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Private Spaceflight Law Revived
Lord Byron II writes "In an update to this earlier Slashdot story, after the defeat of HR3752, California representative Dana Rohrabacher reintroduced the legislation as HR5382. This new bill has just passed the crucial role call vote necessary to maintain it during the "lame-duck" session. MSNBC has more information on this bill that will enable the private spaceflight industry to (both literally and figuratively) takeoff and from Google News."
"Officer... I'm sorry. Please don't write this ticket... Look man it was only Mach 7.4! hey you're really starting to piss me off! Damnit! I'm going to be late for lunar yoga! Thanks for the negative energy man!"
First post?
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
There is also a space flight rage law in the works, no sputnick capsule will be left alone against those space shuttle maniacs.
A law doesn't go through... try it again. and again.
"can I have some of your chocolate?"
"no"
"can I have some of your chocolate?"
"no"
"can I have some of your chocolate?"
"no"
"can I have some of your chocolate?"
"OK JUST TAKE THE FUCKING CHOCOLATE AND STOP ANNOYING ME"
"thanks!"
And how do you propose that foreign law is useful in space? You can't really work with airspace zones since orbiting craft will cross them in a few minutes, and to be honest you're not going to scramble jets up to those violating the law are you?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Wouldn't a lack of regulation really allow private spaceflight to "take off?" Say what you want about Ronald Reagan's presidency, he was spot-on with what he said regarding the government's treatment of new (and for that matter, existing) industries: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. "
They can't be infinite, so where would they end?
"Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin,
I thought it was a fair compromise for the FAA to only consider crew and passenger safety if it "Has already been shown in real flight to cause problems" It may be hard even with that clause and legal waivers for passengers, to avoid law suits should someone die. It is in the companies best interests for any craft they build to be safe. Any accident in space would likely be fatal and destroy the craft, so no company would allow a safety issue to exist. Can an expert on aviation law say what this proposed limitation of FAA regulation will mean?
In an update to this earlier Slashdot story, after the defeat of HR3752, California representative Dana Rohrabacher reintroduced the legislation as HR5382. This new bill has just passed the crucial role call vote necessary to maintain it during the "lame-duck" session. More information on this bill that will enable the private spaceflight industry to (both literally and figuratively) takeoff is available from this MSNBC article and from Google News.
"MSNBC has more information on this bill that will enable the private spaceflight industry to (both literally and figuratively) takeoff and from Google News."
Anyone else think Google News is an odd place to build a spaceport?
But now that you mention it, it's quite obviously the mistake of someone editing an already finished paragraph...
I don't think you should have introduced FCC in your reply without saying something about FBB first.
Bert
He's a cool representative. Hopefully this addresses the issue that the Senator had with the previous bill.
Fellowship 9/11
If private space flight is not currently legal, are UFO abductees actually criminals?
There you are, staring at me again.
We could have a wonderful regulatory industry in place, ensuring the safety of private space flight, for a measely few million dollars, well before there is any private space flight.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
If only I had mod points today, I'd mod you down just for shouting your name.
i did it for you
Recent forays into totally unregulated services include the cell phone industry, where the Government left it up to industry to determine the underlying technology and phones have to support at least 6 different standards to function on this continent, much less the rest of the world. Euorpeans have many more services available on their cell phones because governments used the standards process to set a single operating standard everywhere, creating a framework within which industry could build services.
I'd prefer have some minimal level of regulation up front to having space turn into what we see on our streets these days (imagine sitting in your spacecraft when the driver of the vehicle next to you breaks into "space rage"). Good or bad, the FAA model generally does keep idiots out of pilots chairs and makes crashes a fairly rare occurence.
Wow so will google be building a space launch pad?
COol
"(both literally and figuratively) takeoff and from Google News."
I don't think the space flight industry will *literally* take off.
Not like the hair dressing and telephone sanitising industry anyway.
No, it is figuratively only. The actually space craft may take off literally.
My God! Someone I voted for is doing something I like!
--- Ban humanity.
Find another country to work from. Problem solved.
It's good (but exceedingly rare) to hear about legislation that doesn't take away rights. Perhaps it's even more sad that we need the legislation, rather than being free to travel in space by default. But I think it's progress, and it's coming from my representative in Congress to boot!
HR 3752, which provided important regulatory support for a new commercial space flight industry, has widely been reported dead in the last day or two, and it almost was. It has been reintroduced in the House of Representatives as HR 5382, it was debated today, and it should be up for a vote by the full House sometime in tonight's extended session - possibly as early as 8 pm EST, possibly well into the small hours of tomorrow morning.
For more info on the history and content of HR 3752, see http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau105.htm. HR 5382 is the latest hard-fought compromise version of HR 3752 that everyone interested had finally agreed on. The current problem is largely a matter of a few who hadn't been following the issue closely not understanding why certain features of the bill are necessary for the healthy birth of the new industry. A letter from the head of the House Science Committee summarizing the issues follows:
Dear Colleague:
A few minutes ago you received a letter from congressman Oberstar about H.R. 5382 which will be before the house shortly. Mr. Oberstar's objection to the bill is well intentioned but reflects fundamental misunderstandings about the bill. Here are some facts:
The house passed earlier this year by a vote of 402 to 1 and earlier version of this bill (HR 3752) that gave the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) less regulatory authority over commercial human space flights than does the bill before us today.
The Science Committee which has primary jurisdiction over this bill which was given the sole initial referral had several hearings on the bill and has talked about it frequently with the press, engendering more public discussion.
This bill concerns the commercial space flight industry, an industry that is now of interest only to entrepreneurs and daredevils and should not be regulated as if it were a commercial airline acting as common carrier, which is basically what Mr. Oberstar is advocating.
The bill does give FAA unlimited authority to regulate these new rockets to ensure that they do not harm anyone on the ground and to ensure that the industry is learning from any failures. The bill also gives FAA additional authority after 8 years by which time the industry should be less experimental.
The Oberstar approach would be the equivalent of not letting the Wright Brothers test their ideas without first convincing federal officials that nothing could go wrong.
Without this Bill the FAA will continue to license private space flights without adequate authority to protect either the safety of the public or the finances of the government.
Please support HR 5382, just as you voted for the initial version in March. Today's bill is an equivalent of a conference report as it reflects bipartisan negotiations with the Senate.
Sincerely,
SHERWOOD BOEHLERT
Space Access Society's sole purpose is to promote radical reductions in the cost of reaching space. You may redistribute this Update in any medium you choose, as long as you do it unedited in its entirety. You may reproduce sections of this Update beyond obvious "fair use" quotes if you credit the source and include a pointer to our website.
Space Access Society http://www.space-access.org - space.access@space-access.org
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Just what the hay is a lame-duck session? And since when winged creatures are allowed in the Congress?
This page has a transcript of the House debate on the bill. Some interesting parts (bolding is mine):
...
[Boehlert, R-NY]This bill tries to strike a delicate balance between the need to give
a new industry a chance to develop brand-new technology and the desire
to provide enough regulation to protect the industry's customers.
We think we have struck that balance and here is why. First, the bill
gives the Federal Aviation Administration clear authority for the first
time to regulate the commercial human space flight industry.
Second, the bill gives the FAA unlimited authority to regulate the
industry and its rockets to make sure they do no harm to third parties,
that is, people on the ground or in the air who are in no way involved
with the flight.
Third, the bill sets a clear timetable for when FAA will have
unlimited authority to regulate the industry and its rockets to make
sure they do no harm to the people on board.
But here is what the bill does not do. It does not allow the FAA
right now to guess whether some new untested rocket technology will do
harm to the people onboard. Why? Because this industry is at the stage
when it is the preserve of visionaries and daredevils and adventurers.
These are people who will fly at their own risk to try out new
technologies. These are people who do not expect and should not expect
to be protected by the government. Such protection would only stifle
innovation.
So instead of allowing FAA guesswork for the next several years, the
bill requires that anyone participating in launch, whether it is crew
or passenger, must be notified of all risk of flight and must be told
explicitly that the government has not certified the vehicle as safe
for crew or passengers. And the FAA can come in and prohibit rocket
designs and operational procedures that have already been shown to
fail.
Now, obviously, this Wild West or barnstorming or infant industry
state of affairs cannot obtain forever, if the commercial space flight
industry is to become more than an expensive and risky novelty. Safety
must increase, and gradually the industry will start to look more like
a common carrier. And that is why the bill allows FAA after 8 years to
regulate commercial space flight in pretty much the same way it
regulates the airline industry. But it seems to me kind of silly to
regulate Burt Rutan's vehicle, which has flown three times, as if it
was a Boeing 747. If we regulate it that way, then his craft will never
evolve into the equivalent of a 747.
[DeFazio, D-OR] We all salute the innovation and the achievement that we have recently
seen in the early days of private space flight, and we certainly do
want to encourage that. But we go a little bit too far in this
legislation.
I do not understand why the committee has inserted the references to
paying passengers and that we would not regulate until after the
serious injury or death of paying passengers. It took me a decade here
in Congress to strip the FAA of its requirement to promote the
industry. That was something adopted in the very early days. It seems
to be similar to what is going on here, to say that in the early days
the Civil Aeronautics Board would have a charge of promoting the
industry and later regulation became more paramount. But up and to and
through the 90s until a tragic accident with then Air Tran, the
industry was both regulated and promoted by the same agency. I promoted
it out for years as a conflict. And it was only after that incident
that we finally changed the language and said, no, it would be
paramount that they would regulate in the interest of public health and
safety.
But here we are again trying to codify the old so-called ``tombstone
mentality'' of the FAA by including paying passengers. It is one thing
to say, here is someone who invente
Here's a tally of the House votes. If you're a US citizen, be sure to check how your congressman voted and give them a happy or angry phone call on Monday. I'm certainly planning on doing so.
Even though the legislation was bipartisan (and the earlier version passed the house with only one vote against), this voted ended up being mostly along party lines. Overall, 206 Republicans voted for it and 2 against. 63 Democrats voted for it, with 117 against.
Oh... wait...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm more concerned about the FBR, CEA, and especially TPC.
Except, we are getting ready to cycle to the next congress. As I understand it, when we go to the next congress (a two-year period of time), all bills of the previous congress are dropped and must be reintroduced anew. So, if she just now started the process, and they adjurn this congress, it's a moot issue. This has to get through both houses and through the President in less than a month.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
The text of HR 5382 isn't up on the congressional web site yet. But the text of HR 3752 is. And it seems to split the life of a vehicle design into a permitted experimental phase and a type-approved commercial phase.
The kicker is that the experimental phase doesn't allow carrying a payload for a fee, while the experimental permit dies upon the granting of the license for type-approved commercial operation.
Net result is that the entire development period MUST be financed off capital investment - including the jumping through ALL regulatory hoops to get the final approval for commercial use of a production design. You have to get to airline-level regulated convince-the-bureaucrats safety and red-tape levels before you collect your first cent (except for prize money, of course).
IMHO this is NOT a bill to encourage general private space development by entrepreneurs.
Instead it's a bill to give the current aircraft manufacturers a lock on spacecraft design and production, protecting them from competition by upstarts.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I wonder if someone gave Dana Rohrabacher a copy of X2: The Threat or Vega Strike for his birthday?
After playing those for a few hours I always go outside and gaze up at the sky wistfully.
I hope Elite 4 is released soon.
We should give these games to more politicians around the world - with god mode pre-enabled - and say (lie outright),
`This could be you. Just forget the military and help us get into space.'
A boy's got to have his dreams.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
There are going to be a lot of places other than the U.S. blasting people off to the moon. I think it's funny that the stupid U.S. Administration think they are going to write legislation over space travel
If there is a galactic civilization and if it's anything like current developments on earth, you can expect ungodly numbers of regulations as some 10^^11 representatives to the Galactic Congress, all full-time, constantly sponser more and more laws.
Galactic Thomas Jefferson: Any galactic civilization with over 10 thousand billion laws makes a mockery of the rule of law.
Galactic Libertarian: And we have over 60 thousand billion laws, with over 40 thousand new ones per day. And thanks to the invention of the time machine (rolls all 3 of his eyes) the tax freedom date for this year is actually six and a half years in the future.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The PDF of the bill reads like a bunch of editor commands: insert a phrase here, delete a phrase there. Some of the other bills that I've read read like as well, while others are written with more context to make their "editor commands" a bit more understandable. From what I glean, the bill appears to increase government oppression ("regulation") of our right to travel on "safety" grounds in exchange for a brief eight year period of slightly less regulation on passenger safety only for vehicles that have a near perfect safety record.
The end of the bill also seems to set up a study on reducing what appears to be a mandatory liability sharing for space launches. Undoing a government requirement, but high liabilities themselves part of the legal problem. Perhaps someday we could adopt the British system where punitive damages are awarded to the government. That would probably do more for both the people who want lower liabilities and the people who want bigger government.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
But only because of the drugs they're on when they see these things.
Thats exactly what I was thinking. WTF? I'll be among the first to inhabit the furthest world from earth.
i'm sure we're not too far from putting the u.n. in charge of space and having some interplanetary court...
Get your torrents...