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Legislators: 'Spaceport America Could Become a Ghost Town'
RocketAcademy writes "A group of New Mexico legislators is warning that the $200-million Spaceport America 'could become a ghost town, with tumbleweeds crossing the runways' if trial lawyers succeed in blocking critical liability legislation. The warning came in a letter to the Albuquerque Journal [subscription or free trial may be required]. Virgin Galactic has signed a lease to become the spaceport's anchor tenant, but may pull out if New Mexico is unable to provide liability protection for manufacturers and part suppliers, similar to legislation already passed by Texas, Colorado, Florida, and Virginia. The proposed legislation is also similar to liability protection which New Mexico offers to the ski industry. An eclectic group of business and civic interests has formed the Save Our Spaceport Coalition to support passage of the liability reform legislation, which is being fought by the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association."
It'll just go the way of the rest of American industry. What's the big deal as long as I have my ObamaPhone?
Isn't it terribly convenient that, on the cusp of commercial spaceflight really taking a step forward a commercial spaceflight centre is threatened by legal action.
Of course you should be liable if a poorly designed rocket crashes into your home, explodes and kills you.
Complete the port and then shoot the trial lawyers into space.
And this folks is precisely why we never get anything done anymore... Between the lawyers / politicians / managers who "just want to get along", we will just sit here and spin our wheels until our society falls apart.
corporate welfare to me, the cost of which is borne by the tax payers.
If the business can't generate enough cash flow to pay the liability insurance bill, maybe the business shouldn't exist.
No more trips to Alpha Centauri!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Let private space fail on its own, it doesn't need "help" from bottom-feeding sociopathic scum.
After more than half a century of big rockets, they still crash far too often. About 5%-10% of satellite launches still fail. Chemically powered rockets have to be weight-reduced to the point that they're inherently unreliable.
Boeing doesn't have legislation protecting them if one of their airliners crashes onto somebody's house. They carry private insurance for that. If affordable insurance isn't available from the private sector, the technology isn't safe enough for use by private parties.
The previous administration in New Mexico was involved in some major boondoggles. There's this spaceport, which is way overbuilt. There's the reposessed supercomputer. More recently, there was that bogus empty test city in the desert project. New Mexico keeps trying to monetize all that desert, but it's not working.
And this folks is precisely why we never get anything done anymore...
No, this is why New Mexico apparently isn't serious about having a spaceport. I know Colorado already has a robust space industry and would probably welcome the opportunity to host a spaceport if New Mexico doesn't want to do it.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Get the lawyers involved.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
There's a special interest group --for lawyers-- to pressure lawmakers to make laws --for the benefit of lawyers-- to maintain an intractible wall of legal liabilities, so said lawyers will never run out of people to sue?
And we are taking it.... seriously?
For real?
Coming from an industry that makes flagrant use of offset liabilities and liability law loopholes (the legal profession), this seems to be not only pathologically stupid and self destructive, but also blatantly hipocritical.
Seriously, an association for trial lawyers?
"And this folks is precisely why we never get anything done anymore."
I think this is mostly a USA-specific curse, so the business will just go elsewhere. You do seem to be rather plagued by lawyers, and citizens ready to sue for millions/quadra-tetra-billions at the first whiff of a split hot coffee or cracked paving slab that might cause them emotional damage.
So I think it will just be to the detriment of the USA and not necessarily anywhere else. Though to be fair we do seem to be having more of this kind of legal madness occurring in Europe these days as well, so perhaps space will be Asian based in the future?
This leaves out the only critical information of interest- what kind of litigation for what cause are they trying to be exempt from?
is bullshit.
Your shit blows up and damages something, then you are liable.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It wouldn't be the first time lawyers have caused a little bit of trouble.
Get Richard Branson involved
" being fought by the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association."
This quote from Lord of War.
"You know who's going to inherit the world? Arms dealers. Because everyone else is too busy killing each other."
It should instead be:
You know who's going to inherit the world? Lawyers. Because everyone else is too busy suing each other.
For an industry which is mature enough that it does not expldoe or come back crashing down on you about 5% of the time, you can reduce the logn tail reliability. But an industry like rocket ? Forget it.
If one of these rockets comes crashing down on your head, you sure as hell aren't going to want the launcher to have special protections. And, if the shit comes down, a trial lawyer is going to be your only weapon against the megacorporations financing these launches.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
My old boss was always telling me "not to re-invent the wheel" when I was designing and writing my software...
There's a fully functional, well established spaceport about 20 miles from where I live in east central Florida. It seems to be largely unused these days and it has a huge safety range already established as well (i.e. the Atlantic Ocean.) Perhaps those folk should consider moving their operations here instead of building their own.
If they choose to stay there, I wish them better luck than we had lobbying to save Spaceport.Florida.
They're not talking about protection for people on the ground. They're saying the people onboard are taking all the risk and directly comparing it to skiing. We're at the point where ski equipment is probably quite reliable and in addition a skier can and should inspect their own equipment and be blamed for any liability. None of that is true for the space industry - the passengers are not in control, could not make a reasonable inspection of anything, and the field is so new there may certainly be negligence on the part of the manufacturer. Watch the videos from Space Ship One, see where Burt Rutan tells his guys to go down to the junkyard and see what kind of parts they can find - 'cause the automotive guys have some good stuff. While I'm certain they're doing a higher quality job on the commercial vehicles, I think it would be unfair to shield them from liability to the extent of the ski-equipment industry.
so we send up 100 flights a uber rich people and 2 will goo poof
thats less jerks in the world
we should make it mandatory for them so one day they get whats coming....to them
As someone who is 100% behind the idea of commercial space activities and hopes one-day to be able to go into space (or on a sub-orbital flight) myself, I am 100% behind the idea of giving manufacturers and parts suppliers protection from liability if the operators of the space flight do everything in their power to make it safe and something goes wrong anyway.
Standard business behavior. Make the public pay for liability, but don't give the public the profits. Keep all profits for the investors, who supposedly deserve it for... no one knows why. Then use some of those profits to pay accountants to stash the cash in some foreign country and avoid taxes which might somehow benefit the people. Because those people paying for liability insurance don't deserve anything but grief for helping rich people fly into space. Makes good sense for a few, but not for the many.
Spaceport America is a government boondoggle that will die in court. The governor of NM is trying and failing to secure private investors, most of whom know better than to sacrifice their capital to this lawsuit magnet.
If and when something like this gets built it will happen in Mexico. Virgin or whomever will pay off the local kleptocrats, put some Blackwater guys on the perimeter and fly their paying customers in with a Sikorsky. The Romper Room States of America will not be involved.
Unless the Air Force picks it up for a song as a maintenance depot, or something, nothing will ever fly out of "Spaceport America."
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
US companies can build the same tech overseas, for example in Brazil, and locate their spaceport there too. Spaceport gets built either way.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The issue is that Martinez has purposely been gutting these projects. The supercomputers are hard to sell when you purposely yank the sales people. Likewise, Pegasus Global Holdings pulled out of CITE because Martinez did not live up to what she was supposed to. She wanted the state to pay for a number of items such as utilities, while her partners had the land that they were going to sell to Pegasus. Problem is, that Martinez's parners got greedy.
Basically, Martinez is the exact opposite of Richardson. She is as corrupt as they come.