Remember that part of the current testing program includes testing whether or not they can reliably relight their engines on orbit in order to do things like a controlled re-entry. Given the nature of that testing I imagine there's very little room for narrowing their re-entry corridors. If the test succeeds they may re-enter earlier and if it fails they'll re-enter later... or laterally different... either way lighting up the engines for the test probably changes the trajectory of the spacecraft.
The one thing they can do is be sure the original trajectory that gets them to space intersects the Earth within some reason so that if things don't go as planned it doesn't go too far afield.
At best this article is a complaint about communication of whether or not a launch is happening. And even that's hard to really do reasonably: weather, maybe a stuck valve during the countdown, maybe a leisure boat close to the launch site enters the exclusion area... all of those things have happened and prompted changes in launch times and many of those things are outside of SpaceX control.
So seems to me you can lock up the airspace on a "just in case" basis with lots of advanced warning but also reserving lots of time that you won't really need in the end... you know... just in case... , or lock it up much less, but at the cost of relatively short notice to others that might want to use it. Either way you'd still get the article protesting... it's just the complaint would be different.
The one thing they can do is be sure the original trajectory that gets them to space intersects the Earth within some reason so that if things don't go as planned it doesn't go too far afield.
At best this article is a complaint about communication of whether or not a launch is happening. And even that's hard to really do reasonably: weather, maybe a stuck valve during the countdown, maybe a leisure boat close to the launch site enters the exclusion area... all of those things have happened and prompted changes in launch times and many of those things are outside of SpaceX control.
So seems to me you can lock up the airspace on a "just in case" basis with lots of advanced warning but also reserving lots of time that you won't really need in the end... you know... just in case... , or lock it up much less, but at the cost of relatively short notice to others that might want to use it. Either way you'd still get the article protesting... it's just the complaint would be different.