NFPA Journal - May/June 2019 - 25

Dispatches
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launches from the
Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 11, 2019.
The rocket carried a communications satellite that
was successfully placed into orbit.

C O M M E R C I A L S PAC E I N D U ST RY

WE HAVE IGNITION

NFPA WILL PURSUE THE CREATION OF A NEW STANDARD ON
THE CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATION OF SPACEPORTS
By Jesse Roman
ith the second Space

W

Age now upon us, NFPA
is making moves to shore
up safety guidance for
those blasting off to the

SPACE X

final frontier.
The NFPA Standards Council
recently voted to approve the creation of a new NFPA standard that
would, for the first time, lay out safety
requirements for the construction and
operation of commercial spaceports.
NFPA is seeking subject experts to join
the technical committee for the new
spaceport document (nfpa.org/tcseek).
The application deadline is May 17.

As detailed in last year's NFPA Journal cover story on spaceports ["Primed
for Lift-Off," March/April 2018], commercial space travel is a booming industry,
generating an estimated $335 billion
annually. The number of commercial
launches has been steadily rising, as is
the demand for spaceports, the facilities
that store, fuel, prep, and launch rockets
and spaceplanes-essentially airports for
space travel. There are 12 spaceports in
the US, with at least four others under
construction or going through the permitting process.
With the number of privately owned
spaceports expected to increase world-

wide in coming years, officials from
NASA and elsewhere worry that safety
regulations for the facilities are scattered, conflicting, and in some cases
nonexistent.
"If you are a local fire marshal or
authority having jurisdiction trying to
understand and figure out how to build
a spaceport, make it safe, and respond
and do emergency planning, I feel for
you. There isn't really any good guidance
out there," Jason Scott, the program
manager for fire protection at NASA and
head of fire protection at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Alabama, said in an interview last year.
Once the exclusive domain of federal
governments, space travel has emerged
in the last decade as a commercial
money-making venture. Companies
such as Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos's
Blue Origin, Richard Branson's Virgin
Galactic, and a growing cadre of frisky
upstarts have invested billions in rocket
technology to scoop up lucrative government research and supply contracts
and to meet a burgeoning corporate
demand. Television, communications,
imaging, research, global positioning
systems, academic interests, and more
are looking to private firms to help them
get equipment into orbit. There's also no
shortage of affluent space tourists waiting to pay big money to blast off.
In addition to the proposed new
standard, the Fire Protection Research
Foundation has been working to better
understand spaceports, partnering last
year with the University of Maryland
on a comprehensive literature review of
spaceport safety. The paper, published in
October, included a look at available fire
protection standards and guidance, fire
incidents at spaceports, and listed fire
hazards related to the facilities.
The author of that report, Michael J.
Gollner, will join Scott from NASA to
discuss the spaceport fire safety issue at
the upcoming NFPA Conference & Expo
in June in San Antonio.

CONFERENCE SESSION

NFPA.ORG/DISPATCHES

Lift-Off-Commercial Spaceports and the Fire Community
Wednesday, June 19, 9:15-10:15 a.m.
Jason Scott, NASA; Michael J. Gollner, University of
Maryland

Read the 2018 Fire Protection
Research Foundation report
"Literature Review on Spaceport
Fire Safety."

Read the NFPA Journal story
"Primed for Lift-Off" and
see a map of all existing US
spaceports.

N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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NFPA Journal - May/June 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - May/June 2019
