Environment protection rules for rocket launches targeted by Trump cabinet

I'm gonna re-quote the passage you quoted, just to make the full context clear:

There are lots of things going on here.

First, there's no question that launch operations and the air traffic control system need to be better coordinated. Right now, launch windows are approved far in advance, NOTAMs sent out to the airlines and ATC nodes, and then a corridor (an Aircraft Hazard Area) is blocked off from air traffic for the duration of the launch window. That can be hours. If, instead, that window can be reduced to minutes, the impact on the air traffic system becomes trivial for all normal launches.

For off-nominal launches, there's a mechanism called a Debris Response Area. DRAs are activated to keep traffic out of the way of anticipated falling debris, which can take tens of minutes to make its way to the ground. But some of the DRAs activated during the recent Starship failures stayed active for more than an hour. Again, coordination between the launch providers, who model the instantaneous impact points for their launches, the FAA, which approves the model, and the ATC system, which is currently clueless when it comes to the details of the IIP track, could substantially reduce the impact of an accident.

I'd love to know what the article means when it says that the T&C airport needs to "close". Is this a ground stop? A cessation of both outgoing and incoming flight ops? If so, for how long? T&C airport isn't exactly a hoppin' place; the stakes of a 15-minute closure are pretty low.¹

About your idea that the launch provider should reimburse everybody inconvenienced by an accident: How would that work? Right now, air travelers assume the risk of flight delays, where I strongly doubt that "had to avoid rocket debris" cracks the top 50 sources of delay-minutes. How would you identify who was harmed? How would you compensate them? Who would administer and enforce the compensation?² The FAA? With what resources?

Due to the recent Starship launch failures, this appears to be a much, much bigger problem than it actually is. In reality, Starship will either stop having frequent launch failures, or it'll stop launching. So the real question is how to unburden the ATC system from unneeded delays for normal launches. That's... basically an IT problem.

FWIW, I favor reform of the environmental review, launch licensing, and mishap review processes. That doesn't mean you rip the whole system up, but it does mean that the providers and the FAA should work to make the system more efficient. And everybody's been upset about Part 450. It's a significant update to the regulations, and it hasn't gone well. The FAA needs to fix the broken parts.

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¹Weasel words: SpaceX has a launch corridor problem with Starship. The path between the Florida Straits, the southern islands of the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and Hispaniola is extremely narrow. Threading through all the places where stuff could fall is extremely difficult.

On the other hand, the regulations don't say that there has to be a zero chance of injuries to the public; they say that the expected value must be less than 1E-05 injuries per launch (or reentry). At the point in the trajectory where the breakups are occurring, there's not very much that makes it to the ground, and the population density is extremely low. It's not a ridiculously high bar to clear.

That said, the breakups that did occur likely had big, heavy stuff that landed out to sea, farther downrange than the T&Cs, which only had tiles falling, which have such a low ballistic coefficient that they're harmless. If the breakups had occurred a few hundred km farther uprange, the heavy, high-BC stuff could have landed on the T&Cs. That could have been quite serious, although it's still really hard to kill somebody with a falling turbopump. I think the FAA likely required some trajectory revisions based on what happened. Those may require some minor doglegs on Starship's part, which may lop a few hundred kg off of its performance to LEO.

²There actually is a mechanism in place for compensation: Article VII of the Outer Space Treaty makes the US responsible for any damages caused by US-flagged launch providers. So delayed travelers only have to file a claim with the World Court, get it favorably adjudicated, and then the US owes them compensation. It shouldn't take more than twenty years. And of course collecting the money from the launch provider is the province of FAA regulations, which I'm sure won't be very helpful.