A LOT MORE BENEFITS THAN DANGERS?
Definitely there will be concerns in regards to the risk offshore release sites present yet there are ways to mitigate these types of.
Concerns regarding noise pollution could be addressed by making the site at least 35km away from Johor’s eastern coastline. Sound can have an impact on marine life, but cellular launch vessels could be deployed to websites sufficiently distant through islands and the ocean ecosystems of main coral reefs.
Questions also arise given the waters between East Johor and Borneo host a major shipping lane. However , they extend about 800km, without narrow chokepoint such as the Strait of Malacca.
Without query, a safety area needs to be established. Navigation systems like GPS (Global Positioning System) and AIS (Automatic Id System) can make sure that the safety area will not interfere with delivery. The US experience with roll-outs from Florida, next to a major shipping street, has not thrown upward warning signals.
Another concern may be the risk of falling debris in case of rare post-launch mishaps. Launch sites along the eastern coastline, towards the east of the shipping lane, also means particles would fall into the sea and not onto towns.
Launching rockets not directly to the eastern but into a northeast east direction also means that they do not pass over Borneo just before having reached a better altitude that can burn more debris just before they reach Earth’s surface.
But the thousands of launches up to now suggest post-launch accidents are a very rare probability. With time, we may perhaps see the risk of rocket launch accident in the same way we think about the huge number of airplanes flying overhead to city airports.
The benefits of a space slot appear to outweigh the risks. Potential users, including private space companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Airbus, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and Oriental national space firms, would need an attractive slot.
Besides the economic potential of the area industry, there are in order to develop a launch support industry, such as refurbishing used rockets. This home port may be in Singapore, knowledgeable about maintaining offshore platforms.
If Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines manage to create the legal and infrastructural preconditions, a well-connected equatorial launch web site will be an opportunity that private space businesses will not easily overlook.
Dr Stefan Huebner is definitely Senior Research Other at the Asia Study Institute, National University of Singapore. His current research concerns the history and present situation of sea industrialisation and urbanisation projects.