Spectators watching America’s last shuttle lift off at the Kennedy Space Center will be exposed to six times greater risk from a launch accident than people gathered on the area’s roadways, riverbanks and beaches.
Preparations are made for the July 8 launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, the final flight of the shuttle program, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
About 45,000 Kennedy guests, including members of Congress, diplomats, celebrities and the families of Atlantis’ four astronauts, will fill VIP sites for an up-close view of the program’s 135th launch.
They’ll be among as many as 750,000 to 1 million spectators expected to flock to the Space Coast for the scheduled launch at 11:26 a.m. EDT Friday.
And while the chances of a shuttle launch accident are slight — the demonstrated probability is 1 in 134 — danger exists, and NASA takes public safety seriously.
NASA’s space shuttle is 100 times more dangerous to launch site spectators than other U.S. rockets, according to government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
People watching the launch of Atlantis at Kennedy’s VIP viewing sites could be exposed to falling wreckage, toxic plumes and the shock waves that would accompany a launch explosion.
But the odds of spectators at Kennedy being injured or killed in a launch catastrophe are extremely remote. Not a single spectator has been killed or injured in 60 years of Space Coast missile and rocket launches.
The Atlantis launch will be NASA’s 166th human spaceflight. By law, NASA is obligated to be as open as practicable with its activities, and there always has been a high level of interest in U.S. human space launches.
So the agency must provide for both public involvement and public safety.
“We have to balance the fact that people are very interested in what NASA is doing,” said NASA range safety manager Alan Dumont. “We have a public outreach mission.”
The public safety standards that govern launches from the Space Coast date to a law passed by Congress in 1949.
Signed by President Harry S. Truman, the law states that missiles and rockets should be no more dangerous to the general public than aircraft flying overhead.
The U.S. Air Force since then has been entrusted with the responsibility for ensuring public safety, and the service performs launch area risk analyses for every shuttle launch.
But interagency agreements give the director of Kennedy Space Center the responsibility for public safety on its own grounds.
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Good to know. Some students as well as the executive director of Yeshiva Ketana of Long Island will be there.
They have a science project being placed on the shuttle to see its effect in outer space.