Congress Plans Space Tourism Regulation

ackthpt writes "No new venture seems to escape some regulation, as is the case with the budding space tourism industry. As I piloted my personal groundcraft through pea-soup fog this morning (observing about half the others driving with lights off) CNN News mentioned impending regulation and legislation is on the way to govern commercial space transportation. Among concerns are safety of uninvolved public (to ensure boosters or other launch vehicle parts don't land on the unsuspecting public), assessing risk to passengers and level of fitness necessary to withstand the forces and conditions of spaceflight. Addressing such concerns are the FAA's office of commercial space transportation and the Commerce Department's Office of Space Commercialization and of course the US Congress."

Comments

Necessary evil

[C3ntaur]

I have a lot of Libertarian views, but there are cases where government regulation is actually a Good Thing (or at least better than the alternative). Reason being, letting the market forces regulate corporate behavior just isn't good enough when planes (or rockets) fall out of the sky, food is contaminated, or drugs are defective, and people die as a result.

Corporations are soulless entities that will do anything and everything for profit. When human life and limb is at stake, safety guidelines must be established and enforced before an incident ever happens.

This is a good thing...

[moofdaddy]

There is such a knee jerk reaction on slashdot when they hear the word Goverment. Goverment is not always a bad thing, in fact I contend that most of the time it is not. I am very glad the goverement is going to put some regulations on this. We're not talking about going out back and hitting a tether ball around, we're talking about launching a huge fucking missle into space.

Aside from the safety concerns above the craft, there are also major concerns for those around a launch site and for the enviorment in general. Rocket fuel is really nasty stuff. I remember the warnings after Columbia went bang sent out to people informing them that getting near peices of the reckage could be very hazerdous for their health. What happens when one of the crafts goes bang over some city or populated area? And what is to stop them from taking off on the outskirts of populated areas to begin with? Sure they arn't now, but no regulations exist on the books to ensure that they don't.

This is the job of goverment, this above all else is what I want them to regulate. They are not going to put a wet blanket on this new emerging industry, but they are going to make sure that as we move forward it is in a safe and non-reckless fashion.

Re:Jurisdiction

[sys$manager]

Or you could do what Sea Launch does.

Re:Several ways to view this

[The One and Only]

Speaking as a libertarian, I think lawsuits are the awesome. It's like being bitchslapped by the invisible hand.

do they understand what they are regulating?

[alizard]

How will a set of regulations intended to ensure rocket safety be applied to a blimp-to-orbit venture or a Space Elevator?A railgun orbital launcher?

How would regulations intended to, say, ensure that a passenger can physically withstand X number of Gs at launch be applied where the max launch acceleration is 1G?

I can easily imagine new set of space environmental laws being used to interfere with the development of non-rocket space technology in the USA.

The Internet isn't rocket science, copyright isn't rocket science, but corporations in pursuit of their own interests against the public have worked with Congress to do their best to fuck up both areas. So what happens when the regulations cover an area that is rocket science?