3s, and alternative project delivery models has accelerated, a period coinciding with record traffic at many airports as well as policy inaction in Washington, D.C.

The CEO’s decades-long DBFOM project will be designed and built by architects and developers, financed by private equity, and operated and maintained by an experienced global airport operator. Most of the funding for the multi-billion-dollar project will come from airline rates and charges and the offering of a substantially improved food & beverage and retail program to future airport passengers.

The investors for this project, like their counterparts in other projects, are willing to put up the money because airports have proven to be a stellar asset class, one that produces high single-digit returns at relatively low risk, especially over the lengthy period of a concession. Over three to five decades, perturbations like industry recessions or major events (9/11 terrorist attacks or coronavirus), have proven to be but momentary interruptions in otherwise long-term sustainable growth.

The Diminished Buying Power of FAA Programs

The airport CEO did not have a realistic option of funding the project through passenger facility charges (PFCs), federally authorized local fees assessed on the use of infrastructure, or from Airport Improvement Program (AIP) federal capital grants, since these programs were already committed, having experienced a massive two-decade reduction in their buying power. It is an odd American anomaly; notwithstanding that PFCs are local revenue assessed on the use of eligible airport projects, Washington policymakers, at the behest of the airlines and in stark contrast to other nations, have limited the charge to $4.50 per passenger since 2001 (compare this to C$25 assessed on originating Toronto passengers through their unregulated Airport Improvement Fee).

The current FAA interpretations of PFC and AIP eligibilities create additional hurdles to addressing today’s infrastructure challenges, ones neatly summarized by Kelly Campbell of Lubbock International Airport. Program eligibility focuses “on the Centerline out,” according to the executive director. This bias toward airside infrastructure ignores recent industry developments.

The FAA Hammer and the Airport Nail

The largest airports, as well as smaller airports such as Lubbock, face record numbers of passengers, but they are delivered differently today compared to 20 years ago. Yes, airlines are adding new flights, but they are operating larger aircraft across all airports, running higher load factors, as well as installing more seats in their existing aircraft. Together these trends have made the airport runways, taxiways and gates more efficient, delivering on average more passengers per aircraft operation. These developments have positive effects: this airside efficiency has extended the life of older, land-constrained airports in powerhouse aviation markets including Boston, New York and San Francisco.

But at these same airports, this airside efficiency has a flipside; more passengers per operation creates higher levels of peak loading on the passenger-centric areas of the terminal (e.g., security checkpoints, concession areas, hold rooms) and the vehicle-centric areas of the landside (e.g., curbs, roadways and gateways like tunnels and bridges). Regardless of FAA eligibility, the job of airports is to balance the airside, terminal and landside infrastructure in order to provide seamless and timely passenger journeys.

The 2020 Airport Infrastructure Problem Statement

Airport CEOs face a challenging calculus. With airline traffic growth comes service challenges, but the FAA program offers no inflation-adjusted increase in resources, federal (AIP) or local (PFC), to support capital projects, compounded by the terminal and landside eligibility restrictions.

One further dose of reality is that airports like Boston, San Diego and Seattle are land-locked, making any new development exceedingly expensive, as new capacity inevitably is built “inside the box” having cascading impacts on other infrastructure planned around yesterday’s airline business model and prior to developments such as Transportation Network Companies (which have dramatically increased the loading on roadways and curbs). While some of these projects promise future incremental — a new gate lease, a passenger meal, a parker arriving for their flight, or an Uber fee—accumulated marginal increases in revenue will take decades to pay off the high per-unit cost of the capital project.

The PFC Policy Failure

There have been any number of policy studies, the most recent by the Rand Corporation, making clear the importance of updating the Public Airport Model, including a number of options for raising the PFC to help airports pay for projects. With a PFC increase, and financing projects through tax-exempt bonds, airports can keep project costs down with lower costs of capital and without the premium of a higher return on investment from private capital.

Notwithstanding these potential savings, airline representatives continue to vociferously and effectively oppose an increase, even as past airline CEOs like Bob Crandall agree that airports have the better case for an increase. Airlines counter that they are happy to pay for projects that they either build for themselves at their strategic hubs, or to consider approval of projects that airport management brings to them. These latter two conditions were precisely the reason PFCs were created under the Airport Noise and Capacity Act (1990)—a worry that airlines under old-style use and lease agreements would block airport capacity projects they did not favor, including those that added capacity and increased competition for prospective new entrants and smaller airlines. Airline success in blocking a PFC increase is a principal reason that U.S. airports are turning to more global-style commercial models.

The PFC Policy Failure

During the 1980s and 1990s, policymakers and the FAA pushed airports away from legacy use and lease agreements that often ran 20-30 years and contained provisions giving airlines a practical, if not absolute, veto over airport capital projects. Today, most of those agreements are gone, some of which are being ironically replaced by multi-decade concession agreements between airports and commercial partners. The good news is that the global airport industry has three decades of experience with P3s, and properly structured, competitive procurements can lower costs, incentivize good behaviors during the concession period, as well as help airports protect their community’s interest.

Public-private partnerships provide airports with new options. Investors today have a wide range of return-on-investment goals, appetites for risk, and interests in different types of development projects. Today there are countless industry conversations going on about finding the right investor for the right project for the right airport market. Unless growth abates, service-level challenges subside, or policymakers have an unexpected breakthrough in reinvigorating the historic elements of the FAA public program, P3 projects and a shift to a commercial airport model will undoubtedly continue.

Stephen Van Beek is director and head of North American Aviation for Steer, a consultancy providing support for airports and private equity on public and commercial projects.

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Contrails: Aviation’s Other Climate Problem

Nearly all recent discussion of aviation’s contribution to global warming has focused on CO2 emissions from aircraft engines. Like all other CO2 emissions, these remain in the atmosphere for several decades, and the total accumulation is the key factor in the amount of temperature increase. But engines also emit soot, and at high altitudes under certain conditions, the soot facilitates the formation of ice crystals which can sometimes be observed as contrails but also form into cirrus clouds, both of which block some heat radiation from escaping into space.

The best research paper I’ve seen on this is from Lance Sherry of the Center for Air Transportation Systems Research at George Mason University and Terrence Thompson of The Climate Service in Asheville, NC. They estimate that more than half of aviation’s contribution to anthropogenic temperature increase is due to aircraft-induced clouds (AIC). Yet current and proposed mitigation measures—the ICAO Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) program of carbon offsets, various emission-trading proposals, and carbon taxes—ignore AIC. That’s the bad news.

The relatively good news is several-fold. First, in US airspace, on average only 15 percent of flights generate AIC. Second, their impact on warming is short-lived, compared with the long-term impact of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere. Third, there are some meaningful and not-very-costly mitigation measures.

The Sherry/Thompson research paper, “A Primer on Aircraft Induced Clouds and their Global Warming Mitigation Options,” can serve as an excellent introduction to this subject. It first provides an overview of the physics of AIC formation and of how radiative forcing works (which non-technical readers can skim through).

For policy makers, the most important section is a detailed assessment of potential mitigation measures. There is a fairly large number of these, but most would require a new generation of aircraft designs, a new generation of jet engines, or replacement fuels. These are all costly and would require replacing most of the current airliner fleet or fuel-production infrastructure, taking decades. Their Table 3 lists all these alternatives, and Table 4 ranks them in terms of utility, relative cost, and bang for the buck.

Since the impact of AIC is large but short-term, the most cost-effective mitigation approach would be low-cost changes that could be implemented very soon. Fortunately, there is one very attractive candidate: changing flight plans to avoid the atmospheric conditions that are conducive to the formation of AIC. And that typically means flying a few thousand feet higher over regions with ice-super-saturated (ISS) conditions. The authors note that military aircraft often do this to avoid producing contrails that would make it easy for adversaries to identify where they are going.

Sherry and Thompson reject the idea of flying around such regions, due to the increased fuel burn and CO2 emissions that would generate. Their calculations estimate that a 2,000 ft. increase in cruise altitude over those regions would decrease non-radiative forcing by 62 percent, while a 4,000 ft. increase would reduce NRF by 92 percent. The difference in fuel burn for these alternatives would be very small. Another relatively low-cost measure for soot reduction would be to switch to low-sulfur kerosene, which would require a change in the refining process. Because contrails/AIC affect the climate today, compared with the long-term effect of CO2 emissions, there appears to be a strong case for taking action in the near term, to reduce about half of aviation’s carbon footprint.

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New Aircraft, New Airline Promise Increased U.S. Competition

We continue to hear concerns that U.S. commercial aviation is dominated by the big four airlines, created via mergers: American, Delta, Southwest, and United. It is also widely believed that smaller airports have been left in the dust by major hubs dominated by one (or occasionally two) of the big four. But let’s look at a few numbers and trends to see if this gloomy picture is accurate.

In 2018, only 12 of the 30 U.S. large hubs exceeded five percent enplanement growth. By contrast, 23 of 31 medium hubs exceeded that growth rate. Even the 69 small hubs have experienced a growth of 30 percent in available seats since 2015, due to airline replacement of 50-seat regional jets with larger planes. There is also latent demand for airport growth in the form of secondary airports in large urban areas. Recent examples are last year’s opening of commercial service at Paine Field north of Seattle, continued growth at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway, and the ongoing turnaround at Ontario, CA, in the fastest-growing part of greater Los Angeles. And if somebody ever figures out a way to counter Delta’s political clout in Atlanta, we would surely see the emergence of a secondary airport in its northern suburbs.

Over the past decade, ultra-low-cost carriers (ULCCs) Allegiant, Frontier, and Spirit have grown at a much higher rate than other U.S. airlines, bringing new service to smaller airports by offering direct routes that bypass transfers at hubs. This month’s big news is the announcement by JetBlue founder David Neeleman that his new airline, Breeze, is expected to begin service by the end of this year.

Breeze will begin with Embraer E195s, which are smaller and shorter-range than the 60 Airbus A220s he has on order with deliveries starting in 2021. Its first routes will be three north-south leisure routes east of the Mississippi—under-served city pairs that currently lack nonstop service (unless the expanding ULCCs manage to get there first). Next year will bring more eastern service, and then expansion to the Midwest and Texas.

It’s not clear whether Breeze will seek to be price-competitive with ULCCs or will try to provide a better value by offering a package of services at somewhat higher fares. But the additional service offered by the latest airline from the founder of four successful other carriers (Morris Air, WestJet, JetBlue, and Azul) will likely debut with a unique selling proposition somewhere between ULCCs and the big four. That will mean additional choices for air travelers—and more business for smaller airports.

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News Notes

A Good Space-Based ADS-B Makes The Wall Street Journal

Aviation insiders often complain that too many mass media stories about air traffic control either misunderstand the subject or simplify it to the point of inaccuracy. But The Wall Street Journal’s Jo Craven McGinty did an excellent job of explaining space-based ADS-B and its benefits for global aviation in her January 24th article, “Air Traffic Control Is in the Midst of a Major Change.” This would be a good piece to share with non-aviation friends.

Phoenix Cancels Parking P3 Solicitation

Dashing the hopes of a number of companies and infrastructure investors, the city of Phoenix recently issued a curt announcement that the parking structure procurement is cancelled and will not be restarted. The only explanation given in the announcement was that “uncertainties in the project risk profile . . . are beyond the control of the City.” One source suggests that because the revenue-based parking concession would have led to an increase in the fees paid by transportation network companies (TNCs), a backlash from that sector led a closely divided city council to drop the project.

Auckland Airport Launching Counter-Drone System

Airways New Zealand, that country’s self-supporting ANSP, has announced an agreement with Operational Solutions Ltd. (UK) to jointly develop a counter-drone and UAS traffic management system at Auckland International Airport. It will combine OSL’s counter-drone system with Airways’ UTM platform, in existence since 2014. OSL the previous month announced that it had been chosen to implement a counter-drone system at London Heathrow Airport (LHR).

Bidders Shortlisted for Athens Airport Stake

The Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF) has announced that nine teams have made the shortlist to bid for 30 percent of the equity of Athens International Airport. They include well-known players Aeroports de Paris, AviAlliance, Ferrovial, Global Infrastructure Partners, and Vinci Airports. The equity stake in question is the government’s last share of ownership in the airport.

Netherlands Developing UAS Traffic Management System

LVNL, the Dutch ANSP, has signed a contract with Altitude Angel to develop a nationwide U-Space platform. The UK company has worked with NATS, that country’s ANSP, on an unmanned aircraft traffic management system that was demonstrated at Manchester Airport in 2018. LVNL plans to use the platform to enable commercial drone flights in Dutch airspace. The system will include a drone registration system, a flight authorization process, and operating systems that interface with LVNL’s existing air traffic management system.

Planned Expansion of Stansted Airport Now on Hold

Last month, the local council of the area in which London Stansted Airport is located voted to deny planning permission for the expansion. The project involves a $170 million arrivals building to permit eventual growth from today’s 28 million annual passengers to a maximum of 43 million. Stansted, part of Manchester Airports Group, is a major base for low-cost carriers EasyJet and Ryanair. The project had the support of the previous local council majority, but that changed following an election in May 2019. The new majority cited noise, air quality, and climate change as reasons for its decision.

JetBlue Commits to Carbon Neutrality

On Jan. 6, JetBlue announced its plan to offset 100 percent of carbon emissions on its domestic flights by July of this year. It is the first U.S. carrier to announce such a policy. Air France and EasyJet have made similar commitments for domestic flights in Europe. JetBlue offsets will involve forest conservation, landfill gas capture and solar/wind electric generation. It is partnering with Carbonfund.org in this endeavor.

Airservices Australia Embraces Airport Collaborative Decision-Making

The ANSP of Australia announced in December a partnership with the airports of Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney, along with airlines Qantas, Virgin Australia, and Alliance, to implement airport collaborative decision-making (A-CDM). The aim is to share real-time information on aircraft departures among the ANSP, airport, and airlines so as to reduce aircraft waiting times on taxiways. Sweden’s Saab will operate a cloud-based platform to enable the A-CDM process.

FAA’s Space Data Integrator to Debut in August

On Jan. 30, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson announced that the system developed to provide real-time information on space launches—SDI—is expected to go live in August. His statement also referred to the associated aircraft hazard area generator, which will calculate and display (also in real-time) the amount of airspace that must be restricted during launch and recovery operations. Together, SDI and the hazard area generator will be far more useful than SDI alone, but it is not clear whether the hazard area generator will also go live in August.

Denmark Announces First Remote Tower Center

Naviair, the Danish ANSP, announced this month that it has signed a contract with Frequentis DFS Aerosense to deploy a remote tower center at Billund, the country’s second-largest airport. Its initial task will be to provide tower services for the airspace around Billund, but the facility will be designed to serve that function for other Danish airports. Denmark is the seventh country to select a Frequentis “remote digital tower solution.”

San Diego Proceeding with 30-Gate Terminal Replacement

San Diego County’s Regional Airport Authority board approved the final environmental impact report on the airport’s $3 billion development plan. Its centerpiece is replacing the 53-year-old 19-gate Terminal 1 with a new 30-gate terminal. The project also involves roadway improvements and a connection to a proposed nearby transit hub. The schedule calls for ground-breaking on the terminal in 2021 and opening by 2024. The plan is to procure the project on a design-build basis.

Aireon Wins Aviation Week Laurel for 2020

In its January 13-26 issue, Aviation Week & Space Technology announced its 2020 laureate winners. In the air traffic management category, the winner was Aireon—developer and operator of the world’s first global, space-based ADS-B surveillance system.

Vinci Airports Studying Carbon Charge for Aircraft

The world’s fifth-largest airport company by revenue, Vinci Airports, is studying a fee on aircraft CO2 emissions, to provide an incentive for carriers to upgrade their fleets to more fuel-efficient aircraft. The first airport where such a fee may be implemented is Lyon, one of the company’s numerous airports, which are located in Brazil, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Chile, Dominican Republic, France, Japan, Portugal, Serbia, Sweden, and the USA. Vinci is aiming to halve the company’s carbon footprint by 2030 and to become carbon-neutral by 2050. A number of airports already impose noise fees, including privatized Heathrow and Gatwick.

Memphis Mulls a P3 for New Travel Plaza

Inframation News reports that Memphis International Airport is planning to add a travel plaza on airport property, including a rental car refueling station, a convenience store, and a fast-food outlet. A public-private partnership (P3) is being considered by the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority Board. The travel plaza would be part of the airport’s new master plan.

Local Opposition Emerges to Remote Tower Center in Scotland

Last year, Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd (HIAL) announced plans to create a remote tower center to provide services for its 11 airports. The new problem is resistance by the majority of current controllers, whose jobs are not at risk but many of whom would have to relocate in order to work at the new center. And their concern has now led to some elected officials expressing opposition to the plan.

Bipartisan Proposal for PreCheck as REAL ID

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R, AZ) and Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D, FL) have introduced a bill that would count PreCheck membership as a form of REAL ID. Federal law requires that, by Oct. 1, all air travelers have identification that qualifies under the REAL ID definition, which includes specially marked drivers’ licenses, passports, and Global Entry and other DHS trusted traveler programs. Their Trusted Traveler REAL ID Relief Act would add PreCheck membership to that list.

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The post Aviation Policy News: Attack on Space-Based ADS-B Service, Challenges to Urban Air Mobility, and More appeared first on Reason Foundation.

• St. Louis mayor cancels airport P3 lease
• U.S. getting further behind on remote towers
• RAND report suggests airport funding reforms
• FAA Metroplex still dealing with problems
• Fresh thinking on airport slots in Europe
• Consensus emerging on airline/space-launch conflicts
• News notes
• Quotable quotes

St. Louis Mayor Cancels Lambert Airport P3 Lease

After three years of discussion, studies, and a request for qualifications that attracted submissions from 18 teams, St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson announced that the city’s airport “privatization” effort (of which she had been a prime mover) is dead. Interestingly, her action came just one day after the board of the St. Louis County Port Authority (which operates no ports, but oversees casino gambling spending) voted 4-3 to issue a request for proposal (RFP) for a study on “whether privatizing is in the best interest of the region.” A motion on the RFP had been tabled a month before on 4-3 vote, but one member changed her vote in December.

St. Louis media is filling in the background story. Jacob Barker of STLtoday.com reported that various movers and shakers had been working for some time on the idea that Lambert is a regional resource that should not be controlled by a single city. One of the leading figures in this effort has been Terry Briggs, mayor of Bridgeton, a suburb that lost a large chunk of land to Lambert for a new runway 15 years ago. He has pitched the idea to fellow mayors of cities in the region. These efforts have included discussions of how to raise the revenue to “buy” the airport and pay off its outstanding bonds.

Jacob Kirn of the St. Louis Business Journal identified a trio of business leaders who apparently worked to persuade Mayor Krewson to abandon the airport lease project. Warner Baxter, the chairman of Civic Progress, was reportedly the primary business leader telephoning and meeting with the mayor. Tom Santel, the group’s executive director, told Kirn that Civic Progress had raised concerns about the lease since 2018, when he became its leader.

The County Port Authority “study” is part of a concerted effort to take the airport away from the city of St. Louis. Dissenting board member Mike Hajna told Barker that the RFP for the study asks the winning consultant to make “recommendations for regional governance implementation,” and commented that, “This [will not be] an unbiased report. This is asking how do we go about a regional takeover.”

St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann, who has discussed regionalization with his counterparts in St. Louis County and Jefferson County, understands that the airport is a valuable asset. “The only problem of it is what is the value of the airport. Any attempt to do something like this, that’s going to be the sticking point. . . . Nobody would suggest the city shouldn’t get a decent return on the money they invested,” he said.

The prospect of raising perhaps a billion dollars from a long-term lease of Lambert was a key point in getting former St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay to propose the idea in 2017, and this remained a key theme of current Mayor Krewson. There is a global market for long-term public-private partnership (P3) airport leases. In recent years, investors have paid between 10 and 20 times an airport’s earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). With a multiple of 14 times, Lambert would appear to have a gross value (prior to debt payoff) of $1.2 billion. That’s a pretty hefty chunk of change, which explains why local groups such as the NAACP and the carpenters’ union have called on Mayor Krewson to reverse her decision.

Nobody can “buy” an airport under current U.S. law. In situations where an airport is transferred from city ownership to an airport authority, state legislation has been required, and that is what would likely be done in the case of Lambert if City Progress and others succeed. But that would not involve the city of St. Louis getting anything like the market value of the airport.

The sudden termination of a process that was well along sent shockwaves through the array of potential bidders, as well as the airlines serving the airport. There had just been four days of presentations by the 18 bidders, and attendees (including the airlines) were “incredibly impressed with the quality of the bidders,” according to a knowledgeable observer who was there. On one hand, this debacle will reinforce those who are skeptical that there will ever be a serious U.S. airport P3 market. On the other hand, the fact that 18 very well-qualified teams were seriously interested—and made presentations that impressed the critically-important airlines—suggests that when a metro area with a wiser business community embarks on improving its airport via a long-term P3 lease, investors may take them seriously.

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U.S. Getting Further Behind on Remote Towers

In the 2018 FAA reauthorization bill, Congress authorized FAA to implement a six-airport remote tower pilot program. The first two were the projects already underway, with state and private support, at the airports in Leesburg, VA, and Loveland, CO. Two others would be for airports in the Federal Contract Tower Program (potentially airports with aging conventional towers needing to be replaced), another would be a non-primary airport, and the sixth would be selected by the FAA administrator.

That sounds like a lot of progress, but remember: this is the federal government. Congress has not yet appropriated any funding for the pilot program and the Leesburg and Loveland projects, which many had expected would go operational last year, must still pass an array of FAA safety-review hurdles.

In the aviation safety climate post-737MAX, FAA is now in hyper-cautious mode, apparently ignoring the certification and operational status of a growing number of remote tower projects in Europe. Aviation Daily reported last September that FAA has created eight “safety management system” (SMS) panels to review the Leesburg and Loveland projects at various stages. For example, the Leesburg project required an SMS review for changing the curvature of the display screens.

The Northern Colorado Regional Airport (Loveland), which is currently a non-towered airport, is scheduled to begin testing the new Searidge Technologies remote tower system in April. Phase 1 of the FAA testing program will begin with the remote tower operating in passive mode with active air traffic control provided from a mobile control tower. Phase 2 of testing will see the roles of the remote tower and mobile tower reversed: the remote tower system will provide active air traffic control with the mobile serving as a safety backup. Phase 1 is anticipated to last approximately five weeks (two weeks on, one week off, two weeks on).  In order to proceed from Phase 1 to Phase 2, a rigorous FAA SMS evaluation will be conducted for review and approval by FAA management. (The mobile tower that will provide active air traffic control during Phase 1 and the safety mitigation function in Phase 2 is provided by Serco, Inc., which is one of three contractors that operate towers in FAA’s Federal Contract Tower Program.)

The path to certification of the remote tower at Loveland will involve additional testing phases as determined by the FAA. Nobody could give me a realistic date for certification, but it sounds like it will be at least a year from now. Leesburg, which started sooner, might get to certification sooner, but I’m not placing any bets.

Meanwhile, last month in Sweden, the first new airport in 20 years opened on Dec. 22. It is also the first airport in the world designed to be controlled from a distant remote tower center. The Scandinavian Mountains Airport is the fourth airport controlled by the Saab Digital Air Traffic Solutions (SDATS) remote tower center in Sundsvall. The ANSP of Sweden, LFV, has pioneered remote towers in Europe, and Saab is the remote tower provider for the Leesburg project. Norway’s ANSP Avinor, following LFV’s lead, has developed a remote tower center designed to handle 15 small airports by 2022, with the first remote tower opening last fall in Rost. DFS, the German ANSP, has a remote tower center in operation in Leipzig, which began controlling traffic at Saarbrücken last year and will add two other airports this year and next. Kongsburg, a key player in developing Norway’s remote tower center, has recently deployed a remote tower in Australia, at the Royal Australian Air Force base in Amberley. Several remote tower projects are underway in the U.K., including one for London City Airport.

Remote towers have been certified and are operational in a growing number of countries. Why FAA is treating them with hyper-caution—as if this growing body of knowledge, expertise, and practice does not exist—remains a mystery.

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RAND Report Suggests Sensible Airport Funding Reforms

The new report from RAND Corporation, “U.S. Airport Infrastructure Funding and Financing” has drawn attention mostly for its recommendation of an increase in airport passenger facility charges (PFCs). But the report, called for by Congress in the 2018 FAA reauthorization legislation, contains an array of worthwhile, well-justified recommendations. In fact, because the report is written to be understood by a non-aviation audience, I would recommend it as a primer on airport funding.

To begin with, it speaks the truth about PFCs that is generally obscured by airline critiques of this important airport self-help program. In particular, it states clearly that “airlines cannot veto FAA-approved PFC-funded projects.” And that means that “PFC projects provide airports with a means of accommodating new entrants without a veto by legacy carriers.” As I point out in a piece in the current issue of Regulation magazine, PFCs have been critically important to the airport terminal expansion that has enabled the rapid growth of ultra-low-cost carriers Allegiant, Frontier, and Spirit. (“Comment: PFCs Promote Competition and Airport Self-Sufficiency, Regulation, Winter 2019-2020)

Another airline claim is that airports are sitting on mountains of cash and can, therefore, fund additional terminal projects without an increase in allowable PFC rates. But Chapter 6 of the RAND report explains that “PFC revenues at all large hub airports but one are fully committed,” just as I expected.  Of those 30 large hubs, 18 have committed their PFC revenues until at least 2030, and six have committed PFC revenues until at least 2040. And of the 31 medium hubs, 10 have committed PFC revenues until at least 2030, while 14 will have some new revenues available after 2025. Hence, the increase recommended by RAND—an increase in the federal cap from today’s $4.50 to a new level of $7.50, but only for the originating airport. That’s less than some airports were pushing for, but would still be very valuable.

The report also calls attention to revenue diversion, which it notes is still an issue. When Congress enacted the current Airport Improvement Program of airport grants in 1982 it required airports to use all their revenues for airport purposes. But since a dozen airports had historically sent some revenue downtown for non-airport purposes, Congress “grandfathered” them, letting revenue diversion continue indefinitely. RAND notes that three of the 12 have had this protection removed—and says it is time to remove it from the remaining nine. It notes that a DOT Inspector General report found that between 1995 and 2015, grandfathered airports diverted over $10 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, including $1.2 billion in 2015.

The RAND team also addressed the large and growing unfunded balance in the Aviation Trust Fund. Spending rules are supposed to prevent such accumulations, but Congress ignores them. RAND suggests that beyond maintaining a prudent reserve—a rainy day fund—money paid by aviation users should be spent for aviation infrastructure. And they urge that the 7.5 percent passenger ticket tax be applied to airline ancillary fees for baggage, meals, etc. which used to be included in the airfare and hence were taxed. Rather than making this a net tax increase, they suggest working with the airlines to make the taxation of ancillary fees revenue-neutral.

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FAA Metroplex Implementation Still Facing Problems

A high priority for FAA’s NextGen program has been to untangle the airspace in America’s largest metro areas. The basic idea was to use performance-based navigation (PBN) to provide more precise and standardized arrival and departure routes for each of the metro area’s airports. The agency identified 12 such areas for its Metroplex program, some with multiple air carrier airports, as well as reliever airports for business aircraft. Only the New York metro area—with the most complex and convoluted airspace—was left for a future project, presumably based on lessons learned from the easier cases.

These projects have had, at best, a mixed reaction from the metro areas in question. Community groups and local media, never using the Metroplex program name, defined what was happening as simply “NextGen,” and many of them didn’t like it. The principal cause of distress was increased noise beneath the new approach and departure paths, which instead of being widely spread out were now much more tightly grouped. That was by design, taking advantage of PBN to shorten the average track, saving time and fuel, but also reducing the number of square miles experiencing a given level of aircraft noise. But the concomitant result was significantly increased noise beneath the concentrated flight tracks. Seven of the 12 projects are defined as completed—Houston, North Texas (DFW), Southern California, Northern California, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Washington, DC. Despite being “completed,” there are still major noise complaints and actual or threatened litigation in Southern California (BUR), Northern California, and Washington (DCA and BWI).

Last August the Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report on the Metroplex program (AV2019062). Its verdict was mixed, noting that the schedule for completing the remaining metro areas is not promising. While the original completion date was 2017, FAA’s latest target date is 2021. One of the original 12—Phoenix—has been canceled after litigation. And of course, New York is not in any current plan, despite being the direct source of 40 percent of US delay hours (just from its four busiest airports). In response to the noise concerns from the completed projects, FAA has lengthened the schedules for the remaining ones, to build in more community outreach time. But it has not proposed any kind of new noise compensation (a subject the OIG report does not mention).

Besides the noted implementation delays, the OIG report also finds that the benefits are only about half of what FAA had projected. Specifically, for the seven completed sites, FAA now estimates annual benefits of just $31 million, which is 49.5 percent less than the minimum previously projected. Only one site, Charlotte (CLT), has benefits slightly more than projected. CLT was the only one with significant fuel savings, which might have been due to greater use of westbound departures (with more favorable winds). At the other sites, actual time and distance flown were often greater than projected. And at the Northern California site, Metroplex benefits were actually negative. The report also points out that FAA’s benefit projections depend significantly on the judgment of subject matter experts rather than on hard data.

The OIG researchers identified some of the technical reasons for less-than-expected benefits. For example, effective use of PBN tools depends on improved technology for controllers, such as Time-Based Flow Management (TBFM) in Centers and Terminal-Area Sequencing and Spacing (TSAS) at TRACONs. TBFM is not being used regularly due in part to many aircraft not being equipped to use it, as well as controllers in adjacent facilities still using “miles-in-trail” separation instead. And TSAS is behind schedule for implementation with only nine facilities expected to have it in operation by 2022. As shown by the very limited use of TBFM, inadequate controller training and poor management (not mentioned in the report) seem to be the causes. In addition, with a significant fraction of the commercial fleet not equipped for PBN (let alone RNP), controllers are not comfortable using PBN with mixed fleets. Some other ANSPs, in certain airspaces (e.g., the North Atlantic tracks), follow the principle of best-equipped/best-served (BEBS), under which aircraft equipped for advanced procedures get priority access, which is an incentive for laggards to upgrade their planes. Lack of equipage is especially a problem with regional airlines, only 30 percent of whose aircraft can fly advanced procedures. This segment would seem to be a good candidate for a BEBS policy.

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Fresh Thinking on Airport Slots Allocation in Europe

In the November 2019 issue of this newsletter, I discussed conflicting views over how the huge increase in capacity to be brought about by the forthcoming new runway at London Heathrow will be allocated to airport users. I noted that with Brexit about to happen, the U.K. will no longer be constrained by out-of-date European Union (EU) slot allocation rules, which fail to take into account airline deregulation in Europe, the rise of low-cost carriers, privatization of most state-owned airlines, and corporatization/privatization of airports.

I’m pleased to report that similar discussions are also underway in Europe. Last fall, the Florence School of Regulation held a conference on “a more efficient airport slots allocation regime in Europe.” This month Airports Council International-Europe issued a position paper, “Airport Slot Allocation.” Both discuss market-based measures as a possible supplement to or replacement of a slot allocation system that has failed to keep pace with several decades of change in European aviation.

The current system is based on each airport having a slot coordinator, following a detailed set of rules. The most important of them are (1) permanent grandfathering of slots for carriers that were serving the airport when the EU regulation was adopted in 1993, and (2) a use-it-or-lose-it rule that requires a carrier to use its slots at least 80 percent of the time. Airlines know how to game this system, and a major drawback is that it severely limits competition from new entrants, especially at airports that are now or soon will be operating at capacity.

The majority of the proposals discussed at the Florence conference dealt with reforming the rules and procedures used by slot coordinators, such as changing use-it-or-lose-it to 90 percent and strengthening existing preferences given to new entrants when slots become available. Some participants pointed out that during EU slot reform discussions a decade ago (which led to no changes), an analysis “showed that the slot allocation system prevented optimal use of scarce capacity,” a point many economists have made. And most of the discussion about the possible use of market-based measures to allocate slots focused on slot auctions rather than runway pricing.

Teodora Serafimova of the Florence School made a critically important point in commenting on the conference discussions—“that slots are not homogeneous, as their value varies significantly with time and location.” Variable runway pricing is the best way to take this into account. Senthuran Rudran of the UK Competition & Markets Authority noted that “a pricing solution would lead to greater allocative efficiency than an administrative system.” And he pointed out that “With a pricing solution, the scarcity rents, which are currently being enjoyed by the airlines, would shift away either to the government or airports or both.” And this would help to pay for needed airport capacity expansion. Today, alas, incumbent airlines are often not enthusiasts for runway additions, because they “have an incentive to foreclose or delay airport expansion to protect existing profit margins.”

Given these kinds of discussions, I had high hopes for the ACI-Europe airport slots position paper. Its introduction calls for a paradigm shift in the slot allocation regime, and its discussion of possible reforms notes that as self-supporting businesses, “Airports have a legitimate commercial interest in how their capacity is allocated and utilized.” But the closest the paper gets to pricing is in a discussion of “super-congested airports” where it suggests, tentatively, that in slot allocation “the number of seats per movement does not fall below a specified lower limit” and that perhaps “Allocation of new capacity, or a share thereof, [could be done via] market-based mechanisms.” It also suggests that maybe there could be a slot reservation system, with a monetary incentive. But in the end, it basically recommends regulatory reform of the existing slot-coordinator system.

I won’t repeat here the case I have made elsewhere for the many ways in which runway congestion pricing is far better than any proposed slot-auction system. In particular, the much larger revenue stream from runway congestion pricing could serve as the basis for issuing runway revenue bonds and perhaps airport noise compensation payments to those seriously impacted by a new runway.

Even if the recommendations now being discussed are mostly reformist, rather than calling for a real paradigm shift, it’s good to see market-based mechanisms starting to be part of this discussion.

Consensus Emerging on Space-Launch/Airline Conflicts

The historic launch of the first SpaceX Falcon Heavy in February 2018 was a great success for commercial space—but a huge problem for airlines. That launch delayed 563 flights for a total of 4,600 minutes. To be sure, that was a much larger launch vehicle than most, but with the rising projections of space launch activity in the coming years, the need to close airspace during launch and recovery operations is a problem that needs to be solved. On Nov. 1, 2019, the Congressional Research Service issued a two-page briefing paper, “Impact of Commercial Space Launch Activities on Aviation,” which served as a primer for Congress on the subject. Three weeks later the bipartisan leaders of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee sent a letter to FAA Administrator Steve Dickson expressing their concern about this problem.

As I have reported previously, FAA has been working since 2014 to develop a Space Data Integrator (SDI) that will feed real-time telemetry data from launch vehicles to the FAA’s Traffic Flow Management System. Duane Freer, who manages space operations at the ATC System Command Center in Warrenton, VA says SDI is moving through the acquisition process and told a conference on Oct.31st that he hopes SDI will be operational sometime in 2020.

That was good news to attendees at that historic conference in Washington, DC, co-hosted by the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. Representatives of both industries are supportive of SDI, but pointed out that it needs to be supplemented by a tool for controllers that figures out, in real-time, how much airspace needs to be closed. That hypothetical tool is called an Aircraft Hazard Area generator. Blue Origin’s Deputy General Counsel Audrey Powers agreed that what pilots and controllers need to know is “the hazard area in real time.” This dynamic hazard-area data would add more value than SDI alone. Concurring in that was the National Air Traffic Controllers Association’s Safety Director Jim Ulmann, who mentioned a prototype system called the Hazard Risk Assessment Management (HRAM) system. He told attendees that “SDI is nice; it’s certainly better than what we’ve had in the past, which is next to nothing. But it’s still just an awareness tool. I’m talking about a decision support tool—something that goes on the controller’s scope, something more like an HRAM kind of thing.”

While the ALPA white paper did not mention HRAM, it did make another important recommendation. After pointing out that most or all U.S. orbital launch sites are located on the coast, and that launches, therefore, affect mostly oceanic airspace, ALPA recommends that FAA adopt space-based ADS-B surveillance in oceanic airspace to provide near real-time information on aircraft positions, direction, velocity, etc. as part of managing air travel during space launches. It also suggests that ADS-B be installed on space launch vehicles so that they can also be tracked in real-time in a way that can be fed directly to ATC facilities. Also needed is better communications between controllers and pilots operating in oceanic airspace. Overall, ALPA suggests, with these improvements in place, “it becomes feasible to imagine that an air traffic management capability with full access to real-time information would allow for much more tactical control of the launch operation with surrounding air traffic.” That will be essential as the volume of space launches ramps up significantly in coming years.

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News Notes

FAA Expanding Plans for Space-Based ADS-B
Aviation Daily reported that FAA is developing a one-to-three-year roadmap to expand its use of this “promising technology,” in the words of Deputy Administrator Dan Elwell. Prior to this, FAA had negotiated only a one-year agreement with space-based ADS-B provider Aireon for an operational evaluation of space-based ADS-B surveillance in the Caribbean. That trial will use a modified version of the ERAM system at Miami Center to control traffic between Miami and San Juan. FAA has also developed a modification of the ATOP oceanic automation system used by the New York, Oakland, and Anchorage Centers so that it can integrate space-based ADS-B data feeds.

Further Delay for London Heathrow’s Third Runway
The Civil Aviation Authority has imposed a new “economy and efficiency” condition on Heathrow Airport Ltd. (HAL) as it works on designing its long-awaited third runway. The CAA’s rationale is that the airport has market power, especially since its closest competitor Gatwick has been denied permission to add a new runway. After digesting this news, HAL announced that “the CAA has [therefore] delayed the project timetable by at least 12 months.” Despite Parliament having approved the new runway, HAL must still obtain “planning permission” to actually begin construction.

TSA to Add Two More PreCheck Enrollment Companies
For the first time since PreCheck began, TSA will allow additional contractors to offer enrollment services. Alclear and Telos Identity Management Solutions will join long-time monopoly provider IDEMIA (formerly Morpho Trust) in providing enrollment services. After years of false starts by TSA, in the 2018 FAA reauthorization bill, Congress required TSA to use at least two companies to market PreCheck and vet applicants.

24-Hour Free Route Airspace in Northern Europe
The Maastricht Upper Area Control Center (MUAC) as of December began offering free route airspace on a 24 hours/day basis. MUAC airspace includes Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and northwest Germany—above 24,500 ft. The system includes cross-border free route options with Germany and the Danish-Swedish functional airspace block. In MUAC airspace alone, the estimated daily savings (due to shorter flight tracks) are 40 metric tons of fuel and 150 metric tons of CO2.

Airbus Pilotless Air Taxi Flight Tests Completed
The 8-rotor tilt-wing Vahana pilotless air taxi last month completed 138 test flights at the Pendleton Unmanned Aerial Systems Range in eastern Oregon. The autonomous vehicle is battery powered and the longest distance flown on a single charge was 27 miles. There was no human on board any of the test flights, Airbus reported. The Vahana that flew is one of two prototypes; the other has been displayed at air shows and aviation conferences.

Atlanta Officials Gear Up to Fight Another Takeover Attempt
The leading legislative proponent of setting up a regional airport authority to take over Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport from corruption-plagued City of Atlanta—Sen. Burt Jones—is expected to make a second legislative attempt in the 2020 session that began this month. City officials are considering the creation of an inspector general position to address corruption problems. Jones’ bill last year passed the Georgia Senate but failed in the House.

Huge Allegiant Expansion Means More Airline Competition
Allegiant Air has welcomed the new year by announcing 44 new nonstop routes, including its first services to Boston, Chicago (Midway), and Houston (Hobby). Nearly all the new routes from these large cities will serve smaller airports in places such as Asheville, NC, Fargo, ND, Peoria, IL, Allentown, PA, and Grand Rapids, MI. They will give many travelers non-stop alternatives to longer routing through a major airline’s hub airport—and likely at much lower fares.

New Law Portends Better-Qualified Controllers
A little-noticed provision in the 2020 defense authorization bill allows FAA to prioritize hiring air traffic controller candidates from the military and from FAA-certified Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) colleges. CTI graduates and veterans have a higher retention rate during controller training at the FAA Academy, and the CTI graduates can bypass the first five weeks of that training since it would repeat material they have already mastered. The provision is called the ATC Hiring Reform Act, and it’s long overdue.

CLEAR Adds 35th Airport
The St. Louis Airport Commission has endorsed a contract with CLEAR, the identity verification service that offers an alternative to long screening lines at airports. Its system uses fingerprint and iris scanning to verify that the passenger is the person who applied and was vetted. CLEAR charges members $179 per year. If the proposed contract is approved by the city government, St. Louis Lambert International would be the 35th U.S. airport with this service.

Amazon Expands Air Cargo Contracts
In December, Amazon announced a contract with Sun Country Airlines to operate 10 Boeing 737 cargo jets. The new contract is in addition to larger contracts with Air Transport Services Group and Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, both of which fly Boeing 767 cargo jets. Atlas will also add 20 737s to its Amazon fleet this year.

Anti-Drone Technology Gets Airport Testing
TSA announced last month that it will use Miami International Airport as a testbed for various anti-drone technologies. The test site will assess drone detection and mitigation technologies. In Germany, the Transport Ministry announced that Hamburg Airport will be the site of tests to detect, identify, and intercept drones. The German defense system is code-named Falcon. And in London, Heathrow Airport has installed a counter drone system that uses “holographic radar” to detect and track drones and locate their pilots, reports Engadget.

Air Traffic Management 2019 ATC Award Winners
Issue 4 (2019) of Air Traffic Management included an array of winners of awards in various categories. Winner for “virtual center concepts” was a consortium organized by Thales, Frequentis, Indra, Leonardo,10 ANSPs, COOPANS, and Eurocontrol. Irish Aviation Authority won a first place for the Aireon Alert system, which it hosts at its facility in Ballygirreen, Ireland. And Nav Canada took a first place for being the world’s first ANSP to implement the new ICAO standard, “Established on RNP-AR,” which is now operational at Calgary International Airport. Congratulations to all.

Murray Smith, RIP
The founder and long-time publisher of Professional Pilot magazine, Murray Smith, died on Dec. 25, 2019, at age 89. I met Murray in the early 2000s when he attended a presentation I gave at Heritage Foundation on ATC corporatization. That led to invitations from Murray to write columns for Pro Pilot. It also led to a Christmas-season visit by Murray and his wife to my home in Florida. Unfortunately, when AOPA and NBAA created a coalition to fight ATC corporatization in 2016, my access to Pro Pilot was cut off. My condolences to Murray’s wife, Eleni, and his family and colleagues.

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Quotable Quotes

“A regulatory regime based on what the air transport market looked like 27 years ago is not only anachronistic; it is limiting the ability of airports to pursue more-sustainable operations, to develop air connectivity for their communities, and to promote airline competition for the benefit of consumers. Indeed, under the current rules, airports have no say in the way in which the very infrastructure they are creating and investing in is being used by the airlines. This needs to change, and the position paper we have published today . . . clearly shows the imperative for reform.”
—Olivier Jankovec, Director, ACI-Europe, in Alan Dron, “ACI Europe Calls for EU Airport Slot Reform,” Aviation Daily, January 17, 2020

“From an economic and regulatory perspective, an administrative mechanism by its very nature will not lead to efficient or effective outcomes. Some of the proposals for evolutionary changes [to airport slots allocation], such as a revised new-entrant rule, will lead at best to marginal improvements. A revised administrative system will still face some of the same difficulties as today, such as airlines’ incentives to game the system by exploiting the information asymmetry that exists between them and the [slot] coordinators.”
—Senthuran Rudran, UK Competition & Markets Authority (CMA), “Perspectives and Policies—No Time for a Soft Landing,” in “Navigating Towards a More Efficient Airports Slot Allocation Regime in Europe,” European Transport Regulation Observer, October 2019

“Space-based ADS-B is already a reality and is being used to separate air traffic today, with the same performance as domestic en-route radars. ALPA recommends that the FAA incorporate space-based ADS-B in their infrastructure plans for oceanic airspace, and that similar methods of surveillance be developed for installation on spacecraft components, including boosters and payload elements.”
—ALPA, “Safe Integration of Commercial Space Operations into the U.S. National Airspace System and Beyond,” Air Line Pilots Association, October 2019

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The post Aviation Policy News: St. Louis Airport Lease, Airport Funding, Remote Towers, and More appeared first on Reason Foundation.

• Major environmental challenge to aviation
• How close are we to electric airliners?
• Enabling space launch and aviation to live together
• Politics and airline maintenance
• Why isn’t PreCheck expanding?
• News Notes
• Quotable Quotes

Aviation Faces Major Environmental Challenges

Growing concerns about climate change are creating a newly hostile situation for airlines and air travel, especially in Europe. New aviation taxes are on the way in France and Germany, and there is serious discussion at the European Commission about a Europe-wide tax on aviation kerosene (jet fuel). Perhaps more daunting is the growth of European protest movements seeking to “save the planet” by shaming people into not flying (Sweden) or attempting to shut down London Heathrow by flying drones around its edges.

It’s not only aviation organizations, such as the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Airlines for Europe (A4E), that are worried. Financial analysts at Jefferies Financial Group in June released a 51-page report on the threats to airline business due to climate-related concerns. “It may currently be confined to European airlines . . . [but] there is a risk of contagion. More uncertainty ahead feels probable; an adverse event possible. There is a new risk, in our view.”

Alas, as a recent Bloomberg headline put it, “Airline chiefs have no easy answers for flight-shaming critics.” They point out, correctly, that there are currently no alternative fuels available that would materially reduce CO2 output. They note that each new aircraft model is more fuel-efficient than the last one, but the reality is that these are long-lived (20 years or more) vehicles that cannot simply be scrapped.

Just as a discussion point, here are some estimated numbers provided by a long-time airline pilot on an online aviation discussion group approximating the fuel burn on medium-length trips over the past 26 years:

That’s a major reduction in fuel used per passenger mile over the last two and a half decades. And global aviation accounts for only 2.5 percent of worldwide anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Unfortunately, pointing out such information will not suffice. So let’s take a closer look at other aspects of the problem. An Aug. 2 Washington Post story, “Europe’s flight-shame movement has travelers taking trains to save the planet,” used as an example a Swedish traveler to Austria who could have flown there in two hours. Instead, his trip via rail, bus, and ferry took more than 30 hours. And he was convinced that this lowered his carbon footprint. Well, maybe not. A detailed 2008 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a credible environmental group, compared the carbon footprints of various-length U.S. trips via bus, train, car, SUV, and plane. For trips of anywhere from 100 to 2,500 miles, buses had a lower carbon footprint than air travel. Trains (Amtrak, mostly diesel-powered) were slightly less carbon-intensive for trips up to 1,000 miles but worse than planes for 2,500-mile trips. To be sure, most passenger trains in Europe are electric, but simplistic carbon calculators often omit the carbon-intensity of electricity produced by coal (as is the majority of German electricity, for example).

Looked at from an economy-wide perspective, the question that must always be asked is how much CO2 reduction is possible in an industry and at what cost? Many kinds of carbon emissions can be reduced at costs of $50 per ton or less. There is no actual carbon price at which the carbon-intensity of air travel can be significantly reduced in the near term. The implicit assumption of environmental groups and most regulators is that every carbon-based activity must reduce its intensity by the same amount by some future date. But if there are numerous economic activities that can make large reductions at a cost of $20 or $30 per ton, those reductions produce more bang for the buck than spending large sums trying to reduce those that cost $100 or $200 per ton.

This idea is what led economists to the second-best concept of a carbon tax. Under this approach, governments would agree to a mid-range tax, such as $50/ton, applied to all generators of CO2. This would provide a strong incentive for all those industries that could significantly reduce their CO2 output at a lower cost to do so, to save money longer-term. For those (such as airlines) without the ability to reduce CO2 in meaningful amounts in the near term, the carbon tax would increase their cost of doing business and would increase their interest in research on such things as biofuels and other alternative fuels, hybrid and electric propulsion, etc. The tax might also lead to somewhat accelerated retirement of older fuel-guzzling planes.

Many knowledgeable observers have suggested that the revenues from any new taxes that may be imposed on airlines in the name of CO2 reduction be dedicated to research and development on the above kinds of technologies. That strikes me as a sensible approach.

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How Close Are We to Electric Airliners?

If some form of electric propulsion proves feasible and cost-effective for long-distance commercial air travel, everyone connected to aviation would be overjoyed. And the interest is certainly at a high level. One can hardly pick up an issue of Aviation Week without finding articles about start-up electric or hybrid aircraft companies or survey articles about the whole field. A sampling of the latter includes:

• “Plug to Play,” Aug. 20-Sept. 2, 2018
• “UTC’s Electric Transformation,” April 8-21, 2019
• “The French Revolution,” July 1-14, 2019
• “Shaped by Electric,” Aug. 19-Sept. 1, 2019

As a former would-be aeronautical engineer, I’m fascinated by the wide array of new aircraft configurations and proposed propulsion concepts. But I’m learning to take expansive visions of near-term electric airliners with several grains of salt.

First, it is important to note that the few prototypes actually flying or about to fly are conversions of existing single-engine piston planes. Among the most interesting designs from a start-up company is Israel-based Eviation’s prototype “Alice” design, with its design optimized for low drag, large cabin (for nine passengers), and large battery volume.

Second, there appears to be more near-term promise in hybrid electrics, in which a conventional gas turbine generates the electricity to drive distributed propellers. United Technologies, for example, is developing a hybrid 39-passenger Dash 8 with a smaller turbine engine driving a one-megawatt electric motor. The turbine can operate efficiently at a constant power setting throughout the flight, with the motor adding additional power for takeoff and climb; the result is a projected 30 percent fuel savings. UTC thinks hybridization is a good match for short commuter flights, in which a significant portion of the trip is climb and descent. Airbus and Rolls-Royce are likewise developing a hybrid-electric RJ 100, a larger regional jet with a passenger capacity in the 70-seat range. Neither of these prototypes has flown yet, and the weight and range penalties remain to be seen.

Several hybrid-electric studies are underway in Europe, under its Clean Skies 2 program’s Large Passenger Aircraft project. The Dutch project team selected the most promising three concepts from among 35 possible configurations of an A320-class airliner. HS1 is a parallel-hybrid, while HS2 and HS3 are serial-hybrid concepts. The study assumed a not-yet-existent battery capacity of 500Wh/kg (which NASA has dubbed “achievable but not impossible”). Alas, the mass of the hypothetical plane in the HS2 and HS3 concepts was increased by 600 percent and 730 percent, respectively, leading to greater overall energy consumption (and reduced passenger load). HS1, however, looked more promising, with a 10 percent decrease in energy consumption, but this does not count the weight of the additional power conversion, cooling, and distribution systems. My initial assessment is that serious hybrid-electric airliners (other than small ones for short hops) are unlikely to be found feasible.

A few weeks ago NASA announced six-month research grants for single-aisle electrified transport aircraft. The selected firms are Boeing, GE Aviation, and UTC. The aim is to demonstrate the integration of megawatt-plus electrification into regional transport aircraft. These projects all appear to be hybrids. NASA’s mid-term goal is to reduce energy consumption for this category of aircraft by 50-60 percent compared with 2005 technology, sometime in the 2025-2035 time-frame.

Thus, a lot of research and development is going on, but the chances that we will be able to book seats on an all-electric 737 or A321 within the next decade are essentially zero. We’ll be lucky if such aircraft begin service by 2040.

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Enabling Space Launch and Aviation to Live Together

I travel fairly often between Washington, DC, and my home office in South Florida. More than once my return flight has been diverted to the west of Cape Canaveral due to an impending space launch there. This used to be pretty uncommon, but last year saw 31 U.S. launches to orbit and 14 re-entries to earth. An extreme example was the first launch of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy in February 2018. The launch window, in that case, was two and a half hours, and the FAA’s declared Aircraft Hazard Area excluded aircraft operations in that large area for the entire time. More than 500 flights experienced delays that day, and flew an extra 34,841 nautical miles, burning extra fuel and delivering passengers late.

The reason for this kind of interference with air travel is that FAA is still using a manual system, without real-time data inputs about the actual launch. But since 2014 it has had a new system under development to fix this problem: the Space Data Integrator (SDI). The prototype SDI receives telemetry data directly from space vehicle operators and sends it to the FAA Traffic Flow Management System, operating at the FAA Tech Center in Atlantic City and at the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Warrenton, VA. Currently, space missions are being monitored in “shadow mode” at the Command Center, so the large Aircraft Hazard Areas (AHAs) remain in effect, for now.

The Tech Center has also developed a Hazard Risk Assessment Management prototype, and used it to show that the time to reconfigure an Aircraft Hazard Area, based on new, real-time data, can be reduced to seconds. Once this becomes operational, data on real-time AHAs will be shared with TRACONs and centers via their current software, STARS and ERAM. This is called Phase 3 of the ongoing SDI program. And Phase 4 will deliver hazard-avoidance guidance to pilots via Data Comm text messaging or other means.

Overall, this effort will replace a process that is slow, manual, and labor-intensive with one that is dynamic and real-time. This should greatly reduce the size and duration of AHAs, meaning far less interference with aviation operations despite the expected growth in space launch operations. But the big question is when will this needed change be implemented? My most up-to-date source for the above is a detailed article by Bill Carey in Aviation Week, July 1-14, 2019, which provides no timeline.

Complicating the process is a disagreement between aviation trade associations and groups like the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. In commenting on the FAA’s recently proposed revision of commercial space-launch licensing, the aviation groups want the licensing to expand its scope to include effects on other airspace users, not just safety impacts on non-participants on the ground. It appears the airlines and others want to impose the same kind of prescriptive safety regulation on space launch companies as apply to airlines and private aviation. The new space industry argues, correctly in my view, that space launch is still a fledgling, entrepreneurial industry that has made major advances because it has not faced prescriptive regulation. They fear that airlines and others are over-reacting to the recent increase in launches, and would like to see it slowed down, which prescriptive regulation would likely do. Faster implementation of FAA’s SDI would be a far better way forward.

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A Political Attempt to Micromanage Airline Maintenance

Airline mechanics’ unions for decades have opposed the common airline practice of outsourcing portions of their aircraft maintenance to other companies, especially when those companies are based overseas. Earlier this year, Rep. John Garamendi (D, CA) introduced a bill the unions love. Rather than banning such outsourcing (which is practiced by airlines worldwide), it would merely require disclosure. Sounds innocuous enough, but here is how the congressman describes the required disclosure (as reported by Sandy Murdock in JDA Journal, June 13, 2019):

“The bill would require carriers to display notices providing the public with the location at which [the] aircraft most recently underwent heavy maintenance, as well as the date of such maintenance. That information would have to be prominently displayed on carriers’ websites and boarding documents, and airline workers at the ticket counter would be required to communicate it clearly to passengers.”

This seems intended to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt among passengers, which could lead to outcries by consumer groups and put pressure on airlines to bring all maintenance in-house or at least back to the United States. It could also be intended to create enough pressure that Congress would direct FAA to mandate such actions by airlines.

in a recent issue of JDA Journal, Sandy Murdock, a former FAA chief counsel, made several pointed criticisms of this proposal. First, it would not be feasible to provide this information for specific airline flights, without major modification of computer reservation systems. He also noted that ticket wallets are printed months before flights. And how many passengers actually check in at a “ticket counter” these days?

More substantively, Murdock reminds us that aircraft repair stations are already regulated by the FAA, and those in Europe are regulated by European air safety regulators. Lufthansa is a global provider of aircraft maintenance to other airlines and would run afoul of any ban on overseas repair station use. The union contention that outsourced maintenance is risky has been made by unions and their allies repeatedly over several decades, and we have yet to see an accident involving a U.S. airline caused by faulty maintenance at an outsourced repair station. This has been a theme of several muck-raking books in the 40 years since airline deregulation, but there is still no “there” there.

As Murdock’s headline aptly put it, “Rep. Garamendi’s Outsource Maintenance Disclosure Will Not Add One Iota to Aviation Safety.”

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Expanding TSA PreCheck Still Not a Priority

Some years ago. TSA announced a goal of having 20 million PreCheck members. Last summer (July 2018), the agency put the achieved number at only 6.4 million—but you will look in vain if searching the TSA website for any updated total a year later. The best that Acting Deputy Administrator Patricia Cogswell could do in Senate Commerce Committee testimony on Sept. 11, 2019, was to state that 20 percent of those passing through screening checkpoints each day are TSA members.

The only change in PreCheck currently active in Congress is the TSA Credential and Endorsement Harmonization Act of 2019. It would extend PreCheck membership to people who have already passed some other TSA security review, such as those with Transportation Worker Identification Credentials (TWIC). The bill, by Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D, IL) and Todd Young (R, IN), has passed the Senate and gone to the House for consideration.

Apparently down the memory hole is a PreCheck expansion effort that was moving forward last year, with strong support from Airports Council International-North America, the Global Business Travel Association, and the U.S. Travel Association. S. 1872 would permit competing companies, under contract with TSA, to market PreCheck more widely, breaking the long-standing monopoly contract held by MorphoTrust, which last year changed its name to IDEMIA. The key change the bill would permit is to allow the companies to do background checks without requiring fingerprints. The companies would have to develop screening algorithms to vet applicants, and only those algorithms that passed TSA testing would be approved.

There’s a long history of TSA starting and later stopping procurements along these lines, which I have chronicled in this newsletter. The most recent efforts were stymied by a lawsuit filed by Morpho, which led TSA to give up that effort. Last year’s Senate bill, which passed the Commerce Committee in June 2018, would have given TSA clear authority to carry out such a program.

I’m not enough of a security tech analyst to venture an opinion on whether higher-risk applicants could be weeded out via a system that does not include fingerprints. But before TSA’s previous attempts were stymied by litigation, it appeared that the agency had tested one or more industry algorithms and judged them to be effective. If that is the case, then IDEMIA’s objections should not prevail, and competing providers of PreCheck recruitment should be authorized.

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News Notes

Foreign Airlines and Puerto Rico Airport
Economically ailing Puerto Rico and its three international airports have asked federal permission to become a regional air traffic hub for air travel between Europe and Latin America. The idea seems worth a try but is being opposed by two airline unions and Delta Air Lines. They argue that this would somehow lead to “cabotage”—the transfer of passengers between two domestic points by a foreign airline. The Commonwealth government also notes that what it is asking for has already been provided to Alaska and Hawaii.

Poland Plans Revised Airspace, Major New Airport
The air navigation service provider (ANSP) of Poland, PANSA, has begun a consultation with stakeholders over a proposed restructuring of the country’s airspace. The impetus for this is the government’s plan for a Central Transport Hub in the center of the country, including a new Solidarity Airport, located between Warsaw and Lodz. Planned to open in 2028, the new airport expects an initial volume of 45 million annual passengers, with growth potential of 100 million. Airspace modernization will include free-route airspace and performance-based navigation, consistent with the Single European Sky program.

Flyht Signs Airbus Deal for Real-Time Flight Information Reporting
Customers buying the new Airbus A220 may now opt to have Flyht’s automated flight information reporting system (AFIRS) installed during production or retrofitted on in-service aircraft. The system permits an array of services, including real-time flight tracking, data streaming, and equipment monitoring, using the Iridium satellite network. AFIRS is already in use on numerous A320 and A330 aircraft.

Anchorage Seeking P3 for International Terminal
Anchorage International Airport (ANC) is seeking expressions of interest for a public-private partnership (P3) to operate and manage its international terminal. The aim of the P3 would be to bring the terminal up to modern standards and assist in developing more international air service.

Raytheon Enters U.S. Remote Tower Market
Major aerospace supplier Raytheon has partnered with Frequentis USA to offer Remote Virtual Towers as replacements for aging conventional control towers at some 150 U.S. airports. The joint venture is looking at $2 to $3 million for a small-airport RVT, compared with an estimated $8 million or more for a replacement conventional tower. The RVT includes Raytheon’s STARS, which is standard in terminal airspace at more than 600 locations across the country.

100 Percent Airport Employee Screening Proposed
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is studying revised airport security standards that would require all airport employees to be screened daily. TSA is studying the implications of the proposal, which Airports Council International estimates would cost hundreds of millions of dollars per year and might be difficult at some airports. To the best of my knowledge, only three U.S. airports do this: Atlanta, Miami, and Seattle. And as noted in a recent Reuters article, 100 percent screening did not stop a ground service worker at SeaTac from stealing a small plane and crashing it last year.

Phoenix Airport P3 RFPs Due Out This Fall
Sky Harbor Airport is preparing requests for proposals for two P3 projects, both using the design-build-finance-operate-maintain (DBFOM) model. One would replace 3,000 surface parking spaces with a new parking structure; the other would build and operate an upscale airport hotel. Both projects would be financed based on the revenues generated by the project, and the airport would receive a share of the revenue. Four teams have been shortlisted for the parking project and three for the hotel.

North Dakota Seeks Statewide Drone ATC
The state’s legislature this year allocated $28 million for development of a statewide network to manage flights of unmanned air vehicles. It builds on work undertaken by the Northern Plains UAS Test Site, in cooperation with the FAA. It will use radar and radio transmissions, the latter making use of existing towers for the state’s emergency services radio network. With the design nearly completed, the next step will be an RFP for a vendor to install the hardware and software. North Dakota has considerable UAS use in both agriculture and for monitoring utility lines.

Chile Seeks P3 to Upgrade Regional Airports
Last month Chile’s public works ministry published a notice of its intent to offer a long-term P3 to expand two regional airports: Carlos Ibanez del Campo Airport and Balcameda Aerodrome. Interested teams have until October 30th to submit their qualifications for the project. The term of the P3 agreement is expected to be 15 to 20 years.

Russia Considering Remote Towers
Flight Global reported recently that Russian air transport regulator Rosaviatsia has been hosting discussions on remote towers with the transport ministry, the state-run ANSP, and the state civil aviation research institute. The next step is expected to be a pilot project at an airport, to provide practical experience and define the legal and regulatory implications of remote towers.

Another One Bites the Dust in Atlanta
The latest episode in the ongoing corruption scandal at Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson International Airport took place on Sept. 5, when the city’s top contract compliance officer, Larry Scott, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and tax evasion for failing to report $220,000 in income received over five years for “helping companies obtain government contracts.”

Hamburg Airport Hosts New Airport Radar Display
Germany’s ANSP—DFS—has developed a web-based air situation display to add to its existing PHOENIX system that provides apron management and air/ground traffic management. The displays are provided in airport ground vehicles to increase situational awareness. Drivers can view all air and ground aircraft movements in real-time, and plan their routes accordingly.

P3s for General Aviation Airports
The Airport Cooperative Research Program has produced a 74-page report, “Attracting Investment in General Aviation Airports Through Public Private Partnerships.” It should be of interest to city and GA airport officials interested in considering P3s to upgrade such airports. The document is ACRP Synthesis 94 and is available here.

Correction Re ADS-C and Altitude Bursts
An alert reader provided additional information on what is available from ADS-C compared with space-based ADS-B. He noted that under ICAO PANS-ATM (Doc. 4444), aircraft operators using ADS-C can include in their service agreements for procedural airspace a feature that alerts controllers when an aircraft deviates by 400 ft. from its assigned flight level. This is “not as real-time as space-based ADS-B,” but does provide a means of notifying controllers of unexpected deviations.

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Quotable Quotes

“I’m not someone who finds public entities to be an anachronism, but there are instances where it could make sense. If your airport authority is using revenues from its commercial airport to subsidize smaller general aviation facilities, it might make sense to privatize the small airport. Privatization isn’t a cure-all for airports, nor is it something all of you should look at doing. But if there are some issues in the system you can’t address or some challenges that are impossible to tackle due to current restrictions, it might be worth at least kicking the tires on privatization to see if there’s any potential solution.”
—Joe Petrie, “Should Your Airport Be a Private Affair?” Airport Business, August/September 2019

“[I]t is challenges faced in developing a megawatt-class hybrid-electric propulsion system that provide a lasting lesson. Some key startups in the electric-aircraft market are developing their own motors and generators because a supply chain does not yet exist. But getting to megawatt-class and beyond may not prove as easy as they hoped. Enthusiasm for electric propulsion may not be reduced by the premature burnout of the [Aurora] LightningStrike, but an edge of realism has been introduced.”
—Graham Warwick, “Leading Edge,” Aviation Week, May 7-20, 2018

“For many regulations on commercial issues, the market, not the government, should be the ultimate regulator. The pitch for seats or the organization of the boarding is not government business. It’s company business, and the market will arbitrate. If the pitch is too small, nobody will take the flight. When there is a safety issue, the regulator has a legitimate reason to intervene. . . . Usually [legislative proposals] start with an isolated event that someone capitalizes on to make a political point. It’s politically rewarding to capitalize on emotions triggered by a bad event and generalize it to make it appear that airlines are always behaving badly. It’s cynical—and it is easy politics, because it is simple to understand and regulate. We forget that these are isolated events. Millions of people are being properly transported to the right place at the right time.”
—Alexandre de Juniac, in Ben Goldstein, “Fast Five with IATA Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac,” Aviation Daily, Sept. 6, 2019

“Developing a one-size-fits-all surveillance solution [SENSR] can become a recipe for failure. The multitude of requirements to meet the multi-government entities introduces risk in scope management and successful test completion—all classic drivers to large-scale acquisition overruns. Considering the large inventory of current surveillance assets, a system of systems approach can enable the end state. . . . [W]idely distributed, decentralized surveillance assets can enable an agile network that morphs over time to the optimal end-state condition. [Making] the key requirement for all aircraft to be cooperative provides the first step in reducing the current cooperative/non-cooperative long-range radar footprint. . . . Redesigning the airspace could end up pigeonholing users—drones for delivery packages below 400 feet, urban air mobility vehicles operating up to 5,000 feet, upper-airspace users above 60,000 feet, and commercial rockets would all be required to equip so they can be cooperatively surveilled.”
—Frank Frisbie and Vincent Capezzuto, “If a Tree Falls in the Forest: Making a Case for Government-Industry Partnerships,” The Journal of Air Traffic Control, Summer 2019

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The post Aviation Policy News #168 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

This is the first study to present a realistic space industry development scenario, with a 10-year timeline of potential commercial developments, given various legal and policy changes. It draws on historical examples (development of the western United States, ocean shipping, commercial aviation) in which government policies have played key roles, but the private sector’s entrepreneurial innovations and large-scale investments enabled sustainable development. It also explains how the historical government-led development of space capabilities is now limiting the potential of a serious space industry.

Commercial potential discussed in the study includes:

• Tapping space-based clean energy sources;
• Mining asteroids for useful raw materials;
• Developing safe venues for new scientific experiments;
• Sequestering hazardous but valuable debris in space;
• Tapping sources of water in space, for several important uses;
• And using low-gravity and low-temperature properties of space for research and manufacturing.

The study lays out a timeframe for initial development that could be accomplished within the current NASA budget, to include:

• Orbital fuel depots;
• Fuel from water (hydrogen and oxygen);
• A shuttle to and from the lunar surface;
• Lunar facilities to produce water and aluminum;
• And an earth-orbital facility complex to replace the International Space Station.

Over this initial decade, the private sector would eventually assume responsibility for all space transportation, supported either commercially or by contracts from NASA, the Department of Defense, etc. This would free up federal funding for some of the initial infrastructure needed for commercial space development, much as the original transcontinental railroad was developed as a public-private partnership between the federal government and railroads. The government would need to develop a more investor-friendly legal regime for space development and should focus more of NASA’s resources on research, especially on human health in space.

The 86-page study is organized as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Space’s Potential for Solving Major Earth Problems
3. From Exploration to Commercialization
4. U.S. Space Travel: Current vs. New Paradigm
5. A New Approach to NASA Funding
6. Triggering the Virtuous Cycle, without Additional NASA Funding
7. Government’s New Role in Space
8. Recommendations

Authors Jeff Greason and James Bennett have extensive experience in commercial space ventures.

Greason was a founder and initial CEO of commercial space company XCOR Aerospace, with prior experience at Rotary Rocket and Intel. In 2009 he was a member of the Augustine Committee on U.S. human space flight plans. He co-founded the Commercial Spaceflight Federation and served as one of its director for many years. He was involved with the passage of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 and served on the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) for many years. Greason is currently chief technology officer of Electric Sky. He is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a governor of the National Space Society, and holds 25 U.S. patents.

James Bennett was a co-founder of two space-launch start-ups, Starstruck, Inc. and American Rocket Company, which pioneered hybrid rocket propulsion. He served on the 1984 White House Task Force on Space Commercialization and was later a member of the Secretary of Transportation’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC). Currently a consultant on commercial space, he is space fellow of the Economic Policy Center, London, and a fellow of the Centennial Institute in Golden, CO. He is also a former board member of the National Space Society.

Full Study — The Economics of Space: An Industry Ready to Launch

The post New Study Calls for Major Rethinking and Reorganization of U.S. Space Policy appeared first on Reason Foundation.

From the Full Study — The Economics of Space: An Industry Ready to Launch

America’s future success in space depends on restructuring our approach for financial sustainability. While NASA has contracted with the private sector for innovation and cost savings, it continues to use the same antiquated and constraining structure that was first developed for exploring space. This carries an opportunity cost that slows the private sector’s plans to harness space’s many viable materials and properties, compared to the pace it could attain with a more market-friendly approach. Such activities could help solve Earth’s most pressing problems and foster a space industry that sustains itself financially.

Many space-based activities have commercial potential. For example:

• tapping space-based clean energy sources
• mining asteroids for useful raw materials
• developing safe venues for scientific experiments
• upcycling/sequestering hazardous but valuable debris currently in space
• tapping sources of water already in space, to decouple into oxygen and hydrogen for
  space fuels and oxidizers, and to provide radiation shielding mass
• using the low-gravity, low-temperature and other properties of space for many
  activities, including manufacturing and research

These endeavors—as well as our current use of space for communication, navigation, defense, etc.—argue for a change in our approach to space from the current exploration paradigm to one of commercialization. Transportation infrastructure will create the environment for private players to develop space-based industries that use commerce to greatly increase the quality of life and decrease the cost of living. The history of developing frontiers, such as the open seas via shipping practices and the American West via railroads, demonstrates the effects of this evolution in public role.

The basic infrastructure needed should be attainable in 10 to 20 years within the same budget currently appropriated to NASA, with the following features:

• Fuel depots (essentially gas stations) in an appropriate orbit
• Fuel (from water) and water itself
• A shuttle for travel to the lunar surface
• Lunar facilities, for resupply and water and aluminum mining for construction in space
• Orbital facility complex

While this list sounds ambitious, it is technologically feasible currently and would allow the private sector to develop pragmatic use for space’s assets much faster than government provision. This creates a sustainable market-based economy in space that our current approach obstructs. A commerce-based structure, much like we have with the seas and airspace, in which government provides a legal framework where the private sector can flourish, would greatly advance our use of the space environment, maximizing our potential to pursue these activities. Allowing the private sector to continue to advance private launch vehicle technology, and instead spending public funds on infrastructure, not only drives efficiency but creates a financially self-sustaining commercial industry. A great deal of low-hanging fruit is available if (and only if) we make a whole-hearted decision to turn from a merely scouting and near-offshore use of space to being a spacefaring nation.

This can all happen within the current NASA budget. In a commerce-based approach, the private sector develops the space industry and NASA and other government parties buy transport and other key services, such as on-orbit facilities, as customers of the private providers. NASA has already begun buying some space transportation in this manner, just as we currently do with other transportation systems. Extending this good start and making it more consistent is the only way, within the current NASA budget, that leads to comprehensive advancement in space.

This approach does not fault NASA, the Air Force, or the other government agencies in charge of American space launch. Almost all the approaches used by cutting-edge companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin were well known to aerospace engineers and had been thoroughly discussed in aerospace engineering forums for decades. Furthermore, the decision-makers at the top of the relevant government agencies were for the most part intelligent and experienced engineering managers. This study finds the fault lies primarily in the structure of the current system itself, especially the interplay between Congress, the contractor companies, and the agencies charged with maintaining America’s space capabilities. The current structure ties space development to conflicting political requirements and fails to fund projects adequately, making for suboptimal decisions by managers, administrators, and politicians. In contrast, changing to a commerce paradigm, in which government funds infrastructure, lays the foundation for a sustainably funded space industry.

Given a functioning transportation infrastructure, as the private sector develops space industry, government’s role changes to fostering that industry. What space commerce needs from government is a legal framework in which to operate that defines and defends property rights and research (especially on human health in space) that leads to more diverse space activities. Taking cues from agreements on the way various nations regard the bounty of the seas, government can ensure a sustainable and equitable free market environment. With models from other frontier exploration, government should focus on creating the legal framework to allow commerce and private endeavor to flourish.

We cannot imagine how profoundly, comprehensively and quickly technological advancement—when it is commercialized—changes our everyday lives. Every single time, and by orders of magnitude, we underestimate its power to improve ordinary people’s lives once it becomes widely used through commercialization. For example, we cannot each own a jet, but today almost all of us can afford a plane ticket. This is due to the tangible effects of the synergy of technology and commerce. These effects occur so universally that any discussion of new technological frontiers should assume a blind but well-grounded expectation of manifold global rewards if only we have the foresight to encourage its proliferation. Examples from sea, land and air transportation, the Digital Age and countless other endeavors prove that technology combined with commerce triggers comprehensive advancement at a lower cost. America’s future success in space depends on restructuring our approach to accommodate such a vision.

Commercialization Creates a Self-Sustaining Space Industry

Despite the best current efforts of the private sector in this direction, it’s not yet an industry. Yet, launch companies have managed to create a profitable service focusing on occasional launches of very high-value payloads at very high prices. For example, the geosynchronous orbital position for telecommunications is so valuable that even our current highly inefficient way of accessing it is profitable.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch success at one-third the price of a traditional NASA-contracted launch demonstrates the private-sector capability to fulfill many current NASA functions at a fraction of the cost. Such achievement frees up NASA to concentrate on its core research and exploration missions in space and allows the private sector to invest in self-sustaining space-based industry. Developing the industry depends on a certain amount of infrastructure, which can pay for itself by freeing up funds currently used for NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System)/Orion program.

This redistribution of current NASA funding is the key to paradigm change, although there are political problems with terminating the current SLS/Orion program in closely contested states in the 2020 presidential elections—states like Alabama and Florida. A compromise solution might be to push for increased spending on commercial service purchase, while SLS proceeds to flight status since the SLS will run out of surplus Shuttle engines by the early 2020s.

Moving our funding of space activity from solely the exploration function to a mixture of privately funded commercial industry and publicly funded research is signaled by the private sector’s current capabilities, and the commercial-quality resources already identified in space that the current paradigm prevents us from harnessing. Also, changing to a commercial approach allows for efficiencies such as mass production of equipment and standardized designs that can carry cargo or humans with few modifications—which is much cheaper and more effective than what we do now. No matter how much money Congress sinks into status-quo space activities now, utility will continue to decline, making funding increasingly ineffective, and keeping the U.S. space program confined. The first step in progress is systemic change, beginning with policy change. Every single change that makes space operations more like airline operations bears fruit in lower costs, and those changes, in turn, trigger further reductions in costs.

Triggering Large-Scale Advancement in Space Without Additional Federal Funding

Private sector launch allows the market to exploit every available efficiency to develop the cheapest, most effective means of space travel. When NASA becomes a paying customer of such transportation, it fosters the development of simpler and vastly cheaper launch and vessels, which are now the most expensive, difficult and complicated part of space activity. With cheaper launch comes more launch—for the same or less cost. This allows the private sector to exploit its best uses and NASA to do the same, for more NASA emphasis on research and less on transportation.

With NASA as an anchor tenant on a privately contracted space station, funding is available for infrastructure such as orbital facilities, which expands current space activities and makes them better and cheaper to accomplish. Much like the move to railroads did for U.S. exploration and settlement of the American West, transportation infrastructure levers progress in all sectors, usable for commercial, scientific and military pursuits—without increasing NASA’s space activity budget. By redirecting funds, space infrastructure would likely be available by the mid-late 2020s.

The potential exponential cost reduction and technological advancement of such a paradigm shift cannot be precisely quantified. This is especially true in a frontier-like space, where we have only begun to identify caches of resources and uses of physical and material properties of space. This study gives rough order of magnitude cost and timeline estimates based on our current technological capability, knowledge of space resources and current costs, with firm estimates in the near future—through about 2025, when infrastructure would be complete enough to support a fully commercial space industry. From that point, estimates are less firm, as depicted by dotted lines in Figure ES1, as we cannot know which technologies will dominate and which additional resources and efficiencies will proliferate. New ideas will be tested and many will fail. Some companies will fold and others rise up with new perspectives. Such a pattern and outcome is consistent with past technology leaps and acquisition of frontiers. But we know from history that transportation infrastructure catalyzes economic advancement and that industries are created and sustained through private investment and commerce.

This study examines our current radical transformation in space transport as private actors and market forces have slashed the costs of accessing space. These advancements have already greatly reduced costs for not only NASA, but also civilian (mostly satellite) and military space transport as well. These cost reductions, especially for classified military applications, cannot be quantified within the current available budget breakdowns, but are likely to follow similar cost reductions to NASA’s. As with other transportation industries, increasing efficiencies continue to drive down costs, but order of magnitude efficiencies come with infrastructure that can sustain a space-faring industry, where NASA and military and civilian companies become customers on private space transport, as we have seen with shipping and rail industries and even with Antarctic exploration. We argue for shifting to an approach based on our current reality of new private launch capability at a fraction of the cost of government procurement, whereby government invests in infrastructure and allows the private sector to innovate to develop efficient transportation and financially sustainable use of space resources.

Policy Recommendations to Congress

To set NASA and the U.S. space sector on the right path, we make the following recommendations:

Legal/Security Recommendations:

The U.S. government should continue active planning as begun by the current Administration for the defense and internal policing of U.S.-flagged spacecraft, space stations, and extraterrestrial facilities, including consideration of creating a Coast-Guardlike constabulary service for space. The U.S. government should also create a working group, including representatives of the space development community, to examine and make recommendations on the space treaties and international legal environment as they affect the U.S. space sector. Upon its reporting, the U.S. government should give due consideration to its recommendations regarding interpreting, modifying, and/or withdrawing from existing and pending space treaties and agreements. The U.S. should begin discussions with other market-oriented, space-using nations on a multilateral agreement within or without the framework of the Outer Space Treaty, recognizing each other’s property claims on space assets.

Congress should create legislation establishing U.S. recognition of transferable resource rights, analogous to private property rights, based on first capability of reaching space resources, and transferable rights to keep-away zones around space objects, consistent with international law. It should, furthermore, create safe-harbor provisions for buying, selling, and hypothecating such rights on open markets or exchanges and in commercial and financial contracts under U.S. jurisdiction without risk of prosecution for fraud, provided that such rights are appropriately registered and verified by the U.S., consistent with international law.

Procurement Policy Recommendations:

The U.S. government should declare a policy of reliance on the private sector for launch operations and in-space facilities on terms and conditions similar to those of private sector users, starting with commercial resupply and crew transportation to ISS. The baseline future scenario for an ISS should be the government’s letting of anchor-tenant contracts for research space in an orbital facility or facilities.

NASA missions of any sort, including science and exploration missions, should be performed whenever possible by issuing purchase orders for results, such as data gathered from specific targets under specific conditions, rather than contracting for the development of means of obtaining such data. Evidence of market failure, judged by an agency external to NASA, should be required before permitting NASA contracting for construction or operation of spacecraft.

The U.S. government should establish a working group that includes representatives of the space development community to recommend procedures and mechanisms to ensure that NASA’s spaceflight and space operations research supports private sector research and development in the same way NASA and its predecessor, the N.A.C.A., support the aviation industry.

Policy Implementation Recommendations:

The U.S. government, in an agency external to NASA, should establish criteria to determine when the U.S. private sector capabilities in heavy-payload launch become sufficiently reliable that NASA should establish a timetable for exiting the development of large-payload launch vehicles and winding down existing large-payload vehicle launch operations.

The government should select NASA’s future exploration missions (crewed and uncrewed) so they can take on propellant from an on-orbit facility, establish advance purchase contracts that are financially trustworthy for the purchase of that propellant and, with private industry, develop standard interfaces and interconnects for the delivery of that propellant. The industry should be allowed innovative freedom to find the best delivery mechanism. Such a pilot on-orbit refueling facility should be a 10-year objective, including a government open purchase order for delivery of water to an orbital fueling facility at a fixed price equal to the effective price of fuel launched from Earth, which should be unlimited for the first 10 years of operation.

NASA, in its periodic setting of solar system research and exploration priorities, should give preference to dual-purpose probes—i.e., those that serve both scientific research goals and also provide useful scouting data for space resource harvesting, and further possible economic uses of space and its properties.

Full Study — The Economics of Space: An Industry Ready to Launch

The post The Economics of Space: An Industry Ready to Launch appeared first on Reason Foundation.

The report outlines a 10-year plan for shifting from a space exploration model centered on NASA to a commerce-based structure where the private sector assumes responsibility for all space transportation, large payload launch vehicles and launch operations, in-space facilities and more.  Using only NASA’s current funding levels, the study presents a realistic timeline for public-private development of basic space infrastructure, including fuel depots (essentially gas stations) for space vehicles, a shuttle for travel to the moon, lunar facilities to resupply and aid construction in space, and an orbital facility complex that would be part of the foundation for large-scale space exploration, research and commercialization.

The study, by Jeff Greason and James Bennett, two veterans of the private space industry, praises NASA for steps it has taken in recent years to make greater use of commercial capabilities but says far more is needed and offers a plan of thorough reforms that would greatly increase the return the nation receives from its space budget.  The study concludes the private sector’s long-term space efforts could be funded by self-sustaining commercial activities and supplemented by government contracts.  The authors explain that by shifting from a NASA-based exploration paradigm to a commercial space paradigm, the private sector would begin seeking sources of water and clean energy in space. Additionally, the low-gravity and low-temperature properties of space could prompt investment from research and manufacturing and sectors. And companies would be likely to pursue useful raw resources and materials, along with potential ways of sequestering hazardous debris in space.

“A commerce-based structure, much like we have with the seas and airspace, in which government provides a legal framework where the private sector can flourish, would greatly advance our use of the space environment, maximizing our potential to pursue these activities,” said the study’s co-author, Jeff Greason, founder of XCOR Aerospace and co-founder of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. “NASA in this new paradigm would operate more as a venture capitalist, making an investment in the infrastructure that serves both government and commercial transportation needs and fosters an industry that is increasingly self-sustaining financially.”

“The existing space exploration paradigm is plagued by politicization and uncertain funding that makes each project more difficult to get approved, and more complicated risky and expensive to complete,” stated the study’s co-author, James Bennett, a co-founder of two space-launch start-ups, Starstruck, Inc. and American Rocket Company, which pioneered hybrid rocket propulsion. “Private actors and market forces have already started slashing the costs of accessing space. These advancements have greatly reduced costs for not only NASA, but also civilian (mostly satellite) and military space transport as well. Extending this good start and making it more consistent is the only way, within the current NASA budget, that leads to comprehensive advancement in space, ensuring that our reach always exceeds our grasp.”

“The private sector has made impressive advances and this important report shows how Congress can help spur the next generation of advancements,” said Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “For NASA, this study’s recommendations would allow the agency to focus on its core research and exploration missions and free it from many of the political whims and yearly budget battles it is hampered by.”

Report and Resources Online

The Economics of Space: An Industry Ready to Launch
By Jeff Greason and James Bennett
Executive Summary
Full Study (.pdf)
Robert Poole: New Study Calls for Major Rethinking and Reorganization of U.S. Space Policy

About Reason Foundation

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Flores, with the backing of Florida Governor Rick Scott and FDOT Secretary Ananth Prasad, has transformed the freight office structure at FDOT. Previously freight was located in many different modal offices. Trucking was housed in the highway office; air cargo was housed in the aviation office. Today Motro Carrier, Rail, Transit, Seaports, Waterways, Aviation and Spaceports are integrated into one office. As many transportation components are intermodal, combining modes into one office conserves resources and creates connections.

Freight, often overlooked by the public, is a critical part of the transportation network. While the numbers are impressive, the role of freight is more understandable in every day terms. Publix, the 5th largest grocery store in the U.S., helps show the importance of a robust transportation network for freight. Product A arrives via a ship from Jacksonville. The product sits in a port warehouse until it is loaded onto a train bound for South Florida. At the CSX or Norfolk Southern intermodal station, the product is loaded onto a truck. The truck then transports the product to your Publix where you can buy it. This includes three different modes just for one product!

While an intermodal structure may not work for all states, it has been tremendously successful in Florida.

The full interview is available here.

Florida, like most east coast states, saw a deepened Panama Canal as an economic opportunity. But Florida, unlike most states, did not stop with plans for deepening the harbors of its seaports. The Florida Department of Transportation, working with industry partners, has developed a multimodal freight strategy, unlike any other state DOT organization.

Originating from a collaboration between Governor Rick Scott and Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) Secretary Ananth Prasad, the Office of Freight Logistics and Passenger Operations (FLP) combines Motor Carrier, Rail, Transit, Seaport, Waterways, Aviation and Spaceport into one multimodal division. As many transportation components are intermodal, combining modes into one office conserves resources and creates connections between both highway and non-highway modes.

As transportation components are intermodal in nature, there are connections between each modal office. Freight, for example, travels by road, rail, plane and ship. In a traditional DOT, freight would fall into various offices, sometimes embedded within other modal activities. In FDOT, FLP handles all aspects of freight and intermodal mobility. In 2013, FLP was nationally recognized by the Brookings Institution, as one of the Top 10 State and Metropolitan Innovations to watch.

In June 2014, Reason Foundation Assistant Director of Transportation Policy Baruch Feigenbaum interviewed Juan Flores, Administrator for the Freight, Logistics and Passenger Operations Office to discuss the formation of the office, importance of freight to the economy, and growth opportunities for Florida.

Baruch Feigenbaum, Reason Foundation: What is the Freight Logistics and Passenger Operations Office? Why was it created? What is its purpose?

Juan Flores, Administrator, Freight, Logistics and Passenger Operations Office, Florida Department of Transportation: The Freight Logistics and Passenger

Operations Office was created in December of 2011, replacing the former Public Transportation Office. The office serves to communicate and coordinate the working initiatives of all modes within one program.

Under the leadership of Governor Scott, the state has taken a comprehensive look at its economic opportunities. Bill Johnson, former director of PortMiami, brought the multimodal approach to the attention of the governor, who communicated this method to the FDOT Secretary of Transportation Secretary, Ananth Prasad. Prasad liked the idea and began restructuring FDOT’s modal structure.

Two of our top goals include reducing freight congestion and increasing statewide economic development.

Feigenbaum: Many states find a modal structure to be the best approach. Can you explain why the integrated approach is the best fit for Florida?

Flores: For Florida, the intermodal approach also allows for a system of enhanced collaboration. With open discussion and regional outreach through events such as the Intermodal Logistics Center Forum and our Freight Mobility and Trade Plan Leadership and Business Forums (gaining insight and recommendations from industry stakeholders), the FLP Office understands the importance of state-wide collaboration to address the specific needs of the public and private sector in the process of enhancing freight logistics systems.

Making the most of our investments is important, and connectivity is the key in this process. Trucks still transport more freight than any other mode; however it is also important to evaluate how trucking interacts systematically with other freight modes. Combining these modes improves our multimodal planning. This intermodal approach works for us.

Through an intermodal approach, we are also investing in strategies to increase Florida exports through freight system enhancement. Having all modes under one office allows us to create relationships between the modes.

The majority of our 15 seaports focus on either container or roll-on roll-off freight and we are making significant investments in intermodal logistic centers, and seaport dredging and enhancements. Ports are definite economic drivers for Florida: $85.6 billion in waterborne international trade came through Florida ports in 2012, and $90.3 billion was generated in economic value by our seaports.

In addition, our entire commercial and many of our general aviation airports handle freight shipments, working with our seaports in freight connectivity and enhancements. In 2013, Miami International Airport (MIA) was the leading airport for international freight in the country and the 9th in international freight worldwide. MIA is also the world’s largest gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean, handling 84% of all air imports and 81% of all exports from the Latin American region.

In regard to truck transportation, motor carrier has been added to our office and coordinates with truckers, shippers, the other modal offices, Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO), and an in-house Motor Carrier Working Group to address freight transportation issues and needs.

FLP has and continues to work with Florida’s MPO Advisory Committee (MPOAC), to coordinate freight initiatives across the state’s 26 MPOs. For the state to succeed, goods movement planning needs to occur at all levels in a coordinated fashion. Freight does not stop at county, state, or even country boundaries.

We have also worked to include our MPOs early in the planning process. We have found that by talking early in the process, we can speed up project delivery time tables and reduce costs.

For example, an MPO may be opposed to locating a freight terminal in a certain location. However, certain businesses will not locate in that area without that terminal. Negotiations between the MPO, FDOT and the business may allow the freight terminal to be moved to a different location with less community opposition. The location still serves the businesses’ interest and allows the three organizations to move forward as partners rather than adversaries.

Feigenbaum: Are there disadvantages to integrating freight modes?

Flores: I would say there aren’t straight disadvantages, rather challenges. One structural challenge comes in understanding the needs of the individual modes of transportation, on the regional and statewide scale, and implementing strategies which best fit each mode, while still focusing on multimodal advancement. Another challenge, as we change structure from a modal perspective to an intermodal model, is integrating state policy with the direction of the U.S. DOT and federal policy.

To address these challenges, we have worked to develop partnerships on the national level by collaborating with the U.S. DOT, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). FDOT hosted the U.S. DOT leadership team last year, for a site tour and visit of the agency’s investments in Southern Florida, including: Miami Intermodal Center (MIC), PortMiami, FEC Railroad and Intermodal Transfer Facility (ITCF), Port Tunnel, Port Everglades Cruise Operations, Miami Air Cargo facility and MRO Hanger, I-95 Managed lanes, Space Coast and Kennedy Space Center.

In addition, tourism provides another challenge for Florida. In 2012, Florida received a record of 89 million visitors. The annual number of tourists coming to Florida is expected to reach 106 million by 2040, an increase of over 18% from 2012. This means more residents and tourists will use our transportation system. We coordinated $200 million in tourism-related freight projects that will improve goods movement in the Orlando and Tampa areas.

Feigenbaum: Are there other states that have freight offices similar to Florida’s?

Flores: Several states have similar features. Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia and Washington State are a few states that have intermodal features

The rest of the interview is available here.

The post Establishing a Multimodal Freight Program in Florida appeared first on Reason Foundation.

A. BCFC Outlines $795 Billion in Federal Budget Savings

B. Congress Takes on Postal Service Reform-Again

C. Space Privatization Update

D. ANALYSIS: Google, Facebook, Antitrust and the “Public Good”

E. ANALYSIS: Private Sector is Best-Positioned to Lead Cybersecurity Policy

F. ANALYSIS: Privatization of Financial Regulation is Not Impossible

» Return to Annual Privatization Report 2013 homepage

The post Federal Privatization Update appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Space Privatization Update

By Adam Summers

The year 2012 was a banner year for the private space industry. Since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the final space shuttle missions and retired the shuttle fleet during the summer of 2011, a new era of space travel and exploration has begun, one that will be more dependent on the private sector.

Crew and Cargo

NASA will be replacing the shuttle fleet with privately designed and built spacecraft. To that end, the government is subsidizing private spacecraft development through the Commercial Crew Development program. In April 2011, NASA awarded $269.3 million to four private space companies-including Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX and headed by PayPal and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk; Blue Origin LLC, which is owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos; Boeing Co.; and Sierra Nevada Corp.-to develop capabilities to transport cargo and a crew of up to seven astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Twenty-two companies competed for the grants.

The first mission by a private company to dock a space vehicle with the ISS highlighted the year. In May 2012, SpaceX launched its unmanned Dragon capsule atop its Falcon 9 rocket and successfully docked the craft with the ISS in a demonstration mission. In October 2012, the vehicle made its first cargo run to the ISS, carrying a payload of approximately 1,000 pounds of supplies and scientific experiments and then returning roughly three weeks later with 2,000 pounds of gear. The October mission marked the first of 12 such cargo runs SpaceX will make under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. In early March 2013, SpaceX launched its second ISS cargo mission, carrying nearly 1,300 pounds of tools and supplies for research experiments. There was a technical glitch shortly after the Dragon capsule separated from the rocket’s second stage, as three of the capsule’s four thruster pods were not operating, but the problem was resolved with hours and Dragon proceeded to reach the ISS without further incident. As of this writing, the capsule is still docked at the ISS. After a three-week stay at the ISS, the capsule returned to Earth with roughly 2,700 pounds of gear, including space station hardware, research results and education experiments.

Orbital Sciences is looking to join the private ISS cargo mission club in the near future, and has garnered a $1.9 billion NASA contract to fly eight cargo missions between 2013 and 2015 using its Cygnus spacecraft and Antares launch vehicle. The company conducted a “hot fire” test of the first stage propulsion system in late February 2013, and expects to launch a test flight in March or April. If all goes as planned, a demonstration cargo mission to the ISS will likely take place in May or June.

Private sector advances are also being made toward manned missions to the ISS. NASA will be selecting companies for certification contracts, which offer $10 million in seed money to develop their technologies, and will start accepting bids for its commercial crew contract later in the year. The contract will be awarded in early 2014, with manned missions expected within the following few years. SpaceX is currently redesigning its Dragon capsule to accommodate a seven-person crew, and will be testing the “Dragon 2” throughout 2013. Other chief contenders include Boeing’s Commercial Space Transportation 100 (CST-100) spacecraft, to be launched atop Atlas 5 rockets built by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser space plane, which is also designed to be launched on an Atlas 5 rocket.1

SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and other private space companies promise to offer significant cost savings over NASA and the space shuttle program, as well as the cost of hitching a ride on Russian spacecraft, which the U.S. space program has been relying upon in the interim to get supplies and crew to and from the ISS while private-sector technologies are still being developed and perfected. Space shuttle missions cost about $1.5 billion per mission, but SpaceX claims it can reduce the launch price to between $50 million and $100 million, depending upon the rocket used.2 Trips aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft are cheaper than the former U.S. space shuttles, at approximately $62 million a seat, but are still pricey compared to the $20 million per seat offered by SpaceX’s design.3 SpaceX is trying to increase its cost advantage further still by developing a reusable orbital booster system, in which both of the rocket’s stages would return to the launch site and land vertically on landing gear after delivering a spacecraft to orbit. This would dramatically lower the cost of spaceflight since each Falcon 9 rocket costs $50 million or $60 million to build but the fuel and oxygen needed for a launch only costs about $200,000.4

The U.S. government is looking to the private sector to improve the Space Station itself as well. In December 2012, Bigelow Aerospace signed a $17.8 million contract with NASA to build an inflatable space habitat that would be attached to the ISS. The Bigelow Expanded Aerospace Module (BEAM) may be used for additional storage space, and will be transported to the ISS by SpaceX or Orbital Sciences.5

Satellites

In addition to cargo and manned spaceflight, the private sector has continued to develop a flourishing satellite launch industry. There are currently several hundred operational satellites (and thousands of unused ones) in orbit around Earth. They provide communications, navigation, weather, observation and research information. Over the next five years, about 80 planned commercial satellite launches are scheduled.6 The military has, for many years, tapped United Launch Alliance to launch its satellites. And in December 2012 the U.S. Air Force signed two deals with SpaceX for satellite launches in the next couple of years. The company will receive $97 million to launch NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) solar telescope and space weather monitor in late 2014 and $165 million to launch the military’s Space Test Program-2 space vehicles-the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate-2 (COSMIC-2) climate monitor and the Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX), which will conduct radiation research for the Department of Defense-in mid-2015.

In addition to launching entire satellites, government agencies are increasingly looking to take advantage of cost savings and more quickly take advantage of new technologies and potential new research discoveries by hitching a ride on private satellites. In the latter case, under such “hosted payload” agreements, a government agency might contract with a private company to add an instrument to a commercial satellite, saving the time and expense of building and launching its own satellite. Agencies such as NASA and the Department of Defense are interested in taking advantage of such public-private partnerships. “We see hosted payloads as a huge opportunity,” said Lt. Gen. Ellen M. Pawlikowski, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center at Air Force Space Command. “We really see that commercial satellites will play a key role. It’s not a question of whether they will, it’s just how they will.”7

The growing number of operating satellites and inoperable ones that have become space junk has opened the door to a new niche satellite market. Companies such as ViviSat and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) are developing spacecraft capable of repairing and refueling satellites already in orbit. ViviSat is building two craft, which it calls “Mission Extension Vehicles,” and hopes to expand to a fleet of 10 or more vehicles over time. “There is demand for new solutions that can deal with the majority of satellites that can go to end of life with all their subsystems working,” said ViviSat chief operating officer Bryan McGuirk. “It is, in essence, a wasted opportunity for those operators to have to send them to deep space. Added McGuirk, “There are a substantial number of satellites out there coming to retirement that would be candidates. There is a long-lasting opportunity for us to solve problems in the market.”8

Mining Space Resources

Still other private companies see opportunities for mining natural resources in space. Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries seek to mine some of the 9,500 asteroids that have been found in orbits that pass near Earth for materials such as metals and gases. As a Reuters article explains,

“About 1,000 small asteroids relatively close to Earth are discovered every year. Most, if not all, are believed to contain water and gases, such as methane, which can be turned into fuel, as well as metals, such as nickel, which can be used in three-dimensional printers to manufacture components,” David Gump, chief executive of Deep Space Industries, said.9

Deep Space Industries seeks to use the materials collected to create fuel and solar cells in space. It expects to launch an exploratory mission to survey an asteroid in 2015, and hopes to have commercial quantities of propellant available for sale by 2019 or 2020.

Others see the moon as ripe for exploration and extraction. To advance these efforts, the Google Lunar X Prize is offering $30 million in prizes to privately funded teams able to “safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, have that robot travel 500 meters [1,640 feet] over the lunar surface, and send video, images, and data back to the Earth” by the end of 2015.10 Twenty-five teams are currently competing for the prize. In addition to the $20 million grand prize, there is a $5 million prize for second place, and the remainder is offered as bonus prizes for meeting certain goals such as travelling more than 500 meters (1,640 feet) across the lunar surface, landing near previous government mission landing or crash sites, and detecting water.

Finding water is a major goal for both government space agencies such as NASA and private companies such as X Prize competitor Astrobotic Technology Inc. In addition to its nutritional benefits for astronauts, water could be broken down to hydrogen and oxygen in order to provide air to breathe or fuel for spacecraft. Astrobotic signed a contract with NASA in April 2012 to help develop space resource mining technologies. The company seeks to land a rover on the moon in October 2015 and find water.11

Space Tourism

For some, the sheer journey, views and experience of space and weightlessness are the goal. The company that appears closest to satisfying these desires is entrepreneur and billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. While the company has signed a $4.5 million deal with NASA for up to three chartered flights to suborbital space to conduct scientific experiments, it was established primarily to offer space tourism to consumers. The company reports that “several hundred people from around the globe” have already reserved their seats, at a cost starting at $200,000 a ticket, for the chance to experience weightlessness and a view from space.12 Between October 2010 and December 2012, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo has logged 23 glide flights. It is expected to perform at least two more glide flights before its first rocket-powered test flight, which is expected to take place sometime during 2013. When fully operational, SpaceShipTwo will be attached to a carrier aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, and launched from the air.

Another company competing for the suborbital space tourism market is XCOR Aerospace. XCOR plans to test its prototype Lynx I craft throughout 2013. The Lynx I is not designed to break the 62-mile border between the Earth’s atmosphere and space, but after 2013 XCOR will begin manufacturing the Lynx Mark II, which will fly into suborbital space.13

There are even lower-tech alternatives to getting a view of the Blue Planet. Spanish company zero2infinity is testing a helium balloon with a pressurized passenger pod, nicknamed a “bloon,” capable of rising to a height of 22 miles (118,000 feet) during a four-hour journey. While this distance is only a little over one-third of the way to the official edge of space, it would still be high enough for passengers to see “the curvature of the Earth, the black starry sky in daylight, and the thin blue layer of the atmosphere that protects us from the Cosmos.”14 Flights can carry four passengers, will last about four hours, and cost €110,000 ($149,000). Commercial flights are expected to begin in 2014 or 2015.

For those who want to travel deeper into space, a team of former NASA executives has formed Golden Spike Co. to offer people travel to the moon and back. The price tag is certainly not cheap, however, at $1.5 billion for a two-person crew, and some space experts have questioned the financial viability of the venture. Potential customers include governmental space agencies, corporations and wealthy individuals. The company plans to keep costs relatively low by using rockets and capsules that are either already in use or are currently being developed. It will need to create specially designed spacesuits and a lunar lander. In January 2013, Golden Spike announced that it had contracted with Northrup Grumman for the design of the lander. Missions could launch as soon as the end of the decade.

Colonizing Mars?

Some visionaries want to go even farther than the moon. SpaceX’s Elon Musk has generated headlines by talking of his long-term goal to create a human colony on Mars and eventually transport tens of thousands of people each year to the Red Planet.15 According to Musk, key technological improvements-such as developing completely reusable rockets, which he estimates is five to six years away, and the ability to produce methane fuel from natural resources on Mars-are necessary to bring costs down and make such missions feasible.16

And Musk is not the only one talking about colonizing Mars. Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One was formed with a goal of establishing a colony of four people on Mars, with hopefully many more to follow. The venture seeks to cover the estimated one-way, $6 billion cost by creating a global reality television show depicting the selection of the initial astronauts and the crew’s first years on Mars and selling corporate sponsorships and the broadcasting rights to the series. After pre-screening the astronaut candidates, viewers would even be able to help select the crew. The novel financing plan took shape after Mars One co-founders Bas Lansdorp and Arno Wielders saw the revenues that were generated by the Olympic Games. According to Lansdorp,

[The idea] was triggered when I saw the revenue figures of the International Olympic Committee. When my co-founder Arno Wielders and I saw these numbers, we contacted Paul Römer, a well-known Dutch media expert, and discussed the media value of putting humans on Mars. After that we talked to many different experts in the field, all of whom are convinced the media value is far greater than the cost associated with our mission to Mars.17

If all goes as planned, Mars One intends to land its first astronauts on Mars in 2023.

Conclusion

The growth of the private space industry has been dramatic in recent years, and it seems that more exciting developments are on the horizon. As with any start-up technology industry, markets and technologies are developing rapidly, and often in unpredictable ways. While private-sector space ventures were once considered unthinkable, they are now becoming the norm. Whether in transportation, research, exploration, resource mining, tourism or even the colonization of celestial bodies, the private sector is set to play an increasing role in mankind’s efforts to expand its presence and knowledge beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

» Return to Annual Privatization Report 2013: Federal Government Privatization
» Return to Annual Privatization Report 2013 homepage

Endnotes

1 Rob Coppinger, “Private Space Travel to Make Giant Leaps in 2013,” Space.com, January 1, 2013, http://www.space.com/19086-private-space-travel-leaps-2013.html (retrieved February 4, 2013).

2 Jessica Berman, “US Space Program Goes Commercial,” VOANews.com, April 27, 2011, http://www.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/US-Space-Program-Goes-Commercial-120822324.html (retrieved February 5, 2013).

3 “SpaceX Completes Key Milestone to Fly Astronauts to International Space Station,” SpaceX.com, October 20, 2011, http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20111020 (retrieved February 5, 2013).

4 John Antczak, “SpaceX to attempt fully reusable orbital booster,” Associated Press, September 30, 2011, http://news.yahoo.com/spacex-attempt-fully-reusable-orbital-booster-231642440.html (retrieved February 5, 2013).

5 Dan Leone, “NASA Deal May Put Inflatable Private Module on Space Station,” Space.com, January 9, 2013, http://www.space.com/19200-nasa-bigelow-inflatable-module-space-station.html (retrieved February 5, 2013).

6 Clara Moskowitz, “Miltary & NASA Look to Partner with Commercial Satellite Industry,” Space.com, December 27, 2012, http://www.space.com/18588-military-nasa-commercial-hosted-payloads.html (retrieved (February 5, 2013).

7 Ibid.

8 Clara Moskowitz, “New Satellite Will Be Space Mechanic, Gas Station,” Space.com, November 16, 2012, http://www.space.com/18520-space-gas-station-vivisat-satellite.html (retrieved February 5, 2013).

9 Irene Klotz, “Into deep space: Second U.S. firm takes aim at mining asteroids,” Reuters, January 23, 2013, http://news.yahoo.com/deep-space-second-u-firm-takes-aim-mining-005050424–sector.html (retrieved February 5, 2013).

10 “Prize Details,” googlelunarxprize.org, undated, http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/prize-details (retrieved February 5, 2013).

11 “Private Moon Race May Spark Lunar ‘Water Rush,'” Space.com, November 20, 2012, http://www.space.com/18549-moon-water-private-spaceflight.html (retrieved February 5, 2013).

12 Overview – Space Tickets,” virgingalactic.com, undated, http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/space-tickets/ (retrieved February 5, 2013).

13 Coppinger, “Private Space Travel to Make Giant Leaps in 2013.”

14 FAQ – Flight Experience,” zero2infinity Web site, undated, http://inbloon.com/en/faq/flight-experience.php (retrieved February 5, 2013).

15 Colin Lecher, “How Does SpaceX Plan to Move Thousands of Humans to Mars?” Popular Science (PopSci.com), November 28, 2012, http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/what-do-we-know-about-elon-musks-plan-mars-colony (retrieved February 5, 2013). See also Carl Franzen, “What We Know About Elon Musk’s Proposed Mars Colony,” TPM Idea Lab, November 27, 2012, http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/what-we-know-about-elon-musks-proposed-mars-colony.php? (retrieved February 5, 2013), and Chris Anderson, “Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars,” Wired, November 2012, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/ (retrieved February 5, 2013).

16 Ibid.

17 Mike Wall, “Colonizing Mars: Q&A with Mars One Chief Bas Lansdorp,” Space.com, January 23, 2013, http://www.space.com/19398-mars-one-martian-lansdorp-founder-interview.html (retrieved February 5, 2013).

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