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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."
What jurisdiction does Congress have in Space? Any? I can see how regulating our airspace is their jurisdiction, but our space?
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
s/Regulation/Tax/
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Methinks they may try to put governors on our launch boosters. Too bad, I really wanted to rice out my first rocketship.
Umm, CFR 14 (Code of Federal Regulations Part 14 - aka the Federal Aviation Regulations) Chapter III has been around for quite a while. Nothing new to see here, folks.
...and like any living organism, the purpose of a bureaucracy is to grow, expand and reproduce.
The FAA has done more to limit general aviation advancement (as opposed to big commercial carriers) than anything real could ever do. I make the distinction as GA is aviation for the common man, and commercial carriers are another large bureaucracy. Their certification processes insure that people who know nothing enforce rules that may not apply, and guarantee that a plane will not fly until it is outweighed by the paperwork. Any new development will be mostly ignored, as the cost of certification will likely never be recaptured.
Now they want to limit a hand in space travel!?!
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
On the other hand, you have to acknowledge that the private approach is typically to put profits first, last, and mostly in-between, and if that means cutting corners, well what's a few accidents? The problem, of course, is that the public ends up paying for those accidents. If a rocket causes environmental damage, people pay, court cases spring up, it's a mess. If the rocket folks cut corners in a way that somehow (I dunno how, I'm just saying) threatens public health, we, the public end up paying higher health insurance claims. There's an interconnectedness at work here.
This is /., so we are sick of government interference in our high-tech toys. And they do go too far a lot of the time. But it's good to remember how far the private sector can go if there is no regulation whatsoever. A nice balance of corporate efficiency coupled with sensible public safety regulations would suit me. Let the rocket folks excel, but don't let them cause problems for the rest of us just because they put profits above all.
Yeah... I mean, heaven forbid we try and stop people from dumping boosters on people's houses, or launching people on 6G-accel rockets with a 90% chance of killing their passengers without telling them of the risks.
This is common sense stuff. Just because you hear the word "regulation" doesn't mean it's time to freak out. I'm thankful as hell that the airlines are regulated.
"She was out of her depth in a shallow pool." -- Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin
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.
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You, sir, are not sufficiently paranoid.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
1. But I would want an aero agency (FAA, NASA, whatever) to regulate them while they're at risk of flying into something else, either in the Earth's atmosphere or outside of it. Wouldn't you?
2. I'd also want regulations providing for insurance for third parties. If my house gets hit by a piece of RichGuysTourSpace LLC, I'd like it repaired please.
3. Law enforcement? Absolutely. Merely being a passenger in a space-bound vehicle should require at least as much security as is forced upon the airlines. ID, bomb detection, etc.
4. EPA? In the same sense that other vehicles (like airplanes and cruise ships) are monitored, yup. Don't go dumping excessive toxicities in the environment please.
5. IRS? Only in the sense that all businesses gotta pay their fair share of taxes.
It turns out that requiring (2) might force (1) and (3) a la the free market. After all, I'd expect a lower risk of loss if the flight plan was cross-checked, and if the passengers were safe. (4) and (5) wouldn't be treated any differently than other similar industries. Surely, it's the job of Congress to at least investigate the possible problems before the happen though...
Support a few technologists in Washington.
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.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Oops, this is /.
From what I could tell, there were 2 main concerns:
1: Uninvolved people on the ground shouldn't have to be any more concerned about debris raining down on them that they are, today. ie- they STAY uninvolved.
2: Those who want to go up are fully informed of the risks. The operators can't hide information about their operational or maintenance records in order to make a sale.
If initial regulations stick to those 2 points, I don't think its unreasonable, at all. For the forseeable future, I simply CAN'T fly on one, and I also DON'T want it falling on me, my loved ones, or my property. If I ever can afford to fly, I want to know the risks.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
>
> This is common sense stuff. Just because you hear the word "regulation" doesn't mean it's time to freak out. I'm thankful as hell that the airlines are regulated.
If you drop a booster on my house, I'll sue you into the stone age.
If your 6G rocket kills 90% of its passengers, and my 5G rocket kills 5% of its passengers, people will figure out the risks for themselves, and choose to fly on my rockets rather than yours, at least until you redesign your rocket to be safer than mine.
There's a happy medium, but ultimately, this is also common sense stuff.
Congress, you govern a very large economy. Can't you leave this little piece of it alone? Surely there must be something left that you can fuck up for lobbyist dollars than space tourism. Is the well of freedom truly that dry that you have to wipe out private space tourism when it's less than 72 hours old?
I was at the XPrize launch, and they made some comments about this. I was only half listening, but the impression I got was that they (Scaled, Xprize, etc) were in favor of this.
There are legitimate concerns surrounding space travel, and some regulation is needed to address those. Given this, potential investors are reluctant to invest their money when they know that some sort of regulations will exist, but do not know what they will be or how they will effect the ventures they are funding. Burt Rutan has been working with the FAA and OSC from day one and they have been very supportive of his effort. He is wants to get get these regulations out on the table and nailed down as soon as possible, so that the transition from experimental space flight to commercial space flight can begin.
Thank goodness someone can resist the kneejerk libertarian cry against Government involvement. Of course it's good that someone regulates this.
Why?
To ensure basic passenger safety; to ensure that they can cover themselves with insurance; to ensure that the vehicles don't destroy the environment more than they should; to ensure that commisioned flights aren't turned into effective kamikaze weapons.
There are all kinds of considerations here that would either require the industry to establish a credible self-regulatory body, for a citizen's association to establish credible certification body, or for Government to step in and regulate it. Now how many industries regulate themselves honestly and scrupulously? How many consumer association bodies have the power to bring down corporate malpractice? The void has to be filled by Government.
It's not the nanny state, nor is it beurocratic cronyism. It's protecting the nation from a bloody-minded selfish few.
Of course, the state can be a bad regulator, as US institutions often are, but that's another matter.
Sometimes this "when will the gubbmint get off our backs!" mentality just strikes me as being too dogmatic, not too mention simplistic. Besides, oversight like this can be a *good* thing for the companies involved. Establishing trusted, industry-wide standards for safety can go a long way towards legitimizing a new industry in the eyes of the public.
Yeah... I mean, heaven forbid we try and stop people from dumping boosters on people's houses, or launching people on 6G-accel rockets with a 90% chance of killing their passengers without telling them of the risks
Uhm... is it currently legal to drop boosters on people's houses? Won't existing laws cover that?
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
Besides your over the top sarcasm, perhaps you'd understand how that government could easily hit Scaled with regulations from 15 different agencies, often with contradictory rules. The burden of such rules are difficult enough for many large airlines to deal with.
How would you like to be a start-up and have union labor forced on you? The FAA could do this to Scaled. Pilots, flight crew, airport personel, Baggage handlers, checkpoint inspectors, ground crews - all are union labor, all would be subject to seperate contract negotiations.
Every airline and airplane manufacturer has lobbyists to help defend them against the ever present tide of Washington and it's new laws. Scaled will probably need one at some point.
The 2 largest airlines in the US are borderline bankrupt at this time. The cost of operations, high fuel prices, and new security measures is too great to fully add to the price of tickets.
I imagine this is why Scaled is anxious to form a partnership with Virgin. Perhaps they can piggyback on Virgin's contracts to solve some of these problems.
Fine headaches for a bunch of guys who just want to go into space. Yeah, I don't want a fuel tank falling through my roof. I also see where a small company could choke under the burden of thousands of pages of regulation.
I'm just worried that the way they will regulate it will make it impossible. I can easily see them mandating equipment to prevent boosters from falling on people's houses even though they're shooting from the Mojave desert and there's no chance of it happening.
Or mandating a bunch of extra safety equipment on board that makes the thing too heavy to fly. This is a risky endeavor, and it's going to operate on the edge of safety. Those who go up crave that risk and that adventure. They want to know that reasonable precautions for their safety have been taken, but there is a line where too much safety makes the whole venture impossible; weight is everything on this.
I agree that it is the place of government to protect us from each other, and I hope that well-written legislation can make it happen. Sadly, I've seen very little well-written legislation.
If they say, "You must clear out a space X miles wide for every Y miles you want to go up", I think that sounds reasonable. But if they want you to put airbags on the thing, especially if that comes about because the Senator from the Airbag Producing State decides his constituents want to sell more airbags, they could kill the entire venture all at once.
[I can't believe I'm suddenly sounding like a Republican. I'm usually all for government regulation; it's our communal way to keep us safe from each other, and I never trust the oil or chemical industries to regulate themselves. But in this case it's a bunch of smart people who don't want to kill anybody or look bad, so I do trust them to regulate themselves better than Congress can.]
I think you mean:
0) Find customers willing to go to space in a vehicle not covered by any safety regulations, aka the insane.
1) Don't launch from the USA
I was at the XPrize launch, and they made some comments about this. I was only half listening, but the impression I got was that they (Scaled, Xprize, etc) were in favor of this.
What's better for space tourism:
1. Rational regulations designed to protect the safety of passengers and citizens
or
2. a horrific accident resulting in multiple deaths because some greedy corporation compromised safety to increase their profits?
I'm not at all surprised that they are in favor of getting sane regulations passed.
In your unregulated world where lawsuits are the only way to keep people's bad actions in check, who gets all the power to make decisions?
It would be those damned trial lawyers, meddling judges and looney juries. It would probably be only system that could possibly be worse than our current one.
Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment.
Without any regulation, businesses get very opportunistic and start cutting corners. In the space tourism industry, opportunism and cost-cutting ultimately leads to an accident. Imagine: five passengers die in a rocket explosion. Or a booster lands on a neighborhood in west bumfuck, killing thirty people and burning down half a dozen houses.
The market responds exactly the way you expect: people stop going into space, fearing for their own safety. And now the public is clamoring for very tight controls, so instead of moderate, early regulation, we get draconian after-the-fact regulation. The space launch industry is set back decades.
Industry is well known for making stupid, self-destructive decisions in the name of short-term profit and competition. In fact you can hardly blame them. If their competitors can cut margins by shaving safety to the bone, they have two choices: 1) do the same or 2) go out of business. Often, regulation is an attempt to keep an industry alive, saved from its own stupidity.
Remember, it was the airlines who lobbied year after year against tighter security precautions like secure pressurized doors on cockpits. And sure enough, nineteen assholes with boxcutters took advantage of that to kill 3000 people, a couple years back. And what happened? Because they were desperate to save the hundred million it might take to upgrade the cabin doors, the airlines took a fifty-billion-dollar decrease in business in the year after 9/11, and the taxpayers had to freaking bail them out.
By pushing for fewer regulations, the industry killed itself. It only survived because the rest of us paid for life support.
Same with airbags, unleaded gasoline, safety belts: these things save hundreds of thousands of lives every year. But they would never have happened without government regulation: every time, the industry screamed that it would put them out of business. But you tell me, how's the automobile industry doing? Did it go out of business recently as a result of government regulation? No, in fact now many manufacturers use safety as a selling point.
I'm as wary of unnecessary regulation as anybody. I'm a card-carrying EFF dude with a lot of libertarian values. But it's time to pull your uninformed-anarchist head out of the sand and learn some civics. Believe it or not, government and regulations actually exist for a reason, and used wisely can benefit everyone including the businesses being regulated.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
If you drop a booster on my house, I'll sue you into the stone age.
And winning that lawsuit will bring your dead spouse, child, etc. back to life, won't it?
If your 6G rocket kills 90% of its passengers, and my 5G rocket kills 5% of its passengers, people will figure out the risks for themselves, and choose to fly on my rockets rather than yours, at least until you redesign your rocket to be safer than mine.
Ah, capitalism solves everything. So what about all of those dead people? Fuck 'em if they aren't rocket scientists and, thus, didn't understand the risk.
Congress, you govern a very large economy.
But the Republican leadership has spent four years making it smaller.
Can't you leave this little piece of it alone? Surely there must be something left that you can fuck up for lobbyist dollars than space tourism. Is the well of freedom truly that dry that you have to wipe out private space tourism when it's less than 72 hours old?
That's right! Look at how all of those damned regulations have killed the auto industry. They regulate everything: Seat belts, airbags, emissions, bumpers, lighting, brake systems, vehicle width... The list goes on and on. That's why no one drives cars any more.
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?
Tech Public Policy stuff
In the Pennsylvania example, the hijackers had already gotten quite a long way into their plan before the passengers realized what was going on (thanks to phone calls to the ground where the news of the other planes crashing was coming in). The pilots were already taken out. The cockpit was already in the hands of the hijackers. That's not the way it would happen if people were more paraniod from the start of the plan. And, it's useful to note that in that plane, ONLY the occupants died, not the occupants plus a bunch of people on the ground.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Basically, the worst we have to fear is that Congress will make regulations so bad that space ports are merely relocated outside of the US.
Chances are they realize this and rather than force the industry out their control, they will make logical regulatory laws that might add some impediment but not enough to make people look elsewhere for launch platforms.