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FAA Setting Up Commercial Spaceflight Center
coondoggie writes "The FAA this week took a step closer to setting up a central hub for the development of key commercial space transportation technologies such as space launch and traffic management applications and setting orbital safety standards. The hub, known as the Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation, would have a $1 million yearly budget and tie together universities, industry players, and the government for cost-sharing research and development. The FAA expects the center to be up and running this year."
Hello, my name is Fez.
Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation = CECST = SEXED
Do you know how far 1 million dollars goes in a government project? They won't even have a building for 30 years at that rate.
Floating sky cities, New York to Beijing in minutes, Earth to Mars in hours. That's the future of energy and transportation. Soon we'll have vehicles that can travel at tremendous speeds, negotiate right angle turns without slowing down and without incurring any damage due to inertial effects. A new analysis of the causality of motion reveals that Aristotle was right to insist that motion is caused. As a result, we are immersed in an immense lattice of energetic particles. Lots and lots of clean energy. Read Physics: The Problem with Motion if you're interested in the future of travel and energy production. Welcome to the 21st century.
$1 Million dollar budget? It's a nice gesture, but it seems pretty small for the responsibilities they're claiming this center to have. Seems more like a 'token' gesture made to *look* like they're doing something than taking real action to make things happen. That said, I'd rather see them save that money and get out of the way altogether...
Won't that be pronounced "Sext"?
One million dollars! *Pinky to mouth*
I understood it as using 1M to gather up groups (unis and such) to gather together and use the joint gathered funding to build the place and get it running.
So yeah, 1M to gather groups together to work on it MIGHT maybe. Get 2 Big Unis with some clout. Or 4 or 5 smaller Unis together to help. But still 1M in comparison to the Ivy League Schools that might actually have some powers to make it happens to mean little to nothing.
...Not with a bang
but a whimper.
Yep, gotta handle all that space traffic. Yessiree Bob! No more waiting in line, no more congestion in the TSA security line, no more risk of getting bumped off your spaceflight. Yeah, times have changed, what with all the commercial space flight going on.
Honestly, and I'm certainly no libertarian, I don't want the FAA to have anything to do with space or commercial space travel AT ALL. OK, they do manage to keep the air travel in the US somewhat stable, but really they move so slowly and are so co-opted by they airlines they are supposed to regulate. Just ask anyone involved with trying to get the FAA to implement Direct and other flight path changes to improve on-time performance and fuel usage. Or anyone who has ever worked on any project to upgrade air traffic control computer systems.
There are several problems in the way of this eternal fantasy:
1) There is nothing in space. Where would you go? In other words, once the novelty-seekers got their thrills, what's the motivation?
2) There is nothing in space. What would you eat, drink, breathe? In other words, this will be EXPENSIVE, extremely so.
3) ON this planet we can barely keep commercial AIRLINES going profitably. What is the profit motivator for space flight? Who's gonna go, with what money?
4) We can't even make supersonic air travel profitable on Earth, what makes you think we'll do space travel?
And the final nail in the coffin: energy. It takes a lot of it. And since I believe in reality and not Star Trek, it's all about the oil.
You want to see the curvature of the Earth? Make commerical "Man High" balloon flights like Kittinger did. It's a proven technology, much less energy intensive and will get you the same result as all the overly hyped and never heard from again sub-orbital private space flights.
Sounds like someone's nephew needed a job that didn't require him to actually do much other than pick up his paycheck.
$1 million will about cover office space & equipment and salaries for someone's nephew, his secretary, and the office manager for the two of them....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
They're just being efficient. One million dollars pays for exactly one CEO with nothing left over, but we all know that a CEO is a superhuman worker who can do hundreds of times what a normal worker can do, why else would they be paid so much? So this is really a cheap way of having an office staffed with hundreds without the hundreds.
Where not understanding energy means you can spout off whatever you like about it! Where philosophical aesthetics trumps empirical observation! It's a wonderland where any thing is possible, as long as it remains but a possibility!
I can tell it's going to suck because it's a "center of excellence". Sounds like something from Office Space.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
$1 million is probably enough to handle 6 or so people working in an office. If they are there to facilitate the cross-pollination of ideas, writing and maintaining a couple hundred page piece of FAA regulations, and another document to explain how to manage the airspace involved, that's probably the right amount of money to get started.
A web page with a form. One poor nerd to sit in a dimly lit cubicle feebly attempting to respond to the 35,000 submitted forms per day, the IT infrastructure to support him (an exchange cluster, an AD + file&print server and bandwidth, a leased pair of IIS servers backed by a two-node MS-SQL Server server cluster). A filing cabinet he steals office supplies from every day.
A "consultant" in Bangalore that sets up said single web page ready to exploit with various viruses.
It does not even begin to pay for serving the inevitable FOIA requests submitted the nerds who thought their submitted forms might actually reach someone useful and irate they've received no response.
All that, and some mentions in the press for "trying" to preserve US manned spaceflight when we all know it's over. What a deal.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Maybe, but they had already slated Edwards AFB to be the American spaceport for commercial ventures. There's no mention of Edwards in the article nor the associated pages, so this may be yet another great waste of time. Brac Apartments
Exactly how is it "commercial" if the government forces everyone to jump through their hoops and use their services? And you wonder why everyone is moving to China.
...but then I realized that, while there were the predictable rants to the effect that government having anything to do with "commercial space flight" was a bad thing somehow, there were no observations on the irony of "commercial space flight" being reliant upon existing and massive taxpayer-funded infrastructure and the continued maintenance and improvement of same.
How "private" is a venture that depends upon the preexistence of a trillion dollar taxpayer investment to ensure that they don't get a free colonoscopy from a bolt or other bit of space debris that is traveling at 22,000 MPH??
I am still waiting for the "commercial space flight venture" that starts out in a truly "private" manner by building ground communications and tracking stations around the planet - to include a facility equivalent to the Air Force Space Command's tracking site at NORAD.
"Commercial space flight" is not so much a "venture" as it is a new and fascinating form of wealth transfer. Pat yourself on the back: If you have paid any Federal taxes in the last 50 years, you're helping somebody else explore the possibility of getting extremely wealthy through the use of the facilities you built.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Let's see... it looks like they will use an existing structure, probably part of either NASA's donation or a universities. Researchers will probably be from universities and NASA working on some kind of team with someone from the FAA either overseeing the whole operation or having significant input.
Here is one part I just wonder about -
3.3 CRITERION 3: THE ABILITY OF THE APPLICANT TO PROVIDE
LEADERSHIP IN MAKING NATIONAL AND REGIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO
THE SOLUTION OF LONG-RANGE AND IMMEDIATE AIR TRANSPORTATION
PROBLEMS.
The applicant must demonstrate the following:
Significant experience with industry and/or government agencies related to
commercial space transportation. A proposed plan might include the establishment of
an advisory board comprised of leaders in the field and written commitments from
their organizations to be actively engaged in the COE.
High standing within the national and international arena of commercial space
transportation research as evidenced by presentations at national and international
conferences, publications in popular and peer-reviewed periodicals, etc.
Evidence of ability to obtain matching funds and potential sources, i.e. letters of
commitment.
If the applicant proposes as a member of a team of universities, it must provide a
comprehensive strategic management plan. This plan should articulate proposed
management and oversight of fiscal and technical activities, and detail how the
universities will coordinate research efforts, how research teams will be selected and
evaluated, and how the costs of administering the Center will be apportioned and
funded.
Do they plan on having Virgin-whatever help them out?
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
Okay, fine, no, I can't do those things, but that wasn't my point. My point was that the quantities of those things up there might make it commercially viable to invest the resources necessary to get personnel to near-Earth asteroids, or to orbit for processing.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Not sure, but that's probably enough to pay for business cards, a pallet of letterhead, and the salaries for the G-20 and the three G-14s that are gonna run the operation. In government that's enough.
1) Build vertically and increase the density of our living space, but it doesn't address increased food & water consumption or increased heat generation (if you haven't read Ringworld, you need to) as the population continues to grow,
2) Build on the ocean floor or floating cities; same problems as #1,
3) Wars fought over increasingly scarce resources, which will ultimately reduce the population, but is a rather drastic and ugly way to achieve it,
4) Allow part of the population to migrate off this planet, freeing up resources and reducing consumption of resources on the planet.
Now, #4 is hard and we're nowhere near ready for it. But if we don't work towards it, if it is not a serious goal, we will never get there. We also don't know what cool technologies will spin off and benefit everyone. You benefit handsomely from all the tech that has grown out of the first 50 years or so of "Space Nuttery".
I didn't warn you there would be math.
Help stamp out iliturcy.