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Draft Guidelines for Space Tourists
IZ Reloaded writes "Draft guidelines for space tourists have already been written in the United States." From the article: "A paying customer will now be able to fly into space once he has been informed and accepts the risks of space travel. There are several factors to take into account, depending on whether a passenger is taking a speedy "pop top," up-and-down, suborbital voyage, versus climbing onboard space machinery to roar off into orbit for an extended stay."
For one, if you are in a critical crew position, your health problem could endanger the life of others. Secondly, on an orbital mission, your health problem could cause the mission director to have to make a difficult choice, Diamandis said, between your possible death or ending a billion dollar mission early, presuming that returning to Earth could save your life.
Good to know the lawyers are getting a head start writing their closing arguments.
Once this has properly taken off (bad pun) with regular orbit or sub orbital flights, the benefits of having cheap reqular orbital research opertunitys is grand for smaller projects who could not afford to pay for time on one of the NASA missions or simmilar.
This could herald in a new era in more than just rich recreation , if this is as sucesful as i can only imagine it will be , then im sure we will now begin to progress at a far greater rate in these areas.
ps: this joke just writes itself here on slashdot "virgins in space "
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It'll be interesting to see how far the operators will go when performing the physical. Imagine the liability implications if they send a pregnant woman up into orbit and she later has a child with birth defects...
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Doesn't it seem a little bit pointless to just do one of those "pop top" flights into "space" since "space" is kind of an arbitrary thing? I would think it kind of an expensive indulgence just for some dubious bragging rights. Orbit I can understand; really really high and back down, not so much.
To be honest, I don't quite see why would should impose any licensing restrictions for passengers.
I mean we don't require a people to be certified to drive a race car - you don't even need a driver's license to do so. And you can certainly injure or kill yourself in a race car. And even when there are restrictions on who can perform a given sport (eg. you need a certification to go scuba diving in most places), that's usually a self-imposed rule. As far as I know, there is nothing illegal about scuba diving without such a certification (I could very well be wrong though).
Requiring mandatory medical check ups for crew members - sure, I'm all for that. But if you're a passenger and you decide you want to shell out the money for a space flight, even though you're not really in good shape, then, well, that's your problem. As long as you understand what you're getting yourself into (and I'm quite sure they will make your sign a waiver), I don't see why the state or the federal government should get involved in that.
Look at it this way: if I'm an 80-year-old guy with a heart problem, I probably shouldn't ride any rollercoasters. But the government certainly isn't stepping in to prevent me from doing it (yet).
Why is it now "officially" allowed. Last time I checked the US was NOT the world and no one but them has to stick to any rules they make unless supported by an international agreement or group.
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This is one time though that I hope the lawyers DO get heavily involved just so that one lawsuit doesn't bring this whole fledgling industry down in one fell swoop.
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The (US) government does not (YET) require licences for race cars [thanks for bringing this oversight to our attention], but the various racing associations (Formula One, NASCAR) certainly do.
That being said, I certainly agree with the rest of your comments. The trouble is, your comments are reasonable and thoughtful, governments rarely so.
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I wonder whether this was put together taking into account the recent, varyingly successful, lawsuits against earth-bound adventure tourism operators who provided white water rafting and rock climbing and who, despite all the no-liability clauses in their paperwork, manage to surprise the world by killing their customers periodically?
Given that at least some of those lawsuits were successful (if memory serves), one wonders how much value escape-from-liability contracts really have, unless the US signs a bill similar to the no-lawsuits-of-fast-food-providers into law. Even then, they'd still be taunted by various international courts.
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though if you crack the window it would be gone pretty quick...
The same was the case when aeroplanes first came on the scene. The people who could not afford to fly (who were in the vast majority) simply were religated to much cheaper forms of transportations such as buses and trains. The same will happen here. As technology gets refined and more companies are competing in the marketplace, things will get cheaper.