The billionaire space race is making life hard for airlines
On February 6, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its largest rocket into the blue Florida sky. Onboard was “Starman,” a dummy strapped into the billionaire’s cherry red Tesla roadster. Minutes later, fans cheered as Musk topped himself by nailing a simultaneous landing of the Falcon Heavy’s boosters. It was arguably a turning point for the commercial space age.
Airlines were somewhat less thrilled. On that day, 563 flights were delayed and 62 extra miles added to flights in the southeast region of the US, according to Federal Aviation Administration data released by the Air Line Pilots Association, or APA.
America’s national airspace is a finite resource, and the growth of commercial launches has US airlines worried. Whenever Musk or one of his rivals sends up a spacecraft, the lowly industry that operates closer to the ground must avoid large swaths of territory and incur sizable expenses.
Most of the commercial activity to date has been focused on Cape Canaveral, the Air Force post on Florida’s Atlantic coast, where Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin base their stellar operations. It is one of 22 active US launch sites, and a number of other locales—including Brownsville, Texas; Watkins, Colorado; and Camden County, Georgia—are pursuing new spaceport ventures to capitalise on commercial space activity.
Bezos is blasting off from land he owns in West Texas; Virgin Group founder Richard Branson plans to launch tourists from southern New Mexico as early as next year; and Musk is planning an eventual new SpaceX launch pad in extreme southern Texas, near South Padre Island. While this trio of space tycoons currently dominate the nascent industry, more companies will soon join the party. And the potential for what may eventually be daily launches carries major implications for air travel.