Engineering and policy analysis of strategic and tactical options for future aerospace traffic management

Abstract

Current space launch/landing events are conducted only within Special Use Airspace (SUA), separate from air traffic. This is a strategic traffic management policy because SUA size and duration are set well in advance. It forces space operations to disrupt aviation, which could become costly with growth in air or space transportation. This was investigated through integrated engineering/policy analysis of strategic and tactical options. Total annual disruption cost was calculated using the number of conflicts per SUA event, the annual SUA events, the average disruption per conflict, and the cost per unit disruption. The conflict count was identified as most important, and an analytical airspace conflict model was developed to predict the number of conflicts associated with restricting an arbitrary region of airspace for a given duration. This approach was used to investigate the sensitivity of disruption cost to SUA radius, SUA active duration, air traffic density, relative velocity, annual SUA events, and conflict resolution distance. The current annual cost is under $1 million, but the expected ranges of all factors comprise a plausible range of $100 to $8 million. This cost was most sensitive to SUA radius: on average, doubling the radius multiplies the cost by 49, while doubling the traffic density simply doubles the cost, and doubling the SUA active duration multiplies the cost by only 1.8.

(cont.) The cost was also two orders of magnitude more sensitive to "control" factors (SUA size and duration) than to "market" factors (air and space traffic levels). Four scenarios investigated changes in multiple factors: 2% or 6% annual growth in space operations, managed by reducing only SUA radius or by reducing active duration and scheduling events to affect less air traffic. The results confirmed that radius alone is more powerful than other factors combined, and suggested that tactical alternatives could control costs over time, even with high aerospace transportation growth. However, a preliminary risk analysis indicated a safety need for large SUA, which also offers security benefits. The final recommendations were continued use of SUA for the short-medium term, with detailed safety analysis required for future consideration of several tactical options.