Debris risk analysis.

Checkout our iOS App for a better way to browser and research.

§ 450.135 Debris risk analysis.

(a) General. A flight safety analysis must include a debris risk analysis that demonstrates compliance with safety criteria in § 450.101, either -

(1) Prior to the day of the operation, accounting for all foreseeable conditions within the flight commit criteria; or

(2) During the countdown using the best available input data, including flight commit criteria and flight abort rules.

(b) Casualty area and consequence analysis. A debris risk analysis must model the casualty area, and compute the predicted consequences of each reasonably foreseeable failure mode in any significant period of flight in terms of conditional expected casualties. The casualty area and consequence analysis must account for -

(1) All relevant debris fragment characteristics and the characteristics of a representative person exposed to any potential debris hazard;

(2) Statistically-valid debris impact probability distributions;

(3) Any impact or effects of hazardous debris; and

(4) The vulnerability of people to debris impact or effects, including:

(i) Effects of buildings, ground vehicles, waterborne vessel, and aircraft upon the vulnerability of any occupants;

(ii) Effect of atmospheric conditions on debris impact and effects;

(iii) Impact speed and angle, accounting for motion of impacted vehicles;

(iv) Uncertainty in input data, such as fragment impact parameters; and

(v) Uncertainty in modeling methodology.

(c) Application requirements. An applicant must submit:

(1) A description of the methods used to demonstrate compliance with the safety criteria in § 450.101, in accordance with § 450.115(c), including a description of how the operator will account for the conditions immediately prior to enabling the flight of a launch vehicle or the reentry of a reentry vehicle, such as the final trajectory, atmospheric conditions, and the exposure of people;

(2) A description of the atmospheric data used as input to the debris risk analysis;

(3) The effective unsheltered casualty area for all fragment classes, assuming a representative impact vector;

(4) The effective casualty area for all fragment classes for a representative type of building, ground vehicle, waterborne vessel, and aircraft, assuming a representative impact vector;

(5) Collective and individual debris risk analysis outputs under representative conditions and the worst foreseeable conditions, including:

(i) Total collective casualty expectation for the proposed operation;

(ii) A list of the collective risk contribution for at least the top ten population centers and all centers with collective risk exceeding 1 percent of the collective risk criteria in § 450.101(a)(1) or (b)(1);

(iii) A list of the maximum individual probability of casualty for the top ten population centers and all centers that exceed 10 percent of the individual risk criteria in § 450.101(a)(2) or (b)(2); and

(iv) A list of the conditional collective casualty expectation for each failure mode for each significant period of flight under representative conditions and the worst foreseeable conditions.


Download our app to see the most-to-date content.