Coast Guard investigating cruise ship that violated SpaceX launch zone
The Coast Guard has started an investigation of the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Harmony of the Seas, that violated the launch zone of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch on January 30, forcing a scrub.
The ship veered into the exclusion zone along a Falcon 9 rocket’s flightpath just before the 6:11 p.m. EST launch, forcing SpaceX to stand down from the mission and prepare for a 24-hour turnaround. Harmony of the Seas is the world’s third-largest cruise ship at 226,963 gross tons. It has 2,747 staterooms, a passenger capacity of 6,687 and a crew of 2,200.
In a statement issued Monday, U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson David Micallef said: “We can confirm the cruise ship was Harmony of the Seas. The Coast Guard is actively investigating Sunday’s cruise ship incursion and postponement of the SpaceX launch.”
“Our primary concern is the safety of mariners at sea, and we will continue to work with our federal, state and local port partners to ensure safe and navigable waterways,” Micallef added.
I am quite certain such investigations are routine, since ship captains are supposed to know about such launches and avoid the launch range accordingly. We normally never hear about them because the violations are almost always done by small boats or planes, not giant cruise ships.
SpaceX’s expected increased launch pace in ’22, combined with the desperate need of the cruise lines to resume normal operations following the Wuhan panic, will probably make this kind of conflict more possible. It also highlights SpaceX’s request to rethink the size of the exclusion zone, since today’s rockets are much more reliable than the rockets of the 1960s, when the zones were first created.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The Coast Guard has started an investigation of the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Harmony of the Seas, that violated the launch zone of the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch on January 30, forcing a scrub.
The ship veered into the exclusion zone along a Falcon 9 rocket’s flightpath just before the 6:11 p.m. EST launch, forcing SpaceX to stand down from the mission and prepare for a 24-hour turnaround. Harmony of the Seas is the world’s third-largest cruise ship at 226,963 gross tons. It has 2,747 staterooms, a passenger capacity of 6,687 and a crew of 2,200.
In a statement issued Monday, U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson David Micallef said: “We can confirm the cruise ship was Harmony of the Seas. The Coast Guard is actively investigating Sunday’s cruise ship incursion and postponement of the SpaceX launch.”
“Our primary concern is the safety of mariners at sea, and we will continue to work with our federal, state and local port partners to ensure safe and navigable waterways,” Micallef added.
I am quite certain such investigations are routine, since ship captains are supposed to know about such launches and avoid the launch range accordingly. We normally never hear about them because the violations are almost always done by small boats or planes, not giant cruise ships.
SpaceX’s expected increased launch pace in ’22, combined with the desperate need of the cruise lines to resume normal operations following the Wuhan panic, will probably make this kind of conflict more possible. It also highlights SpaceX’s request to rethink the size of the exclusion zone, since today’s rockets are much more reliable than the rockets of the 1960s, when the zones were first created.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Spacex is doing great and needs to be less constrained by the government
Just as there are NOtices To Air Men (NOTAMs) there are NOTM (NOtices To Mariners).
They involve much of the same types of things respective to each medium of travel. There should have a NOTM published soon after the launch time shifted. If it was not published, then this is the mistake. It it was published, then it falls on the vessel’s Master for not checking.
It may result in a steep fine.
Notices To Air Men? I don’t think so! Notices to Air MISSIONS.
You didn’t think the FAA could allow the word ‘man’, did you?
That would make it unbearable to be a female pilot.
Hopefully Mariners is gender neutral, or we’re all in trouble.
I see now they changed that last month. Not being an air man, checking that was low priority for me.
Our tax dollars at work.
“I see now they changed that last month. Not being an air man, checking that was low priority for me.
Our tax dollars at work.”
Clearly the FAA’s work in aviation safety is at an end or completely up to date.
“Harmony of the Seas is the world’s third-largest cruise ship at 226,963 gross tons. It has 2,747 staterooms, a passenger capacity of 6,687 and a crew of 2,200.”
SpaceX passed on the chance to sink that? Wimps
“A crew of 2200”
One thing that jumped out at me in reading about the Titanic was how few sailors were on board. There was a huge number of what we would call today “hospitality” workers and the boiler and engine rooms had an army of stoker and wipers, but not many mariners. I don’t suppose things have changed much except that the machinery is now automated with a minimal “black gang” below. I hope all those maids, bar tenders, waitresses and pastry chefs have been given something more than minimal training in sailing a lifeboat and/or life raft.
And can you imagine trying to safely evacuate almost 7,000 people – a number of them drunk – from a sinking ship? Wilhelm Gustloff 2.0 here we come
MV Wilhelm Gustloff – Wikipedia
“The figures from Schön’s research make the loss in the sinking to be “9,343 men, women and children”.His more recent research is backed up by estimates made by a different method. An Unsolved History episode that aired in March 2003,[4] on the Discovery Channel, undertook a computer analysis of her sinking. Using maritime EXODUS software] it was estimated 9,600 people died out of more than 10,600 on board. This analysis considered the passenger density based on witnesses’ reports and a simulation of escape routes and survivability with the timeline of the sinking”