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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."
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.
$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.
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.
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"
There is nothing in space. Where would you go? In other words, once the novelty-seekers got their thrills, what's the motivation?
Precious metals and other mineral resources, for one.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I, for my part, am a libertarian, but that is a little extreme. The FAA should definitely have nothing to do with what goes on above 100km, but there are some aviation concerns that the FAA might need to handle. Things like discarded stages falling on people's heads, rockets crashing into (or at least spraying exhaust onto, or destabilizing the flight path of) planes flying through the rocket's launch trajectory and spacecraft landing (most designs involve making the craft into an airplane). There should be no regulations in space, but things going up and down are still passing through everyone else's airspace.
1) There is nothing in space.
This is probably the stupidest argument against exploring space I've ever seen, and it keeps being repeated like it's a valid statement. Guess what? There was nothing on Antarctica prior to 1905 either. That's when the first research station was built there. Private industry has been sending cruises with tourists for the last 60 years.
There are hundreds of thousands of destinations out there, just in our system alone. Only a tiny fraction has been explored and as far as anyone can tell, it's all raw resources up for grabs. The big expense in space expeditions is the cost of sending everything up there. What we need is a place where we can start to manufacture things from the resources available, and that's not all that far off.
Things like 3-D printers and Fab-Labs are just the beginning when it comes to what we'll be able to do with manufacturing in the near-future. Sure, anything we build up there will still need regular supplies, but I would assume that a corporate sponsored space station or colony's "second order of business" would be to become as self sufficient as possible in order to cut expenses. Once we have the capability to manufacture things like station modules and space craft in space the costs will drop dramatically, just like they have for every industry before.
So yeah, there's not a lot of nearby cheap destinations right now, but they're coming and they'll continue to grow in number as long as there's a market for it.
...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"