Here’s an interesting one. Apparently when Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo was returning to earth it flew outside of the airspace that it was assigned to. I assume it was a TFR (temporary flight restriction) that delineated their airspace, although I’d have to research that detail.
There has been a lot of talk over the past few years about how drones and traditional aircraft can safely share the airspace. It makes sense that as private space flight becomes common there will be issues with those conflicts as well.
It’s one thing to issue a large TFR every now and then for a relatively rare launch. What happens when space flight becomes a weekly or even daily occurrence? Is it realistic to expect all air traffic to deviate around these large areas of airspace? And what happens when the spacecraft flies outside of its TFR?
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. The FAA seems to be getting better at keeping up with new technologies, but even if the FAA becomes more nimble this is a complicated issue that is made even more complicated by the fact that necessarily involves government.
