FCC Guidance On Radio For Commercial Space Operations Falls Short

RocketAcademy writes "The Federal Communications Commission has issued a Public Notice to help commercial space companies obtain use of communications frequencies for launch, operations, and reentry. Commercial space companies can obtain the use of government frequencies on a temporary, non-interference basis through the FCC's Experimental Authorization process. Experimental Authorizations are valid for a six-month period from the date of grant and are renewable, but applicants must obtain a new authorization for each launch and must apply 90 days in advance. Unfortunately, this requirement does not meet the needs of suborbital launch providers who expect to fly several times per day and schedule launches as needed, on very short notice."

Comments

Wrong application

[Brett Buck]

Call it an airplane, get an aircraft RT license and license the pilots. It *is* an airplane, it's not really a spacecraft since it's at most, a hop.

        In any case, no one is coming close to doing multiple flights A MONTH, much less multiple flights a day.

Re:Wrong application

[girlintraining]

It *is* an airplane, it's not really a spacecraft since it's at most, a hop.

An airplane is defined as "a heavier-than-air aircraft kept aloft by the upward thrust exerted by the passing air on its fixed wings and driven by propellers, jet propulsion, etc." If any portion of your flight profile includes a portion where the control surfaces of the wings are ineffectual or lift is generated by means other than air passing over the wings, it is not an airplane.

I'm sorry, it was a really good idea, but wordipulation will not avail you here. Gandalf said so. In other news, an experimental aircraft license does not allow passengers or cargo. You can't do commercial flights in an experimental airplane.

Um, that's why it's experimental.

[slimjim8094]

Rather than guesstimating a timeframe for when these "suborbital launch providers" might in theory potentially begin "fly[ing] several times per day", they're allowing for current needs without over-provisioning or over-promising. They're already being forward looking with these rules, so presumably when needs change, or are about to change, they'll adjust them to meet the upcoming requirements.

Troll article is troll

Re:Um, that's why it's experimental.

[RocketAcademy]

Instead of "guesstimating a timeframe ," they could simply ask.

It's not like rocket companies have unlisted phone numbers or won't take a phone call from the FCC.

Dedicated worldwide spectrum is hard to get

[Animats]

It's hard because the space guys want exclusive use of a chunk of spectrum over most of the planet. Then they don't use it that often.

If there was enough space travel to justify it, there would be something like Aeronautical Radio, Inc. to handle it, with ground stations used by many parties. Or Iridium would offer links that were aimed at other directions than the ground. Commercial space isn't big enough yet to justify the investment.

Re:Dedicated worldwide spectrum is hard to get

[Teancum]

I would generally agree with your assessment, other than the fact that there are many commercial operators planning on getting into the game real soon with much more frequent flights than has been the case in the past. By far and away most of those flights are going to be sub-orbital (typically only going to 100 km in altitude) and the bulk of these flights will even be working with air traffic in some fashion or another.

Orbital spacecraft are going to be a much tougher problem, particularly for things like nanosatellites. They will be using that spectrum for prolonged periods of time (years at a time or longer), and if there are crews in spacecraft like a Bigelow module or some other "orbital hotel", they may even need a global "clear channel" of some sort.

Allowing everybody to have the luxury of a global clear channel communications link like the Apollo astronauts enjoyed in the 1960's isn't going to be possible if large numbers of people start using space and seek their own "private communications channel". It will be interesting to see how this will all work out, and I don't think there is a single realistic solution to this mess but rather a whole bunch of compromises and even rethinking how communications between ground stations and spacecraft will take place in the coming decades.

Nope.

[Gazoogleheimer]

The FCC, while perhaps not being as enthusiastic as I would like, has stood up for consumers against Congress and their lobbyists' wills repeatedly lately, and the spectrum auction helped fund an underfunded agency -- while making sure those that purchased the spectrum would seriously use it. The huge sums of money were a drop in the bucket for those wireless companies.

With the Internet, you have no reason to broadcast music; regardless, new changes in LPFM have made it easier than ever to get a non-profit radio station, particularly in rural areas. I am a DJ at a radio station in Cleveland, OH that was given to the people, as our fees are virtually nothing compared to commercial stations. We give back by offering diverse programming (no top 40 allowed!)

You want everything, but don't realize that this shared resource can't be decided by the selfish. The system has worked, continues to work, and will work in the future. I just suggest against biting the hand that feeds you!

These commercial kids also need to learn planning and contingencies.

Re:Nope.

[fyngyrz]

Oh, please. LPFM is virtually unavailable. Openings anywhere anyone can hear you are so rare as to be irrelevant, and the LP part ensures that should you get one of the rare licenses granted in a rural area, no one will hear you. Even if they did, there are severe limits for LPFM station applications and the practical result of commercial stations having got there first (way first!) in non-rural areas is that you aren't even slightly likely to get any of that precious neighboring airspace.

In other words, you want to run a 100 watt or 10 watt station, you almost certainly can't. It's a sop, not any kind of equal footing or honest offering.

You want everything, but don't realize that this shared resource can't be decided by the selfish.

No, I want something, not everything, and I realize already that this resource is (a) not shared and (b) entirely controlled by the selfish, and (c) that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

As I pointed out to you, the AM band demonstrates that these resources can, in fact, be shared, and no particular earth shaking problems result. What you have right now is essentially no sharing with the public; just between commercial entities. I maintain that is unfair, imbalanced, and downright abusive of the public. It's an intentional muzzle, and WRT the principles of liberty, it's downright evil.

Cheers.

Re:Nope.

[slimjim8094]

AM doesn't suffer from the capture effect. The "range" of a low-power "highway advisory" type station is limited because in order to clearly hear the low-power station, you need a strong enough signal that the main user of that frequency is completely overpowered. This limits the range, and "transition" is linear (the further you get, the more you hear the main user). By comparison, if one FM signal is stronger than another by even a bit, that's *all* you hear. Furthermore if there are periodic changes in which signal is the strongest in a fringe area, it's extremely disruptive because there's an abrupt transition back and forth - not a gentle fading. So the fact that the AM band is full of crap that doesn't seem to affect things doesn't prove very much.

Furthermore, it appears that the FCC has always supported LPFM just as GP claims. The Congress made it more difficult for stations to be licensed in 2000 (of that legislation: "Basically, this act shifts policy making from the FCC to Congress, which was considered an insult against the FCC."), but since then there's been a shift back to making it easier. You should update your arguments. Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski said, "Low power FM stations are small, but they make a giant contribution to local community programming. This important law eliminates the unnecessary restrictions that kept these local stations off the air in cities and towns across the country."

Uncle Charlie

[h8sg8s]

The FCC (Uncle Charlie) is really struggling these days. Their structure dates back to 1934 and the combination of ever-faster-changing-technology and scope creep has simply overwhelmed them. Only the fact that the ITU is worse keeps them in business.

Everybody Wants a Piece of Pie

[Anonymous Coward]

(Author's Note: Author works in the satellite communications industry, and also holds an Amateur Radio license. All opinions are the author's own and he does not speak for either the satellite communications industry nor the Amateur radio operator's community.)

First, the FCC doesn't provision spectrum use for the whole planet--nor do they provision spectrum use for the US in a vacuum. The FCC works in cooperation with the ITU and other governing authorities when it comes to spectrum allocation.
Some areas of spectrum have long been in high-demand--a quick glance at the HF Spectrum chart published by NIST strongly suggests this. One of the major issues, historically, has been that spectrum set-asides have been allocated and under-utilized or not utilized at all. This has had the effect of crowding other users' allocations, as well as over-inflating the value of the remaining spectrum allocations--simple law of supply and demand.

The argument (to paraphrase) that the public owns the airwaves, so the public should have unfettered access at will is not only ridiculous, but dangerous; and completely ignores about 200 years of both case law as well as Constitutional provisions regarding interstate commerce. The Federal government is *well* within their rights to govern the airwaves. What is more, spectrum that *has* been given over to the "general public" and left to govern itself (I'm specifically thinking here about the 27MHz CB band) has been a complete and utter failure--people running illegal equipment, at illegal power levels; causing interference with spurrious emmissions, broadcasting instead of utilizing the spectrum for two-way communications, and wandering outside their allocation into adjacent areas of the HF bands. The only reason the FCC has allowed the disaster that is the CB band to go on for so long is that a] there's no way to stuff the genie back in the bottle--and they know it--and b] by allowing the kids to play in the CB sandbox, at least it contains the problem. The huge up-side to having the CB band at the frequency it falls within is that it's *far* less likely, from a propagational standpoint, to cause harm to legitimate users, first; and second that the Amateur Radio 10meter band is immediately adjacent to the 11m CB band--and hams have historically been *much* better (although not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination) about governing themselves in accordance with the FCC rules. That is not to say Radio Amateurs are saints -there's bad apples in any crowd. However, by and large hams value their licenses and conduct themselves accordingly.

    There *is* spectrum for commercial space operations to use, as well--but just like other stake-holders, there are requirements that have to be met. Within the US there are many, many frequencies for aeronautical use - but there may need to be de-confliction with other users, and users and equipment will probably need to be licensed--just like *all* the other users of the spectrum. What is more, Commercial Space Operations are a johnny-come-lately to the game--so getting everything they want just by asking is simply not going to happen--and that's just in the US and dealing with the FCC--take it to the ITU for worldwide de-confliction and it becomes a much more complicated matter.

    What it sounds like, to me, is that they need a Commercial Space Operations Frequency Managers Working Group to work with the ITU and the FCC and other countries to work a solution set.

There's already a mechanism: the MOU

[erikscott]

Civilians can use govt/military spectrum under a Memorandum of Understanding between them and the agency, and a copy of that MOU is supposed to get sent on to the National Telecommunications Infrastructure Agency - the FCC for Federal Agencies, in effect. This is how privately owned stream gauges get operated on NOAA frequencies around 169 MHz and how privately-owned nuclear power plants use the SHARES shortwave network on federal frequencies. And have for decades. This is totally a non-problem.