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

Re:It's no wonder...

[Transient0]

Or more to the point, not that you want to see a 747 get knocked out of the air by one of these sub-orbital crafts and the people who built it end up in prison as terrorists.

Hey, if these rocket scientists don't like it

[Rogerborg]

They can always move to North Korea.

Er, on second thoughts, perhaps we should let them do their rocketeering right here.

Re:Hey, if these rocket scientists don't like it

[Rogerborg]

Well, sure, it's funny because it's true. The Soviet Union managed to persuade a whole bunch of Western scientists and establishment figures to either move there or hand over sensitive information, all on the basis that, sure, they were an oppressive dictatorship, but they were at least well intentioned.

While everybody knew they weren't, just like everybody knows North Korea is up to no good, rocket scientists are almost axiomatically not "everybody". They will indeed go to whoever lets them play with their toys.