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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
"We're not happy until you're NOT happy."
Different parts of the Federal Aviation Administration regulate the 100-year old aviation industry and the emerging commercial space transportation industry. Unfortunately, the aviation guys want to regulate these new space entrepreneurs the same way they regulate huge corporations like United Airlines or Boeing. If the Wright Brothers had faced such a burden, they would never have gotten off the ground.
Wouldn't it make sense to spin off a portion of the FAA and make it (just an example) the Federal Space Administration? At least then you'd have a separate and wholly defined department to handle both public and government-level space flight regulation.
In it's current form, the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) is stuck under the umbrella of the FAA. With the increasing popularity and usage of private/commerical space flight, the AST is continually limited in its scope from the head guys at the FAA. Spinning that department off into it's own regulatory agency frees it from the burden of having to look over their shoulders.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
In other news, they're also searching for a suitable 'A' word so that the acronym doesn't look so stupid.
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?
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
'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.
The whole idea behind this is not to eliminate regulations entirely, but establish regulations that are just enough to keep the industry from hurting the uninvolved general public. Too much rules are bad, not enough rules are bad. There is a terrific middle ground. In fact, a lot of us would PREFER regulation, so that the image of the industry isn't tarnished with really bad accidents that could have been prevented with a little sanity checking and due dilligence.
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...".
who's thinking that the families of the deceased* won't slap the mother of all class-action suits against, among others, the licensing body?
/. 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. So are the people who modded your clueless post up to +5, so you need not feel as though you are alone here.
Two words: sovereign immunity. You can't sue the king except under certain limited circumstances where the king agrees to let you sue him.
Also, do you have any idea what a "class action" is? It's a lawsuit brought by members of a "class" that usually cannot be individually identified. In almost any case I can possibly imagine, any harm resulting from the destruction of a plane or of property on the ground would result in specifically identifiable and ascertainable victims. A mass tort would not be an appropriate remedy in such a situation.
In the event that there is a pollution release-type event that causes some minimal level of harm to a large number of people, a class action may be a realistic possibility.
In any case, I don't see why the government would be involved in any of this. Giving someone a license hardly subjects you to liability when a third party is harmed by the licensee. For instance, do you see victims in auto accident cases suing states when they are hit by careless drivers? Do you see victims suing state licensing authorities (successfully) when doctors commit malpractice?
If you're going to bitch about lawyers and some nebulous fear of lawsuits, at least understand what you are bitching about.
If there's one thing tech people do not understand, it is tort law.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
if they are suborbital, ;-)
don't they fall under the law of gravity?
(the ultimate authority in such matters...