Edward, listen to Rand. His aren’t “neoconservative” views, they are statements of legal fact. The OST (love it or hate it) actually addresses these issues quite well.

Unless something truly extraordinary happens there’s no reason to expect a turn in geopolitics in this area.

And there’s certainly no reason to expect a “Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse.” or anything like that.

>Nope. They have no say, or recourse, unless they’re actually harmed. Not that they won’t whine, of course.

It remains to be seen, but I’ll be somewhat surprised if Mexico makes much of a fuss, perhaps asks for assurances that existing agreements will be honored.

You can call them whatever you want, Edward. It doesn’t make them that (I tend to take people who even use that label, in any context, less seriously). I’m simply describing current international law and practice, established for over half a century.

Simberg is correct here.

There is exactly 1 (one) Victor/Jet and Q route that would be affected by SpaceX launching from “near Brownsville”

Right after 9/11 Scooter Libby helped (sigh) rewrite the overfly exemptions for aircraft flying internationally. The rules regarding “overflight’ (meaning overflying a USCS “Port” and landing at an interior port) are complayable but they are tedious and even when you “comply” if the Passenger rack is different then the “list” well you cannot overfly.

This put a ridiculous amount of pressure on Customs “ports” which were use to dealing with private planes but not large business jet traffic.

So the FAA, which was still run by a Clinton holdover and relatively sane behind the scenes negotiated with the Mexican Air Traffic Control system to create a Victor/Jet and Q route which “starts” at a fix east of Matamoras (spell) Mexico so if you are hauling the BBJ from Cabo to Houston and the passengers you have are not on the overflight then you can bypass that silly condition and the first port you “hit” is Houston.

The humor of this was not lost on a former President who calls Houston home and strangely enough could not get added to the overflight exemption in time to come back from a conference in Mexico City …I was doing the break in for the BBJ that was/is owned by a major company here in Houston, who loaned it to “their friend” and we (the former President and I) had a laugh about it as we sailed just east of SpaceX’s launch site (of course that was well before SpaceX was thinking of the idea) and he wanted to know why we were detouring… the head of the US Secret Service got a kick out of it as well.

The Victor/Jet and Q route are used but SpaceX would have no difficulty with the infrequent closings…now would aviation..RGO

I’m sure the U.S. would have strong reservations if Cuba were to launch over Texas into retrograde orbit.

Of course they would, but all they could do is “have strong reservations.” If anything in Texas was actually damaged as a result, we could demand reparations, and if it looked deliberate, we could consider it an act of war. As a signatory of the OST (as of 1977) Cuba would be obligated under international law to make them.

But short of shooting it down, there’s nothing that the US could do about it. We try to avoid overflight of populated nations in other areas to avoid potential liability, but if we’re willing to accept that liability, we don’t need their “permission” to do so. Overflying at that altitude doesn’t put us in their “air space,” based on precedents going all the way back to Sputnik.

Nope. They have no say, or recourse, unless they’re actually harmed. Not that they won’t whine, of course.

And then there are the potential hazards and interference to Gulf maritime traffic, and the busy air corridors between the U.S. and Central America.

Minimal for the former, and almost non-existent for the latter. The rocket gets above the air corridors very quickly. Believe me, SpaceX wouldn’t have made as much investment in Texas as they already have if they thought that these issues could be show stoppers. You can bet they’ve already extensive discussions with FAA-AST for both spaceport and launch licensing.