Suborbital Rocketeers Ask FAA For Fair Rocketry Rules

HobbySpacer writes "John Carmack, Dennis Tito, Eric Anderson of Space Adventures, Brian Chase of the National Space Society and other notables in the world of rocketry and space activism issued a call today for the FAA to cut the regulatory tangle that threatens to hold a nascent fleet of suborbital space vehicles firmly on the ground. The FAA needs to make it clear that these rocket vehicles fall under the jurisdiction of its own Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) and not let intra-agency bureaucratic squabbles over control and power stall the development of this promising new industry."

Comments

It's no wonder...

[deman1985]

The space industry is stuck at a standstill. Too many regulations are cutting into innovation anymore... Not that I want to see one of these suborbital crafts get plastered on the windshield of a 747, but geez.

Re:It's no wonder...

[Smallpond]

"Just make sure any test craft are equipped with self-destruct mechanisms"

You are suggesting that in the current climate, the US Gov. will encourage people to build rockets with warheads and fire them in the US?

Yeah. Right.

Re:It's no wonder...

[Dark Lord Seth]

It's the US way fo handling things: Fear.

They are simply affraid that someone, somwhere, MIGHT aquire a SAM missile capapble of reaching commercial airline cruising altitudes and that (communist/drug warlord/terrorist/muslim) MIGHT just blow a 747 full of innocent little children out of the sky.

Of course, the biggest ceiling of any commonly available (read: soviet runion) SAM system is 8000 meters. (roughly 24000 foot) Oh, and that is for a mounted system; I'm not sure if the US police would appreciate anyone driving around in a cold war missile-launcher. Shoulder-launcher SAM systems having an amazing range of 10k feet, for the most common SAM system for ground personell, the US Stinger.

Re:It's no wonder...

[chrysrobyn]

You are suggesting that in the current climate, the US Gov. will encourage people to build rockets with warheads and fire them in the US?

There's a difference between a gaggle of people out in the middle of Nowhere, South Dakota huddling up in shacks in the middle of the woods with their automatic weapons just in case the IRS comes and a gaggle of rocket geeks paving some land for a good rocket pad. I'm not sure how to tell the difference, aside from the fact that the idiots trying to secede from the union have the right to bear arms and the geeks with the rocket are insisting that their manned vehicle isn't an arm but they still have rights.

I'm interested in private space flight, but I think the legislative obstacles are severe on mainland US, whereas an abandoned oil rig in the middle of the south pacific or something would be ideal. Sure, getting there may be fun, but even if it goes haywire and doesn't explode, killing a sperm whale is different from levelling a town of 100.

Personally, I'd trust John Carmack (whom I've given probably $150 at this point, from Quake III, Quake I and Doom II) with the rocket more than the tax evading guys enforcing their own rights.

Re:It's no wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

> even if it goes haywire and doesn't explode, killing a sperm whale is different from levelling a town of 100.

yeah, to the greenies, it's worse.

keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

if one of these rockets does fuck up, a LOT of people could wind up dead or injured. Not just the people in the rocket.

Re:keep in mind

[number6x]

"...a LOT of people could wind up dead or injured.

'a LOT' is kind of ambiguous. Do you mean 'a LOT' like the 150 people that day that die in auto accidents on American roads each day? Or do you mean the 1 or 2 people per day that die in airplane related accident (small and large planes)?

You are much more likely to be killed by an auto than you are to be killed by a commercial sub orbital rocket. So maybe we should regulate those cars more.

Perspective is everything.

Re:keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

I think for most people it's the idea of control. Statistically there's a much higher chance of dying a gruesome death or being paralyzed in an auto accident. But you feel in control (at least until the event) because you're behind the wheel. People forget that you're at the mercy of another person's ability just as much as in a plane.

Re:keep in mind

[WinPimp2K]

"the general public gets a great deal of benefit from automobiles and automotive transportation"

Prove it hotshot:

Please detail (three examples will do) the benefit the general public receives from autos and automotive transportaion. Before you answer, please check your calendar.. you will note that the four digit year is 1903, not 2003.

And stop setting up straw men (stray rocket landing on an elementary school). The early automotive developers did not have to stop development because a "stray auto" might plow through a school playground. They took reasonable precautions - as did the early aeroplane companies when developing their vehicles.

As to your anti capitalist (pigs will fly) rant - you are way off base here - or do you work for NASA. The "companies involved" will pass the savings along to their customers as fast as they possibly can - if they have competition. Monopolists and cartels keep prices artificially high.

Right now space access is damn-all expensive because of the massive bureaucracies that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Ask yourself why in the heck does the FAA have any say at all over *spacecraft* development? Did the FAA approve any of the following? Redstone, Atlas, Titan, Saturn, STS? Kind of interesting that the Federal Aviation Agency is busy stopping commercial spaceflight - so busy that several parts of that agency are independently demanding compliance to *their* regulations for something one might reasonably think would come under the purview of NASA. What is the original ststute wherein Congress gave the FAA authority over spacecraft? (If there was noe, it is a very intereting bit of "mission creep", and if Congress did do it, the history of the legislation should be educational in terms of how NASA felt about it and what deals were cut to make it happen)

Unless something drastic happens (think Chinese space program) you can expect that NASA is ready to stifle the upstart aerospace corps as soon as they fight their way free of the FAA. Expect lots of requirements for "man-rating" the indie spacecraft. Don't worry that NASA has no set of standards for "man-rating" a spacecraft. Every NASA spacecraft from Mercury on has benn "man-rated" becasue NASA wanted it to fly, not because they passed any objective set of requirements. (Just ask the astronauts how they really feel about flying in a pure oxygen environment) The lack of "man-rating" standards will not stop NASA from being the next obstacle to orbit

Please don't take this as a conspiracy rant, it is simply the nature of the organizations involved. Although I'm certain there are some rabid anti-space (or outright neo-Luddite)people in positions of power, simple bureaucratic empire building is all that is required to stifle indie spacecraft development at this time.

Conspicious by their absence

[BiggerIsBetter]

There's a pretty good list of names there, but funnily enough, no mention of Lockheed, Boeing, NASA or the other Government funded big boys of the space industry. Surely they're not afraid that deregulation might allow a little competition?

And another thing, who on earth are the Objectivist Center and Reason Foundation??

Piss on the FAA!

[Cpt_Kirks]

Move the tests to southern Mexico, or even further south. I'm sure they have lighter or even no regs covering this.

IIRC, it's easier to get into orbit from close to the equator. Does that apply to suborbital flight too?

Re:Piss on the FAA!

[djeaux]

> United States citizens cannot launch outside of the United States without FAA approval

Solution: Have the Guatemalan who lives next door to the launch site push the button. If you need to be a "business," incorporate offshore. Bankers in the Cayman Islands can be most helpful with tax strategies as well.

> The FAA has threatened fines and possibly jail for anyone who violates that order.

Solution: Donate early & often to the Senator, Congressman, or court-appointed President of your choice. Then if all else fails, you'll have a friend in court -- the one called "Your Honor" ;-)

These strategies work well for those who are in the "important exportin' trade" in South America, so why not rocketeers, too?

Re:Time to spin-off the FAA?

[El Pollo Loco]

I dunno about that. It seems that there would be another power struggle between the two agencys. How do you define which one controls what airspace? Even once that's defined, there will probably be constant fights over it. Because the one that controls the most airspace, would in general bring in the most money.

Range Safety

[Detritus]

While I don't think regulations should be more intrusive than needed, there is a definite need for government regulation of space launches.

Range safety is an integral part of government and commercial launch vehicle operations in the United States. Range safety ensures that the launch vehicle, or its components, impact in a safe area if there is a problem with the launch vehicle. This involves redundant systems to monitor the velocity, position and health of the launch vehicle, impact prediction systems (where do the pieces land if it blows up), and thrust termination systems (the big red button). The operator of the launch vehicle has to provide a high degree of assurance that no failure mode will result in injury, death or property damage in areas outside the range. This is not a trivial task, and not something to be built from bubble gum and bailing wire.

When Dealing with the FAA...

[Pi to 8 Faces]

it's best to keep pressure on them. When I wrote software for the Air Force a couple years ago, we had to test out new system with the FAA. As lead programmer, I was put in charge of test coordination. The problem with the FAA is that no one will actually make a decision. If you get stuck in a loop where person X says "Sorry, person Y will have to make that decision," and person Y tells you it's person X's call, you're in trouble. And this happens frequently. I was able to call NOT EMAIL them repeatedly until they got so sick of dealing with me that they made it happen. I was working with people at the GS-14 level. I don't know if this helps at all, but don't worry, others have been there and made it work!

re: liability concerns?

[ed.han]

well, not to sound like a jerk but i can't help thinking that's simplistic.

no private organization will want to invest significant money into an enterprise when there's no government regulation to ensure they aren't going to be pi$$ing their money away into a lawsuit-zone. your occasional eccentric tycoon, sure, but there's a limited number of those guys since they're generally busy being bond villains...

besides, when the wright brothers plane crashed, it injured the craft, pilot and very little else. w/ a spacecraft, you've got a controlled explosion taking place with tons of very boom-happy material. imagine if such a vessel fell on a town. or city. or dam. you get the idea.

ed

Re:Intra-agency or interagency?

[Pi to 8 Faces]

No, I think the author has it right. The FAA is compartamentalized. The article even makes mention of the fact that rockets should fall under its AST office.

Re:Shuttle's competition

[McCrabcakes]

Put on your tinfoil hat and shut the fuck up.

FSA?

[nicodemus05]

(This is a bit rambling, but please read before you mod off-topic)

Wouldn't it make sense to spin off a portion of the FAA and make it (just an example) the Federal Space Administration?

I think that this is a great idea, but good luck getting anyone to fund it. What, exactly, would this agency do right now? We have no shuttle flights (nor do we have any planned for the near future), Mars continues to be a pipe dream, and the ISS is serviced by Russian craft. There's not much to regulate right now. I agree that we'll need one in the future, it's just that the future seems an awfully long way away right now.

I think that the only real chance we have for space exploration, at least until China starts kicking our asses in the race to Mars, is commercial. How about a lottery where a couple of people get a ticket to Mars? Zubrin proposes a $30 billion long term Mars program. At $1000 a ticket, that means we have to sell 30 million tickets (assuming absolutely 0 investment, 0 government aid, and 0 commercial sponsorship (The Pepsi Landing Module, anyone?)). I'm just a poor college student, but you can be damn sure I'd scrape up the cash. Many of the rich and famous would by several tickets, I'd bet. Maybe we couldn't sell 30 million tickets here. Our population is about 280 million, so that's about one person in 9 buying tickets. Pretty unlikely. Our chances get better, however, when we open the lottery up world-wide.

So, before I get modded off-topic, I guess what I'm trying to say is that the space exploration of the future needs to be a cooperative effort.

The government needs to deregulate. Anyone who tries to make space something other than the Wild West is a bit delusional. By stepping back and letting explorers take over their doing nothing that we didn't already do in Tennessee, or Montana, or California.

Commercial ventures need to come up with the money. With all of the MBAs pouring out of Harvard alone you figure that someone could come up with a viable business model. Keep the lottery idea in mind, it's a quick way to make the cash roll in.

Citizens need, at the very least, to vote for Pro-Space Exploration congressmen. How are you going to get Joe Sixpack to vote at all, let alone for such a seemingly trivial issue? Make it exciting again. We need imminent, impressive goals. Mars doesn't count. Even now a landing is 15 years away.

What can we do to:
A) Help the plight of commercial space programs bogged down in bureaucracy?
B) Increase funding to government space programs?
C) Let congress know that there are people interested in space exploration?

Why, I'm glad you asked. Write your congressman. The Mars Society has a well developed lobbying system, including mailing lists and meeting reports. Don't know whether your congressman stands on this issue? Get their report card.

Proliferation...

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason that private rocket programs have always hit lots of bureaucratic tangles may be behind-the-scenes interference by the DoW^HD. There is no difference between an ICBM and a suborbital rocket, except maybe what you put in the cargo compartment.

Interesting though it may be, commercial space flight is a nuclear proliferation nightmare: what if anyone with (say) $50M to spend could put any payload he wanted, anywhere on the planet, reliably?

As Gen. Pete Worden (former head of U.S Command) used to say, "We're more concerned about people sending surprise packages...".

Re:liability concerns?

[bigpat]

"/. is a great place for reading about clueless tech users. Let me be the first to inform you: you are equally clueless about the legal system."

And an great place for informed people to slap down the mistaken and uninformed with all due clarity and contempt.

"If there's one thing tech people do not understand, it is tort law."

Stereotypes are very useful for making yourself feel smarter than you are. But thanks for the nice explanation of sovereign immunity.