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Saturday, April 16, 2022

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. 



5 comments:

  1. No argument about the complications with Canaveral, but as not-a-pilot, I'm thinking you might want to re-explore the situation of Boca Chica, being all of a couple miles from the international border, and the Coastal ADIZ.

    Unless having ICE aircraft (or more) off your wingtip calling you on GUARD freq. is what someone thinks of as a good time.

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  2. To further screw general aviation, just south of Canaveral is Cocoa Beach, which is a GO area, but right south of that is... Patrick Space Force Base, which, since 2001, has pretty much been a NO-GO area.

    And same with boats. Lots of ocean-front property, which is controlled. Lots of lagoon-front property, which is controlled.

    Depending on what is going on at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (yes, changed to the Space Force officially on 9-Dec-2020) the actual facility or portions of the facility may be closed to even card-authorized personnel. Like when the X-37B comes landing...

    Don't even think of flying a drone anywhere near the whole area. That stuff is highly frowned upon, as in, armed vehicles with .50cal and 40mm grenade launchers come to find you frowned upon. The same thing happens if you are authorized to be there and take a wrong turn in the middle of nothingness.

    And I do mean nothingness. The whole area is a combined mangrove swamp and palmetto scrub (palmetto bushes, short oaks, some pine, and lots of invasive tree species like Brazillian Pepper) which all looks like every other square inch of mangrove swamp and palmetto scrub. People who have never been stuck deep in mangrove swamps and palmetto scrubs have no idea how mind-bogglingly similar every square inch of said land is. Easy to get lost in even with marked roads. And you don't want to turn down the wrong road. As you are being watched. Trust me, THEY know where you are...

    I wish SpaceX would build a tower or 4 at the Roberts Road site and put web cameras up, or authorize someone like Lab Padre or Boca Chica Gal to mount their cameras up. Kind of like what VirtualRailFan has done all over the US with cameras that watch... railroads.

    Hmmmm... VirtualSpaceFan. That's a yousetube channel I'd watch. Set up some cameras at all the test facilities and engine test stands and covering the manufacturing plant parking lots.

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  3. There's a 10,000 ft (AGL) minimum around Boca Chica and NO drones(!), and of course SpaceX issues NOTAMs and NOTMARs when launching/testing. They also let Boca Chica villagers know of any testing events that *may* result in overpressures (when things go BANG or BOOM or CRASH!) SN11's debris field was pretty wide...

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    1. No drones over the KSC either. I forgot to mention that.

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  4. Fascinating, SiG. Thanks for posting it. I bought all the current Sectional and Terminal Area Charts for around here because they're cool to have and have lots of interesting information on them.

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