NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 36
Primed for
LIFT-OFF
The Expertise Gap
KNOWLEDGE ASSETS, BOTH HUMAN AND IN THE FORM OF GOVERNMENT STANDARDS,
MAY BE INSUFFICIENT FOR THE EMERGING COMMERCIAL SPACE INDUSTRY
WHILE THE FAA AND NASA may have experts available to assess safety at spaceports,
Jason Scott, NASA's program manager for fire
protection, is worried that the local AHJs, fire
marshals, and emergency responders tasked
with overseeing the project and then regulating its ongoing operation may not. While
the proposed Spaceport Camden in Georgia
has found third-party experts, those can be in
short supply, said Scott, who also chairs the
group that maintains NASA's own facility fire
protection standard.
Scott and others told me that, in at least
one case, AHJs have turned to the prospective spaceport users to provide them
with guidance about what requirements
their proposed facility should have. Ideally,
that kind of guidance should come from
third-party experts, they said. Even then,
because of a lack of standards, there could
36 | NFPA JOURNAL * M A R C H /A P R I L 2 0 1 8
be conflicting opinion on the best safety
designs and strategies.
While the FAA process demands spaceport applicants to craft a safety plan, there
is not consensus on how to answer some of
the difficult safety questions it poses. AHJs
and applicants, therefore, are left to piece
together a variety of different and sometimes
conflicting standards in order to make their
proposal.
"If our strategy is to try and create economic growth in commercial spaceports, I'm not
sure that approach works," Scott told me. "We
need some guidance that is nationally recognized and much more explicit in how we think
we reach that reasonable level of safety."
In its examination of the existing spaceport code and standard landscape for the
FPRF, the Maryland team came to a similar
conclusion. While it determined that a lot of
information does already exist that covers
almost every hazard spaceports present, the
information is scattered across a patchwork
of federal departments and private organizations such as the FAA, NASA, the Air Force,
Department of Defense, NFPA, and others,
making it difficult for AHJs to access and cobble together. More problematic, it's not always
clear how to apply the standards together, or
which apply for what kind of facilities.
Even existing federal spaceports and flight
facilities often differ in layout, such as how far
apart fuel tanks and launch pads are, depending on which agency built them and when,
Scott said, and the various standards often
reflect those differences. Which standards
take precedence if there is a conflict may be
unclear to AHJs and consultants.
"One of the biggest issues seems to be
that there is a large reliance on AHJs with
NASA
INDUSTRY HAZARD
A commercial rocket enountering a "catastrophic anomoly" in 2014,
moments after launch at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
The unmanned rocket, built by Orbital ATK, a private aerospace and
defense company, was carrying a spacecraft designed to ferry supplies
to the International Space Station.
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - March/April 2018
Contents
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - Cover1
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - Cover2
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 1
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - Contents
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 3
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 4
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 5
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 6
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 7
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 8
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 9
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 10
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 11
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 12
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 13
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 14
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 15
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 16
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 17
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 18
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 19
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 20
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 21
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 22
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 23
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 24
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 25
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 26
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 27
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 28
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 29
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 30
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 31
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 32
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 33
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 34
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 35
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 36
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 37
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 38
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 39
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 40
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 41
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 42
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 43
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 44
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 45
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 46
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 47
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 48
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 49
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 50
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 51
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 52
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 53
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 54
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 55
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 56
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 57
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 58
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NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 60
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 61
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 62
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 63
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NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 69
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 70
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 71
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 72
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NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 87
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - 88
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - Cover3
NFPA Journal - March/April 2018 - Cover4
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