FAA Space Tourism Guidelines Draft Published

An anonymous reader writes "...All 123 pages of it. Public comment period runs thorough February 27th, so if you're thinking of joining the latest class of jet-setters, better get your opinions in now. The FAA mentions the possibility of incorporating the "no-fly" list of the TSA into security requirements for space travel."

Comments

My one requirement

[Fr05t]

I must be allowed to bring my ant farm with me on all space trips.

Re:My one requirement

[Elvis Parsley]

I for one welcome our...oh, you know the rest.

Re:My one requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think that "joke" is funny because you don't understand the context. For once, that joke is especially relevant to the topic. Here is the original line from the Simpsons episode, "Homer in space". It happens after Homer releases a colony of ants into the spaceship.

Kent: Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but,
                    uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft
                    has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master
                    race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this
                    vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men
                    or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no
                    stopping them; the ants will soon be here.
                    And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to
                    remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful
                    in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar
                    caves.

No-fly list?

[Big Nothing]

"The FAA mentions the possibility of incorporating the "no-fly" list of the TSA into security requirements for space travel."

Good thing too, we don't want Usama going into orbit, now, do we?

*coughoverkillcough*

Re:No-fly list?

[MyNameIsFred]

*coughoverkillcough*

Is it really overkill? A huge part of terrorism, is media coverage. Kill three people at the neighborhood Quikie Mart and you get local coverage. Kill three people in a suborbital or orbital flight, and instant worldwide coverage. We can question whether the no fly list works or not, but looking at ways to keep terrorists off of spacecraft is not unreasonable.

Re:No-fly list?

[jmp_nyc]

Even Apollo 11 had to fill out a customs declaration. I'm sure the same rules would apply to commercial space travel that involves a stop somewhere outside of the US. (Say, on a privately run space station, which is likely to happen in the long run if commercial spaceflight is a success.)
-JMP

No space plane for you, junior.

[Phariom]

"The FAA mentions the possibility of incorporating the 'no-fly' list of the TSA into security requirements for space travel."

That includes this individual.

No Fly List in Space

[t_allardyce]

Could we possibly keep retardedness out of space? Perhaps if someone can point me to one single example of the no-fly list stopping a terrorist attack I would think differently. As it happens, 1000's of suspected terrorists (eg Rep. Don Young) are actually allowed to leave an airport without being arrested, when they CLEARLY tried to get on a plane! I mean how fucking more obvious can you get than going up to the counter and presenting your ticket! These people are suspected terrorists, the incentive is as clear as day and yet they are simply told "no you cant blow up this plane you're on the no fly list, why dont you try blowing up a bus on the way home instead?"

Am I missing something here?

Thank Goodness For Government Regulations

[gadlaw]

Leave it to the government to put their tentacles into something that was only able to grow out of nothing because of the lack of government regulations in the first place. New regulations on space tourism and privately built spacecraft will likely mean no spacecraft can be built without wheelchair access, without headlights and taillights, without flush toilets with the government regulated amount of power and flush, without seperate and secured pilot cabins, without air marshalls, without a whole system of spacecraft licencing and regulation paperwork to be filled out/ security background checks for pilots/passengers/investors and without government approval for every time they run a test all the way to blasting off. Yes indeed, thank goodness for government. At least those pioneers and inventors have been able to get this far because the eye of Sauron was elsewhere. Thank goodness the Wright Brothers didn't have this government on their asses or there wouldn't even be airplanes now. Geez.

You have to ask yourself..

[IAAP]

if we're really safer with these kinds of procedures and people "protecting" us (See parent's link). If an obvious error of someone who is harmless cannot be fixed, what would happen if there's someone who is a threat and the TSA cannot get their name ON the list do to their own internal policies and procedures? Or is it that all you have to do is have a similar name to someone who is a possible, maybe not a probable, threat and you're fucked?

If I have to make a choice between my liberties being taken away or dealing with the terrorists, I'll take my chances with the terrorists. And before anyone says something to the effect of "It's better to be safe than sorry!" or "It has happened!" or some such nonsense, let me point out that we're already taking chances everyday with terror attacks from the wholes that exist. The only way to get rid of ALL possible threats is to put everyone under house arrest and have personal GPS planted on everyone. Of course, the non-persons will not have one and considering that the non-person is usually the type that is recruited by terrorist organizatons; well, again, we're fucked.

Re:You have to ask yourself..

[antifoidulus]

The funny thing is people get more worked up about terrorism which kills relatively few people worldwide then they do about barelling down the highway at 100 mph while drunk and not wearing a seatbelt. Last year car accidents killed about 40,000 Americans, about 13 times the number that died on September 11th, but I don't see the government rushing to make cars safer(hell, they are doing the opposite with lax fuel economy standards that don't punish the mammoths that cause a lot of these fatalities)
However, that number is rarely mentioned in the news, but if Zarqawi sneezes the media is all over it. The media has seriously distorted people's sense of reality...

Re:You have to ask yourself..

[bit01]

Insisting on absolute safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world.

-- Mary Shafer, Risks researcher, NASA Dryden

From here.

Re:Liberia anyone?

[pla]

Guess the TSA regs just means the Space Industry will have non-US based locations

Let's see...

Dennis Tito: Soyuz capsule launched from Khazakstan.
Mark Shuttleworth: Soyuz capsule launched from Khazakstan.
Gregory Olsen: Soyuz capsule launched from Khazakstan.

Notice a pattern there?

The US may have "won" the race to the moon, but we've already lost the commercialization of space to the Russians (although Richard Branson - A Brit - may beat them to making such travel commonplace via Virgin Galactic).


The TSA can make whatever rules it wants to. As can I... In fact, I hereby decree that all space tourists must pass a rigorous 57 point inspection at the nearest Jiffy-Lube. Of course, I expect my rules to have as much relevance as the TSA's on this matter.

Earth to Ground Control....

[MosesJones]

Given that a major purpose of the FAA is controlling airspace over the US, and given that the FAA has impressively failed over the last 15-20 years to build an integrated Air Traffic Control system (its not that hard as even the European's have one at Mastrict for upper airways, and are proposing a new single system in the next 20 years) and have allowed systems that crash at places like LAX, are they really the people to start defining rules for Space Tourism, sure Branson says he is kicking off from the US, but if it hits revenue why not drop south into Mexico or just go to Russia/China/some nice Island in the Pacific ?

Nice attempt by the FAA to expand its remit into space, but they'd have more respect if they could build a decent ATC system first.

Re:Earth to Ground Control....

[PPGMD]

As a regulation body, the FAA does a very good job, in fact I think it's one of the few government organization that actually listens to the public, very few rash rulings, public comment on almost all changes to regulations, and new regs well before they are implemented. Their education branch is very good also, my local FSDO is always running interesting, and informative sessions on safety of flight, and changes in regulations, along with partnering with the AOPA ASF. Enforcement is a little hit or miss, but is overall good.

Where the FAA has failed has been facility mx. Because of safety of flight it takes years for systems to get vetted and out into the field, by then they are obsolete, or the idea is so far out, it never makes it off the drawing board. I think thats why you are seeing NASA more and more involved in the far out ideas, and the FAA coming back to it's more traditional role.

I think that the FAA should stick with regulation, enforcement, and short term advocacy of flight, it should off load the long term ideas to NASA, and there should be a separate agency that manages ATC, with it's own budget. The FAA would still have regulation and enforcement over that ATC agency, but wouldn't be funding them.

there actually IS a point to this

[Quadraginta]

Before y'all freak, realize that these regs are doing a favor for the industry. If the Feds don't issue rules, it's not like the industry won't be unsupervised. Oh no! What'll happen instead is that it will get "supervised" by the motley crew of lawyers who sue it, and the decisions of the judges and juries who decide the resulting cases. The net result, that is, would be that a random patchwork of State and Federal Courts would exercise some kind of random and mostly unpredictable supervision of the industry.

Now, think of the McDonald's "Yes The Hot Coffee Is Actually Hot" case, or the Texas Vioxx case, or John Edwards' channeling unborn babies in the Courtroom, or any number of bizarre legal circuses, and you can see why the industry would rather drink liquid oxygen than let that lawyer's Wild West scenario happen.

So what they're getting from the Feds here is a set of clear and comprehensive rules which put an "official" stamp on certain best practises. That way, when -- notice I don't say "if" -- somebody gets sued, then as long as they've followed those regulations they're pretty safe. In Court they just point to the regulations, produce the signed inspection reports, and say they followed the rules, the passenger signed the waiver -- end of story, sorry Charlie. The bad operators will get toasted of course, but they should. The good operators won't win all their cases (Handicapped Single Minority Mother Of Five Rhodes Scholars Crawled Over Broken Glass To Sell Pencils For Nine Years To Pay For Son's Graduation Trip To Space: Court To Decide Evil Capitalist Spaceship Owner's Liability For Tragic Accident Today). But they'll win most of them.

Furthermore, these regulations give the industry a consistent national policy. No random variations from county to county, depending on which fool is sitting in the judge's chair this month. That's worth a lot, since these are going to be national-scale ventures, and it sucks up a lot of company resources to make sure you're complying with 50 sets of state regulations, not to mention a few hundred local rulebooks. Much better to have one set of Federal rules trump them all. (And a mere 120 pages is nothing compared to the tens of thousands of state and local regs that could have come into play.)

Not to mention that unpredictable liability rules mean high interest rates when you borrow money, because investors don't like unmeasurable random risks.

So maybe just take a deep breath and all. There do have to be some rules, after all. As long as they're sensible, this is a good thing. I believe also these rules are issued in lieu of any FAA meddling, too -- as I recall, the FAA is forbidden by Executive order from issuing any regulations beyond this set here for 8 years, or until an avoidable fatal accident happens, whichever comes first. Sounds sensible to me.

Much of the proposal sounds well thought out

[eagl]

As a USAF pilot and mild space enthusiast, much of the proposal sounds very well thought out. The discussion points about topics such as licensing and qualification requirements and medical standards show that they have considered numerous alternatives and are interested in creating regulations that enhance safety and protect the public, without placing unnecessary burdens on companies, crews, and passengers wishing to participate in spaceflight.

Plus they're actively asking for input, and discuss input they've already received.

It really looks like a good faith effort to allow reasonable spaceflight efforts, with an eye on public safety.

I thought it telling that right away, they list "citizen explorers" as a category of people who will be conducting spaceflights under these regulations. They're specifically addressing the understanding that this will be a risky business that should still be allowed and encouraged.

Lots of blah blah comments so far including one tard griping about the pdf document format (get a life dude), but very few have bothered to read any of the proposal. I recommend taking the time to at least browse through it... I think it will be educational.

FAA?

[dada21]

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the FAA will be useless based on their desire to want to regulate space tourism.

The country that offers the LEAST regulation in regards to launching orbitals will be the country that takes in the most tourists in this incredibly expensive (but always getting cheaper) business. The initial costs to build the base of launch pads and terminals is very high -- once built, I can't imagine them being moved around.

If the FAA over-regulates this business, businessmen will go elsewhere. The next few years will set a financial precedent to where the space companies will go. My guess? Australia, South America or even islands off of Africa. Remember, if a trip costs $100,000 and 2 weeks of planning, the extra few hours of flying to some remote location is no big deal.

He may be a brit, but...

[C10H14N2]

He chose New Mexico to build a billion-dollar spaceport because the "restrictive" government there wants to foot half the bill.

Act of Terrorism?

[Sebilrazen]

Is slashdotting a .gov website an act of terrorism?