Reusable launch vehicles present a series of unique problems in the management of the national and global air space. Commercial and military spaceports that support RLV's will be built inland, forcing vehicles launched from these spaceports to fly over populated areas and through commercial airways to reach orbit. Integrated command and control tools are required to manage these new dynamic spaceways that safely accommodate standard air transportation, RLV's, expendable ELV's, and military SOV's. These tools need to address both the mission planning phase and real time operations associated with these vehicles and assorted mission classes to enable class-specific goals like rapid turnaround for military sorties.
Command and Control Technologies Corp. is involved in building a path finding solution for aerospace traffic management that integrates both RLV operations and conventional aircraft operations that may also be adapted to military aircraft operations.
The results of this research will help define the concepts of operations, architectures, and information technology approaches needed for the next generation of air and space traffic control for civil and military space operations.
To date, CCT has created new applications for mission planning and analysis of space launch vehicle operations within the NAS. These new applications integrate space transition models with Air Traffic models to assist in optimizing aeronautical and space traffic to further integrate air and space traffic control.