(a) General. A flight safety analysis must identify the location of populated or other protected areas, and establish flight safety limits that define when a flight safety system must terminate a launch vehicle's flight to prevent the hazardous effects of the resulting debris impacts from reaching any populated or other protected area and ensure that the launch satisfies the public risk criteria of § 417.107(b).
(b) Flight safety limits. The analysis must establish flight safety limits for use in establishing flight termination rules. Section 417.113(c) contains requirements for flight termination rules. The flight safety limits must account for all temporal and geometric extents on the Earth's surface of a launch vehicle's hazardous debris impact dispersion resulting from any planned or unplanned event for all times during flight. Flight safety limits must account for all potential contributions to the debris impact dispersions, including at a minimum:
(1) All time delays, as established by the time delay analysis of § 417.221;
(2) Residual thrust remaining after flight termination implementation or vehicle breakup due to aerodynamic and inertial loads;
(3) All wind effects;
(4) Velocity imparted to vehicle fragments by breakup;
(5) All lift and drag forces on the malfunctioning vehicle and falling debris;
(6) All launch vehicle guidance and performance errors;
(7) All launch vehicle malfunction turn capabilities; and
(8) Any uncertainty due to map errors and launch vehicle tracking errors.
(c) Gates. If a launch involves flight over any populated or other protected area, the flight safety analysis must establish a gate as required by §§ 417.217 and 417.218.
(d) Designated debris impact limits. The analysis must establish designated impact limit lines to bound the area where debris with a ballistic coefficient of three or more is allowed to impact if the flight safety system functions properly.