FAA Releases Requirements for Space Tourism

An anonymous reader writes "Due to companies such as Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Benson Space (SpaceDev) announcing their commercial spaceflight ambitions, the FAA has just released space flight requirements for safety and experimental permits. Virgin Galactic has already received nearly 200 bookings while Benson Space just recently started accepting reservations, although they plan to be first. The companies desire to have tourists in space as early as 2008 or 2009. All that it takes is a spare two hundred thousand dollars, and maybe a little courage."

Comments

Re:Its dead Jim.

[SpiffyMarc]

Yeah, I know what you mean -- it ruined the prospect of commercial aviation, too!

I have the courage

[Typingsux]

Now who has the 200 thousand dollars.

I can't wait

[misanthrope101]

It's going to be a real pain to be made to remove your space boots before you enter the airlock.

Re:Who cares?

[TheWart]

Or people might like the thought of flying with companies that have strict rules regarding safety, etc, espcially when you are rocketing into outer space.

Here we go again.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the FAA starts making tourism such a hassle, most would be tourists will go to space via Russia, on Russian rockets that are more reliable and on the cheap! Now beat that.

This is, yet again, why I can't stand /. stories about space. The commenters rarely know jack shit about space exploration, space flight, space robotics, or space commercialization. Yet they often unfortunately think they do.

The FAA regulations are good. They were well thought out, in careful consultation with the parties involved.

They require things like informing passengers about the risks, and obtaining written consent. They clarify the liabilities and responsibilities of parties involved. They require insurance based on the maximum-probable loss resulting from operations.

They don't impose a massive paperwork burden. They allow the participants to assume great risk, while mandating some basic, sane, minimum standards, and they aim to mimimize (not eliminate) the risk to uninvolved third parties.

The commercial spaceflight companies wanted these rules. They provide a well-defined regulatory environment. If you're building a rocketship that will be carrying people, you want to know roughly for what you can be sued or thrown in jail.

Oops, sorry. I recant. Our elected Federal government enacted regulations. That must hurt pioneering development and be bad. I forgot.

Re:Here we go again.

[arthurpaliden]

They allow the participants to assume great risk, while mandating some basic, sane, minimum standards, and they aim to mimimize (not eliminate) the risk to uninvolved third parties.

Like shoe checks and no liquids since they might be parts of binary explosives.

Re:Its the liability

[georgewilliamherbert]

These rules are driven by politics, not by sound engineering. Most of the people making the rules probably don't know enough about flying to fold a paper airplane.

Please don't go around sticking your foot in your mouth. The anon coward a few back is an industry outsider (I have a guess who, but it's obvious from what they said that they at least know the insiders). I participated in some of the discussions leading to comments filed with the FAA about the proposed rules which are now final. I know most of the people who wrote the industry comments, and saw a number of the comments in draft form prior to submittal. The FAA AST staff who did this are also people who've come out into the community. The industry objected to some details of the proposed rules; those objections are noted appropriately and either got changed or explained well enough that the justification is sensible, though some of us may disagree with individual pieces of it. The rest of it was ok, with a little jockeying back and forth to optimize some of our particular operating paperwork burdens for our spacecraft designs. Characterizing this as random government abuse of a new industry is bullshit.