XCOR COO Warns That Proposed State Department Rule Could Cripple Space Tourism

MarkWhittington writes "Andrew Nelson, the chief operating officer of XCOR Aerospace, a company that proposes to take paying customers on suborbital jaunts on its Lynx rocketplane, posted some good news/bad news concerning some proposed rule changes from the State Department on June 3, 2013. On the good news side, the Department of State has proposed changes (PDF) that would move satellites from the Department of Defense's Munitions list, where they have been since 1999, to the Department of Commerce's commerce control list. 'This is a great step for the industry. Since the time commercial satellites were placed on the munitions list in 1999, the commercial satellite industry was almost wiped out.' On the bad news side, the State Department proposes to place commercial manned spacecraft on the DOD munitions list, making it very difficult if not impossible to fly them outside the United States. 'This is the same backward path provided to the US satellite manufacturing and launch community two decades ago that almost decimated that industry.'"

Comments

Re:No, it is very American

[saihung]

The IRS decides that only groups with leftist names can be considered non-profits.

Except that isn't what happened. None of those groups were actually denied non-profit status. Meanwhile, when the Bush-era IRS did exactly the same thing to "leftist" groups, none of the current batch of tea bag imbeciles cared in the least. Sod 'em, they deserved the extra scrutiny. After all, they're all just astroturfers funded by the Koch brothers anyway.

while attempting to limit in any was possible U.S. citizen ownership and carrying of firearms.

Oh, I see my mistake. You're stupid. Whoops, never mind.