The launches out of Spaceport America are mostly just ballistic tests to
prove out all the steps before the rocket lights. In those cases, the dart
is basically a piece of artillery, that is at least somewhat constrained by
physics. The only thing it should be able to reach is empty desert and
White Sands.
For orbital flights they've been talking about an over-water range like
most people use.
~Jon
On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 10:47 PM Robert Steinke <robert.steinke@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I suppose no one on this list probably knows, but what is their risk
mitigation plan for launching over land? They certainly can't argue that
their vehicle will burn up on re-entry. Maybe they have a trajectory that
takes them over the gulf of Mexico before going over too much population?
On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 9:40 PM Jonathan Goff <jongoff@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Troy,
Given what I know about their system, the biggest risk would be being
downrange of their launcher, but that's the whole point of launching east
over white sands. In fact, I think for this next stage, they're mostly
going to be throwing big darts, not even messing with the rocket part right
away.
~Jon
