Slashdot Mirror
Private Spaceflight Law Passes Senate
Neil Halelamien writes "HR 5382, the commercial spaceflight bill which has been previously mentioned on Slashdot, has been passed by Congress at the last minute (almost literally). The bill had previously been stalled several times due to disagreements about how much the FAA should regulate crew and passenger safety. It's now headed to the White House to be signed into law. Under this legislation, the FAA's role until 2012 will be to protect the uninvolved public on the ground, and allow passengers to ride as long as they've been properly informed of the related dangers. Also, the FAA will be able to regulate certain aspects of the vehicles if they prove to be dangerous."
Well, we only control the airspace up to FL60 (a.k.a. 60,000 feet). To get there, you'd either need to launch with FAA control (you have to be under instrument flight rules in Class A airspace (18-60k ft)), or from some other country, and never be under 60001 ft.
I don't know about international treaties regarding the area about FL60. I know that NORAD track all the space junk (as well as watching out for incoming missiles).
For the person (way above) who complained that this is just guberment stomping on individuals rights to do what they want on their property...1.) You don't own the airspace above your land. 2.) Wouldn't it be fun to own the land at the end of a runway, and launch missiles straight up without any coordination with ATC (air traffic control)???...but hey when you kill several hundred jumbo jet passengers, you can say they were flying over your airspace...DOH!
Just another day in Paradise
The rank structure, beginning in the original series, was always that of a navy or marine corps rather than an army or air force.
Captain Kirk was always treated as sovereign, within regulations. He regularly waxed poetic about life on the high seas.
sigs, as if you care.
I couldn't find the exact height during a short google, but according to American law, the US government owns everything between (either 1,000 or 2,000) feet to just below low Earth orbit.
That allows for skyscrapers to be built, allows for government control of aircraft above those skyscrapers and gives us the "legal" ability to orbit spy satellites over other nations without "officially" breaching their airspace.
That last one pretty much was settled between the USA and USSR when we started orbiting satellites over one another.
I don't know how far up an individual's property rights go, but I believe it is right below the lower limit of what the government claims for itself.
Only on
Hey, I'm the guy who submitted the story. I should've made this more explicit in my submission, but this bill is mostly a good thing, as it was required to open the door to launching paying passengers.
That said, I'm somewhat uncertain about the provisions for unrestrained FAA regulation after 8 years, and the regulation of certain aspects after they prove to be dangerous. That could potentially be misused to unfairly restrict the budding industry, but so far the FAA has been quite supportive of private spaceflight.
Anyways, I'd like to give kudos to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif) for proposing this bill (which was originally much less restrictive on private spaceflight) and keeping pressure on it. Frownie faces go to Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn) and a few other House Democrats for trying to kill off the bill, referring to it as having a "tombstone mentality" because it didn't have enough provisions for regulation, and being largely responsible for the 8-year compromise and the provision for regulation after an accident has occurred.