Since the beginning of America's space program, rockets have always been launched into orbit over the oceans for reasons of safety. However, recent advances in designs for a new generation of reusable rocket now offers the opportunity to reliably launch into orbit over land areas. These rockets, called Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs) are destined to operate much like commercial aircraft. These reusable rockets promise significant economic opportunities for reducing launch costs. Nevertheless, the question of how the public will react to commercial rockets flying over their communities has been a concern of both NASA and the FAA. This paper reports on a study that was designed to measure public attitudes towards overland flight of commercial rockets, and determine underlying factors affecting these public attitudes. The authors review the background of critical factors as they report on the hypotheses and some of the preliminary findings. Three hypotheses were developed. First it was postulated that individuals who favored space flight in general would also be favorable toward overland flight by commercial rockets. The second hypothesis was that individuals with environmentally sensitive orientation would oppose RLVs. The third hypothesis was that individuals who had a strong belief in the positive impact of technology would be in favor of RLVs. A mail survey resulted in one hundred ninety-five survey responses. The outcome of the correlation analysis strongly supported all three association-hypotheses. However individuals with ecocentric orientations appeared to have reservations about rocket overland flight due to lack of convincing information as to the potential affects to ecosystems and wildlife populations. Therefore, space policy makers cannot take public support for granted. Given the characteristics of the population it can be concluded that the majority of the public would be supportive but only after they are informed of the sizable benefits and low level of risks associated with commercial rocket overland flight.
Public Attitudes Toward Overland Rocket Flight
Seventh International Conference and Exposition on Engineering, Construction, Operations, and Business in Space ; 2000 ; Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Space 2000 ; 567-574
2000-02-18
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Public Attitudes Toward Overland Rocket Flight
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