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."
no right to interfere with what a person does on their private land
It's more about regulating what happens above the private land rather than on the private land. How far above your land does your ownership extend?
Besides, if you build a rocket and launch it from your private land and land on me as I sit (in private) in my washroom, it's too late to go to the courts!
EricPlease, people: JavaScript is not Java
Our pile of bureaucrats are afraid of losing a shiny toy to some other country's bureaucrats. Governments that have to compete for something can - SURPRISE - do a much better job of not mucking it up too much. If Scaled Composite's design involved specialized launch facilities instead of a flat piece of concrete, you can bet this bill would've been really restrictive... Because the control freaks in congress would've had a better opportunity to control it.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
Also, the FAA will be able to regulate certain aspects of the vehicles if they prove to be dangerous.
uh, wouldn't it be in everyone's best interests if this could be regulated *before* it's "proven" to be dangerous, ie an accident's occured?
If this law works out the way it looks then Congress might have gotten it just about right. Protect the public from the nutballs, but let people make their own choices about risk/reward. That's how exploration should work.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
It is always a Good Thing when people get involved in the legislative and judicial processes. It's a Good Thing when they question a court's decision, or question a proposed resolution, etc.
But please, oh please oh please oh please, see what you're doing from the lawyer's perspective. If a lawyer with no training in electronics came up to you and ask you to "install Windows on his RAM", or something to that effect, you'd be laughing your ass off, might make a joke of it here on Slashdot, put it in your sig, and generally ridicule those with no knowledge whatsoever of computers.
On the other hand, lawyers go through an extra three years of school to get to where they are, and their backgrounds are diverse. Yes, there are in fact many many engineer-lawyers who know far more about either profession than people on here.
Now stop, and think for a moment, about what uninformed comments about our legislative or judicial system look like to a lawyer. You look just as dumb as a luser looks to you. Not that you probably give a rat's ass what the average lawyer thinks, but I want to believe that geeks WANT to learn, and legal knowledge is LEARNED, not bestowed upon birth. So please, everyone, take some effort to actually understand our legislative process before criticizing it, to understand our legal process before criticizing it.
I promise, if you take the time, you will find that the system works a whole lot better than people give it credit for.
Thank you.