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."
Space is much more analogous to our experience with ocean travel than air travel. You can stay in space until your supplies run out, not just while your fuel does. That means a lot more interaction between people, and more need for regulation of that interaction.
It always strikes me as a bit luddite when the surface-dwellers arrogate for themselves the right to govern those outside the atmosphere, or on another planet.
I expect one of the first court cases to result in the principle that a space Captain has all the rights of a maritime Captain.
I wonder when we'll see the first marriage performed by a Captain in space?
And I wonder how long before the first space battle over control of a "celestial object", or over something else?
Whatever happens, we'll probably have seen it before.
sigs, as if you care.
Well, I can't imagine the USA allowing just anybody to fly in space above their country. The onyl reason they tend to tolerate foreign spy satelites is that shooting one down would be an act of agression
It is actually normal for Air Traffic Controllers to think in terms of handing an aircraft off to a controller for a different flight level. Establishing control of vehicles between say 10 and 100 km would not introduce any fundamental changes to the way they operate
http://michaelsmith.id.au
So if you've got a plane in orbit does that mean it would only fall under FAA control when its over the US or would it be from which country the plane originates?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Government regulation is un-American and inefficient. Let the market decide. Those companies whose flights don't end in smoking craters will get more business.
Er, on a serious note, isn't pollution of space a fairly important issue as well? Left alone, companies will just dump their crap up there, and in 20 years time every launch will run the risk of being hit by orbiting junk
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
Not if, in the process of regulating, it kills the entire industry before it's born.
Even funnier will be the idea of a battle over an orbital position. ie: nothing at all. This isn't quite as funny as it sounds, when you consider Lagrange points. The Lagrange points are mathematical fictions, but can be nifty places indeed for many purposes, possibly worth fighting over.
For the obligatory science fiction reference, read Poul Anderson's "Tales of the Flying Mountains," a series of short stories framed in the setting of the first interstellar flight. The officers are trying to build their history to help educate their young and prevent the culture loss that seems to plague just about every "generation ship" in fiction. One story is about some orbital shenanigans around the Trojan asteroids. To say any more would be a spoiler.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I think what the intent of the law is:
1. Thou shalt not kill the general public by allowing your mission (or pieces & parts thereof) to land on them
2. Thou shalt not kill your paying passengers
The only question is how zealous will the FAA be in enforcing rule #2. Will they require inflatible slides for the doors (not that reasonable) or require fire-retardant cabin hardware (very reasonable), or maybe require a preflight speech by the pilot: "Insert the metal tab into the buckle" (stupid, but a legal necessity).
Chip H.
I laughed and blew off what he said, but lo and behold, here comes the government just like dad predicted.
Sad.
One thing we can all agree on is the need to require adult citizens abide by the laws claiming jurisdiction over them. Fine. So how much "law" can every citizen be expected to learn by the time they are 18 years of age?
That should set the limit on the amount of "law" permitted at any given time. You want to pass a new law? Get rid of an old one.
It's called refactoring.
PS: Who knows, if it catches on even Microsoft might start doing it.
Seastead this.
Actually, the Causby case was where the SC said that property rights no longer extend forever. Some farmer were upset that these new-fangled planes were flying over their property and scaring their livestock.
l
The courts response: Common sense revolts at the idea that flying over your property is tresspassing.
http://www.netvista.net/~hpb/cases/causby-1.htm
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Oh, and don't hold your breath. You will only suffer a burst lung, or at the very least embolisms...
Linq
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The thing I love about the Outer Space Treaty is this clause:
Article XVI
Any State Party to the Treaty may give notice of its withdrawal from the Treaty one year after its entry into force by written notification to the Depositary Governments. Such withdrawal shall take effect one year from the date of receipt of this notification.
Basically, if there were a legitimate reason for the USA to ignore the treaty, we can ignore any and all provisions of it, including the national soverignty issues over control of hunks of rock.
I think this provision was even put in to help make it pass the U.S. Senate. What a withdrawl really means to international law, however, is another story.
Oh, there's plenty of data out there for rockets - there are thousands of designs that have been built in dozens of countries. The rocket failure rate is nothing short of "sad". Take that, and strap on the idea that people with little or no experience with rocketry are going to be building these things on shoestring budgets with minimal testing (because testing facilities are expensive).
Why are failures so common the world over? Because rockets are nasty beasts that work by basically strapping your payload to a flying bomb of chemicals that want strongly to react with each other, putting them under extreme pressures, having them react often hotter than the boiling point of iron, having them jet out the back at accelerations that would tear most vehicles apart, and imparting huge vibrational loads on every component, all the while having to be built lightly enough that they make airplanes look sturdy. Machinery just plain doesn't like this one bit. It's truly amazing that we're able to get off Earth at all given what we're up against.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.