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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."
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.
KappaStone
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??
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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?
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 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.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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!
"One day I'll wake up and realize that everything is real" -Andy Palmer
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.
"One day I'll wake up and realize that everything is real" -Andy Palmer
'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.
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.
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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...".