They just scrubbed the Antares launch of Cygnus to ISS, because the range was red due to a boat downrange. Am I the only person who thinks that this rule is stupid, and needs to be revised? As I said on Twitter, I don’t care if there’s an armada of boats in the box, as long as someone is flying a banner “AT OWN RISK.” Holding up a flight over this is insane. It’s the kind of hypercaution that keeps us from making more rapid progress in space.
16 thoughts on “A Boat In The Box”
Comments are closed.
yeah that is *REALLY* stupid.
* odds of rocket failure (.01)
* odds of hitting any where near the boat (.0001)
Multiply that and you get very, very close to zero.
Odds that any person actually hit from debris while being in that exclusion zone would be considered a complete idiot: 100%. Consider it a Darwin Award.
Perhaps they’re worried about anti aircraft missiles
That might be a legitimate concern, if they demanded that everyone evacuate the takeoff path for airliners for every flight. Because, you know, they’re a lot easier to shoot down than an accelerating rocket.
There are maybe different ways of looking at this.
Apparently a man bumped into British PM John Cameron and was wrestled to the ground by his security detail until they could assertain that the man was just a sanctimonious jogger rather than an assassin planting a poison capsule, as happened in London to more than one defector from the Iron Curtain during the Cold War and maybe even some time post.
I mean what are the chances that if some person on the street bumps John Cameron that it is an assassin from the Former Soviet Union or maybe the Just Forming Caliphate State? Close to zero. Odds are it is a jogger, no, make that a “runner”, a dude who looks just as stoopid as Russell Brand. Highly likely, especially given that some “runners” are even more sanctimonious than bicyclists on a college campus that their activity makes them paragons of virtue and that people should just scatter out of their path so as to not slow them down, and that means you too Mr. Cameron, who do you think you are, the Queen of England?
The man was interviewed and rather “put out” that he was “jumped by a group of coppers.” Dunno, he seems like the kind of guy who would say that it was “sad” (oooh, I hate that usage of that word, and the folks around here who talk that way know who you are) that the PM wouldn’t duck out of his path, and that these law enforcement types were fascists or perhaps worse yet, body parts that I won’t describe on Rand’s fine site.
Tell me, the boaters were warned to stay out of the “down range” — I wouldn’t think that they just stood there in the pedestrian crosswalk on University Avenue waiting for the cyclists not- yielding to pedestrians to clear before launching their rocket, some boater ignored the warning, and the launch was scrubbed — I guess they did stand in the pedestrian crosswalk, the other one on University Avenue with the walk signal, and wait for the cyclist cross traffic to finish running the red light?
Rand, this is not a problem of over caution from rocket people. This is the strange guy who looks like Russell Brand bumping the PM and then expecting an apology. This is the Democratic (note how I didn’t say Democrat) New York Governor and the Republican New Jersey Governor agreeing to ask the most powerful political force in the land (The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) to declare a quarantine of persons entering our great Nation through Port Authority facilities who are arriving from the Hot Zone, only to be overruled by an even more powerful authority (Valerie Jarrett).
The boat downrange is not The Issue, Rand. The boat is but a pasteboard mask for the end of common sense in our land.
Actually, it’s David Cameron, or Dave, as he likes to say “Call me Dave”. He also popularised “chillax” for chill out and relax…
John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Gillian Duffy, and David Cameron being the recent leaders of the UK, thanks for the correction.
“The boat downrange is not The Issue, Rand. The boat is but a pasteboard mask for the end of common sense in our land.”
Sad.
No Paul. In a sane world you buy liability coverage and get on with life (launch the rocket.)
In a sane world, the captain of the boat that caused the scrub would have to pay every penny of the cost of the scrubbed launch. This would only need to happen once.
I’ve thought about this some more. The skipper shouldn’t have to pay anything. But neither should his estate or company be able to sue if they had ample warning of an imminent launch. If he assumed the risk, that’s his problem. And the US Coast Guard should be able to enforce the exclusion zone out to the 12 mile limit; if boats are still in the exclusion zone outside the 12 mile limit, launch anyway.
The criterion for hitting a ship with any fragment is 1E-05. That is the same as your odds of dying at a dance party. But we can’t take any chances, can we? What if the ship had nuns and orphans on it? Well? What about that? If a bad day happened, it would be the end of space transportation forever.
Just from a pure liability perspective, this makes no sense. Even taking Rand’s high $50M insurance value for a human life, even if the rocket was guaranteed without a doubt to hit the boat and the boat had 2 people on it it still doesn’t make sense to call off the launch. Also, boaters are not uninvolved 3rd parties. They accept responsibilities when they go out on the water, and included in those responsibilities is being aware of any restricted zones in the area on that day. They enter the water at their own risk. This is an absolutely absurd policy.
I’m sorry, but it isn’t permissible to have any casualties from a launch. Not any. Ever. Otherwise space transportation will be shut down forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ed, when I was a teenager, my mother stopped a 747 from leaving JFK so she could get on to say good-bye. While the other passengers were wondering who the hell I was, I was wondering how much it was costing the airline.
While I fully agree with the above comments, never underestimate the willingness and ability of scumbag lawyers to file multimillion dollar lawsuits should anyone get hurt downrange regardless of the fact that they were in a restricted area. Sierra Nevada has a billion dollar contract with NASA so the lawsuit would likely be a sizeable percentage of that.
I do hope the boat owner is fined for the cost of the launch scrub. That’s likely to be in the tens of thousands of dollars, at least. Fine him and publicize the hell out of the fine to discourage others from doing the same thing.