Test Site rocket launches clear 1st FAA test

Monday, April 24, 2000 | 11:22 a.m.

The Federal Aviation Administration is poised to rule rocket launches from the Nevada Test Site 60 miles northwest of Las Vegas won't hurt the environment.

An environmental assessment by the FAA's office of the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) also says there is no significant environmental impact of a spaceport on Nevada Test Site land from which the rockets would be launched.

Approval of the report would allow the Nevada Test Site Development Corp. and Kistler Aerospace Corp., Kirkland, Wash., to clear another hurdle toward developing a commercial launch operation on land designated for use by the Department of Energy.

Areas 18, 19 and 20 on the northern side of the test site -- barren desert land the size of New Jersey -- have been identified as potential launch sites for Kistler's K-1 reusable orbital vehicle.

The K-1, originally scheduled to be tested in Australia later this year, would be capable of putting three small satellites in low orbit over the Earth in one launch. Experts say 1,700 telecommunications satellites built by more than a dozen companies will need to be deployed in the next 10 years to keep up with growing communications demands.

Kistler has yet to complete financing for the proposal, and officials with the company say it would take 10 months to build a vehicle once financing is approved.

Augie DeLuca, chief financial officer for Kistler in Los Angeles, said the company already has raised money for the initial design of the project and has begun a new round of financing to build the vehicle.

DeLuca concurred that the vehicle could be built within 10 months of final approval of financing, and he said completion of financing is two to four months away, pushing the Australia test at the earliest into mid-2001.

He did not disclose how much the company is seeking, but said financing would include a combination of private equity investors through the private placement of securities and a debt component.

Several expendable rocket vehicles have been approved for commercial use, but the Kistler proposal is the first private system involving a reusable payload delivery system. Kistler hopes to compete in the international market with a reusable system it says will cut launch costs in half.

The federal government's space shuttle program uses reusable boosters and a manned vehicle that can return to Earth for reuse.

The FAA environmental assessment draft says the health and safety of the public would not be affected by the proposal because of the remote location of the test site. The report says Kistler launches and vehicle recoveries would occur in airspace already designated for military operations.

"The potential to affect the public would be limited to actual in-flight emergencies," the draft report says. "The flight ascent profile is designed to minimize risk to the public. Current health and safety programs at the (Nevada Test Site) enhance Kistler's ability to respond to an on-site emergency. Accident scenarios would be detailed and evaluated in the safety review conducted by the FAA as part of its licensing and regulatory program."

Planes using McCarran International Airport also would not be affected by launches, the report says.

"At no time does the launch vehicle enter airspace controlled by the FAA for general and commercial aviation," the report says. "Most proposed Kistler flights stay within NTS airpace; however, certain launch trajectories require flights outside restricted airspace and above FAA controlled airspace. On these missions, vehicle altitude remains greater than (150,000 feet) in airspace not used by general or commercial aviation."

Most commercial flights operate at between 23,000 and 37,000 feet.

"Kistler launch and re-entry-recovery facilities would be located within the (test site) and adjacent to the Nevada Test and Training Range," the report says.

The report says the nearest air traffic routes used by civil aviation during a launch would be one route between Wilson Creek and Tonopah and another between Beatty and Boulder City.

"Because of altitude separation distance, the nearest civil air traffic route structure would not be affected and no significant impacts are expected," the report says.

Randy Walker, director of the Clark County Department of Aviation and the top administrator at McCarran International Airport, said he was unaware of the report and is having his staff check on how much use the two routes get from planes using the Las Vegas area's three airports.

The FAA will conduct a public meeting on the draft environmental assessment May 2. The meeting will be at a Department of Energy office in North Las Vegas. An open house and hearing at the Great Basin Conference Room at DOE's facility at 232 Energy Way begins at 6:30 p.m. Testimony is scheduled to be taken by the FAA beginning at 7:30.

But officials with Kistler and the NTS Development Corp. said today the safety aspect of the proposal won't be addressed in detail at the meeting. That's because safety will be a separate component of the licensing approval process.

The FAA's environmental assessment is the first part of the licensing process. The second step is a FAA policy review, which will consider the pros and cons of the mission of the Kistler vehicle. The third and final step in licensing is the FAA safety review, which is a key part of the Australian test of the vehicle's operation.

"The first step in the licensing process in Nevada is the environmental assessment," said Jack Gregory, vice president of Nevada operations for Kistler. "The draft determined that we can operate without impacting the surrounding environment, and we're pleased to get one at this point."

But Gregory said people who attend the May 2 meeting will be disappointed if they expect safety questions to be answered about the project because the review is strictly on environmental concerns.

"Any significant impacts to surrounding environment and its proposed remote location on the Nevada Test Site is what this is about," Gregory said."What this meeting is not is a safety review of the K-1 or its operations from the test site. It will not include those questions about safety and operation. Those come later in the licensing process."

Gregory and Tim Carlson, president and chief executive officer of the NTS Development Corp., did not address questions on safety and said they would be discussed later in the licensing approval process.

Kistler has proposed building a fleet of five K-1 vehicles and seeks permission to have 52 launches a year.

The NTS Development Corp. is helping Kistler secure all the necessary permits to turn the area into a launch and rocket recovery site. Its goal is to develop a high-tech aerospace industry on the vast area that once was the site of nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s.

AST has proposed issuing a "finding of no significant impact," meaning that an environmental impact statement would not have to be filed. The agency says the proposed launch and re-entry activities are not a major federal action that would significantly affect the quality of the human environment as defined by the National Environmental Policy Act.

The environmental assessment, issued earlier this month by AST, examined air quality issues, noise, socioeconomic and visual resources and impacts on vegetation, wildlife, water resources, geology and soils, cultural and historic sites, transportation, health and some safety issues.

The report concluded that the area under consideration already is used for testing by military aircraft from Nellis Air Force Base and that surrounding communities "are accustomed to land use for flight testing purposes."

"The use of the NTS by Kistler for the purpose of launching and re-entering commercial launch vehicles is consistent with community planning activities in the areas around the NTS," the report says.

Carlson said a second private rocket company considering the test site as a spaceport has been slowed by fuel tank development problems. He said he expects to receive an update within weeks, but he says the project may be set back three years.

The project, called VentureStar, could complement the Kistler program by having two separate rocket launching companies at the test site.

VentureStar is a shorter but wider arrowhead-shaped version of the space shuttle being developed by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works plant in Palmdale, Calif. Designed to launch on a single-stage rocket, the vehicle would use liquid fuel with a new high-tech propulsion system called a linear aerospike engine.

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