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

So use Russian launchers...

[AliasMarlowe]

After all, it's Soyuz that keeps the ISS manned, and Proton that provides most of its supplies. No US components or technology (maybe some really ancient/proven stuff).

Re:It is obvious.

[AmiMoJo]

It's because people are worried that US space technology will get to Iran or North Korea. Even though both those countries already have space programmes there is no reason to accelerate them.

For the US classifying stuff as a munition is just a way to control its export, like they did with strong encryption for years.