Assessing impact of space launch and reentry operations on the National Airspace System (NAS) using historical traffic patterns

The demands on space access for civilian, commercial and military purposes are rising rapidly. Also, the types of operations are evolving with the introduction of commercial space operators and new launch vehicle concepts such as horizontal launches. For each launch and reentry operation, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) typically blocks large volumes of airspace and activates a set of Special Use Airspaces (SUAs). The size, shape and time frames of these airspaces, known as Aircraft Hazard Areas (AHAs), are based on factors such as launch type and the risk profile of the launch vehicle. Exclusion of these airspaces from other NAS operations requires flights to route around these areas and hence experience delays and additional operating expenses. In this paper, an approach is proposed for estimating the impact of a future space launch or reentry operations by measuring the effect of delaying or routing flights around the blocked airspaces on a sample of historical days. There are two main steps in this method. The first step is the selection of a sample of historical days with traffic similar to the schedule launch day. The second step is the assessment of the effect of delaying or rerouting the affected flights around the airspaces in the selected historical days. The results of assessment for each historical day are aggregated and reported as the mean value with expected range (90% confidence around the mean) and likely highest (90th percentile of the distribution) value.