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Launchlock is a representation of the conditions, circumstances, and impediments that affect the launch and employment of capabilities that bear on the mission of the decision maker.
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200
Estimated Private Launches by 2025 |
20,000
New Satellites in Orbit by 2025 |
12
Only 16 capable launch locations in 2020 |
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Industrial Expansion
The number of global commercial launches is poised to explode and overwhelm currently available resources. The US commercial launch industry is on the cusp of a 300 to 500% increase in launch rates in the next 20 years. This is expected to press currently available launch support capacity beyond its limit. |
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Air Traffic
As domestic air traffic and commercial launches continue to increase, conflicts in separation of space and air traffic becomes acute. Those conflicts include additional air flight miles and fuel necessary to maintain safe distance from spacecraft as well as considerable dispatch uncertainty which disrupts connecting schedules and requires changes in timing and routing. According to the Airline Pilots Association in 2018, launches from Kennedy Space Center/ Cape Canaveral alone delayed 536 flights and required an additional 34,841 miles be flown to avoid possible collisions in the Atlantic High Offshore Airspace. |
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Maritime Traffic
Marine density traffic mapping clearly indicates the continual growth of marine traffic in a global economy. The growth of marine traffic on “marine roads” is at risk as ships pass beneath orbital launch trajectories and possible debris fields. Additionally, much like the need for accurate scheduling and dispatch assurance at airports the same is true for sea ports. Launch schedules can disrupt commercial shipping and ocean harvesting operations if they must avoid or circumvent historical shipping lanes and fisheries. The global demand for seaborne trade is driving an increase in the number of marine roads and the intensity of shipping. In some open ocean regions, vessel intensity is so high that shipping traffic is permanently visible when plotted as a marine traffic map. Shipping is one of the world's largest industries, accounting for 80% of the total world merchandise trade. In 2019, world seaborne trade volumes were estimated to have exceeded 10 billion metric tons, and an estimated 53.6 billion ton–miles. |
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Orbital Debris
Orbital debris has resulted in extreme challenges for the expanding commercial launch industry. It is estimated that there are about 200,000 pieces between 1 and 10 cm (0.4 and 4 inches) across and that there could be millions of pieces smaller than 1 cm. How long a piece of space debris takes to fall back to Earth depends on its altitude. Objects below 600 km (375 miles) orbit several years before reentering Earth’s atmosphere. Objects above 1,000 km (600 miles) orbit for centuries. The amount of debris in space threatens both crewed and un-crewed spaceflight. The risk of a catastrophic collision of a space shuttle with a piece of space debris was 1 in 300. With the increasing amount of space debris, there are fears that collisions such as that between Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 could set off a chain reaction (called the Kessler syndrome after American scientist Donald Kessler) in which the resulting space debris would destroy other satellites and so on, with the result that low Earth orbit would become unusable. |
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Frequency Management
Inadvertent RF energy can cause unplanned initiation of space vehicle sub-systems inhibiting nominal performance of rocket motors, pneumatics, release mechanisms, avionics, destruct ordinance as well as telemetry traffic to and from the vehicle. These anomalies could result in system failures that endanger the vehicle, the mission and public safety. Today, new technologies, the needs of other users (government and commercial), and the proliferation of wireless technologies worldwide have made maintaining even current spectrum allocations difficult. New wireless communication products are creating a large demand for spectrum access. Wireless subscriber services are growing rapidly worldwide. Emerging countries, in an effort to modernize, are choosing to deploy wireless infrastructure in lieu of wired infrastructure since it costs less. All of these factors make a more competitive environment for worldwide spectrum access which can affect the primacy of space launch frequency management. |
