Correction to Wednesday' Post

In talking about the ability for space coverage reporters to overfly the cape, I had said, "I think it's a bit more difficult for independent journalists here than in south Texas; over there they can set up remotely controlled cameras and run them all day, as Lab Padre does.  While the KSC isn't a no-fly zone, small plane flyovers are more expensive and can't provide the continuous coverage that ground-mounted cameras can." 

I have a good friend who's a pilot and he let me in on the real situation, letting me know I was too optimistic and lenient.   While it technically isn't completely a no-fly zone, it essentially is.  There's no such thing as flying over the bulk of the Kennedy Space Center without previous approval to do so. It used to be possible, but those days are long gone.  My friend was thoughtful enough to include a clip of the Sectional chart for the area; in fact, two such clips: one showing a wider look and one showing a more zoomed in area.  Pilots will understand this better than lay people, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of it wasn't clear without good familiarity with the area.  First, the wider area, from around Daytona well north of the area, south to the city of Rockledge, just south of Cocoa. 

The wide circular sector offshore the area is the area that is most likely to get shut down both for aircraft and boats.  Rocket parts are known to fall in the area, sometimes even intentionally.  This is the keep out zone that we hear of launches being delayed because of boats or aircraft were in the area, such as this story not even three full months ago.  Every one of the cryptic alphanumeric messages (R-2932, R-2933, W-137G, etc.) is a reference to a document to read and comply with.  

Air traffic flying to and from South Florida (the big, blue cities) tend to go well off the east coast or a few miles inland in this area, depending on destination so they're unaffected by all this.  While difficult to see, the coast of mainland Florida and most of the air space over the western side of the Indian River lagoon tend to be available to small planes.  It's best not to consider flying over the eastern shore of the Indian River because there are sections of the shore in the blue keep out area over the Merritt Island portion of the KSC.  Here's where the zoomed in clip is more helpful.

Along the coast stretching from just above the bottom right (SE) of the clip toward the NE, and then to the west of north, you'll see little black squares; those mark launch pads.  Never expect to be allowed to fly over launch pads.  The inverted triangles near the black squares seem to indicate the towers used for lightning protection, or other towers on the property.  There are two elongated dark blue rectangles, much longer than wide; those mark the two principal runways on the base: lower right belongs to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station while the longer one at the middle top is the former Shuttle Landing Facility, which is now in general use by NASA. 

One of my questions concerned the Roberts Road SpaceX expansion.  Videos of that area (and Blue Origin's facility) tend to look as if they were shot from a more vertical perspective, if not nearly straight down during a fly over, while views of the pads are clearly shot from farther west at a more acute angle.  My friend says that the area west and south of of the shuttle landing strip, which we think includes the Blue Origin facility and possibly the Roberts Road facility, is more lightly controlled.  Casual pop-up requests to the air traffic controller on duty might be possible there, but you still need permission to enter.  

The farther east you venture, the more prior permission and clearances are needed.  Complicating things further is that the south end of Cape Canaveral borders the property of Port Canaveral, which hosts (among other things) a submarine basin that the Navy wants to keep you from flying over.  There are controlled, Class B air spaces around major airports in the Orlando area, Tampa/St.Petersburg, Daytona and Melbourne.  There are heights above which certain avionics boxes are required to fly legally, and the general appearance of those is that of an upside down layer cake; smaller diameters at the bottom, larger at the top.  It's a difficult place to fly for the smaller, general aviation aircraft's pilot new to the area.  The last time I heard someone talking about this they said it's not possible to fly across the state, say from Melbourne to Tampa for instance, on a straight compass heading for the whole trip without steering around "keep out areas."

Just for comparison, take a look at the sectional air chart around Starbase Boca Chica.  Practically no restrictions at all.