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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."
If you want to launch from America, you deal with the American Government.
I'm sure plenty of companies will base themselves elsewhere for precisely this reason.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
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
Once you're up there, it's a different story (international rules, perhaps). But get there first.
If you are launching from US soil through US airspace to reach space... Yes, they have jurisdiction over your launch site and path taken to reaching space which they may then use to regulate various things related to your travel.
Your insane right?
If you plan to launch a commercial space tourism effort from this country, of course it needs regulation. Would you prefer if any moron could claim to have a rocket and start tossing people up into space?
Would you care when one of those morons built a rocket that came apart, killing everyone on board and raining down debris? You would certainly complain bitterly if it was one of your family on board, or if it was your house that was hit by debris.
Your local travel agencty is subject to regulation to prevent the worst of the scammers from coming into/staying into existence. Airflight is regulated tightly to ensure travel is safe for those who fly as well as those on the ground.
What made you think launching a ship of some sort into space would be subject to less regulation? If ytou plan to launch from N. American airspace, or operate your business from N. America, expect to be regulated.
Regulation can be stifling - but it can also be necessary.
- sarcasm is just one more service we offer -
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
You, sir, are not sufficiently paranoid.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
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.
Or you could do what Sea Launch does.
>
> 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.
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.]
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.
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?
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