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

Posted by Soulskill on from the pie-in-the-sky dept.

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.'"

24 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. It is obvious. by flayzernax · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That one person or very few people in our government are exerting almost complete totalitarian control over what goes up and comes down from space.

    This is patently UN American. It is the antithesis to the spirit of freedom and exploration.

    Can we please take this power away from these few individuals and at least tie it up in bureaucratic red tape so we can build an industry to lobby for its control later on before we miss this golden opportunity...

    Oh well. Screw it. It never was about science, tech, or enlightenment (despite the all seeing eye being on everything), always politics, greed, and fear.

    1. Re:It is obvious. by dpidcoe · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is patently UN American. It is the antithesis to the spirit of freedom and exploration.

      Can we please take this power away from these few individuals and at least tie it up in bureaucratic red tape so we can build an industry to lobby for its control later on before we miss this golden opportunity...

      Yeah! Someone should form a committee to investigate these un-american activities.

    2. Re:It is obvious. by flayzernax · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Or at least we should make a Department of Space Transportation. Unrelated to Homeland Security. It could still be under the executive branch, and Civil.

      The only reasoning behind this crazy system I can envision is NORAD and Russia's counterpart. Not wanting to ever see launches without them being scheduled over DEFCON type situations.

      Still munititions is way overboard for a manned space mission. It is laughable.

      Or just extend international maritime law into space. We have other treaties as well. I don't think they stipulate issues like this. In fact the ruling is probably to play into the wording of those treaties deliberately.

    3. Re:It is obvious. by Dcnjoe60 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That one person or very few people in our government are exerting almost complete totalitarian control over what goes up and comes down from space.

      This is patently UN American. It is the antithesis to the spirit of freedom and exploration.

      Can we please take this power away from these few individuals and at least tie it up in bureaucratic red tape so we can build an industry to lobby for its control later on before we miss this golden opportunity...

      Oh well. Screw it. It never was about science, tech, or enlightenment (despite the all seeing eye being on everything), always politics, greed, and fear.

      You should stop and think who benefits and who gets hurt by this new restriction. One only has to look at which DOD contractors are also involved with space flight to answer that question.

    4. Re:It is obvious. by VortexCortex · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Unsurprisingly, also addressed in Planetes. Space terrorists believed the unfair regulations against lesser nations were being used to the economic and political gain of the more powerful nations while creating an even wider gulf between more and less powerful nations.

      TLDNW: When you look down on our precious blue planet from space, there are no borders.

      All the politics, greed, and fear in the Universe is dwarfed by the vulnerability of the planet, and our need for progress outside our home among the stars in order to protect it and thus all life in this corner of the cosmos. If that progress be spurned by power and greed, so be it. If cautiousness is not minded proportionate to the risk, we stand more to loose than a few years of progress. I say let the small space satellites and shuttles advance. Just like nuclear weapons, if the enemy were to bombard us with mass from orbital platforms, then so will we be able to.

      Mutually assured destruction sounds evil, but when I think about it, that's all we've ever had since before the first tribe of man came to trust their members. The only way to gain trust and prosper as a species is to cautiously operate in the same spaces of technology and industry; To shake hands and mutually cause any hidden knives to fall from our sleeves; To become more interdependent on each other; To cautiously take equal risks while never loosing sight of the worlds all mankind is charged to protect.

      It's easy to dismiss such caution as irrational fear, corrupt greed, and political control. The truth is that right now we only have one world. One basket carries all our eggs at present. I would say extreme cautiousness is warranted, but should be proscribed according to actual risk, not perceived threat. If we can not take the risk of shaking hands with those we feel threatened by, they can never prove non threatening and can never become our friends. The more self sustaining footholds life wins itself in the Universe, the more reckless we can be, the more progress we can take at risk.

      TLDR: Let's not throw caution to the wind and fuck it all up forever.

    5. Re:It is obvious. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:It is obvious. by Dcnjoe60 · · Score: 2

      It sounds like the rest of the world is going to benefit the most. Russia is already well ahead in space tourism but it did look for a while like the US was about to catch up and overtake it. It will be interesting to see what happens to Virgin Galactic, since they are EU/UK based.

      As long as Russia or Virgin Galactic or anybody else aren't using patents or technology that is now considered classified for national security reasons by the DOD and they have to find new ways to accomplish it. Look how long it took Boeing to reengineer their battery problem. How long would it take to do that for a space craft and get it re-certified? If the US has fallen behind, the front runners only have to be delayed long enough to allow the US to catch back up.

    7. Re:It is obvious. by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2

      Or at least we should make a Department of Space Transportation. Unrelated to Homeland Security. It could still be under the executive branch, and Civil.

      We already have a Department of Transportation, which is where any regulatory agency for space flight belongs. The key is to start thinking of space travel as, you know, transportation rather than something new and different and scary. Unfortunately, it seems like we're still stuck with IN SPAAACE slapped onto things, kind of like ON THE INTERNET. Only with even less excuse, since the internet was still purely theoretical when Sputnik was launched, and barely a glimmer when Apollo 11 landed.

      But you can guarantee DHS/TSA will get their noses in there somehow.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    8. Re:It is obvious. by Medievalist · · Score: 2

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

      Yeah, because that totally worked. Thanks to our heroic and ever-vigilant government doing its very best to hamper the free exchange of ideas, nobody outside the USA has ever had strong encryption. I can't tell you how much safer I feel.

  2. Virgin Intergalactic by intermodal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does this mean Virgin Intergalactic will be offshoring their operation, like what happened with RSA when the government pressured them on crypto?

    --
    In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    1. Re:Virgin Intergalactic by houstonbofh · · Score: 2

      No doubt. Belize and the Yucatan would work very well. The hard part will be getting the research and data out now, unless it was stored offshore to begin with.

    2. Re:Virgin Intergalactic by intermodal · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is presently just a proposed rule. If Branson moves quickly, he can do whatever he pleases within the present rules.

      --
      In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    3. Re:Virgin Intergalactic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      SpaceShip One is just a starter proposal - all he ever wants out of it is to cover his costs.

      When you really start getting tourism going you're going to need something bigger. Something like SKYLON...which IS 100% British...

      http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/space_skylon.html

    4. Re:Virgin Intergalactic by Hadlock · · Score: 2

      SpaceX was founded in 2002. In 10 years they had designed and built two different rockets (Falcon 1, Falcon 9) and three (soon to be four) different production revisions of their engine. Their total R&D cost was under a billion dollars.
       
      Given what's known about SpaceX's manufacturing techniques it's not at all implausible that Mexico or Brazil would start up their own state sponsored orbital company. The rest of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) already have their own highly active space programs. India should have a man in space no later than 2020.
       
      Access to space, and the plans to get there, are getting cheaper and more accessible.

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
  3. does orbit count as export? by gl4ss · · Score: 2

    because otherwise, aren't the facilities for american space tourist corps inside usa?

    (on another note, space tourism has been subject of pop sci type of magazine articles for some fifteen years now.. and all companies that could put something to orbit have more lucrative payloads)

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  4. Take'm down! by canadiannomad · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Once again the US trying to enforce laws outside of its jurisdiction...

    So my question is what would they do about it? Shoot down a rocket with 12 rich blokes on a joy ride into space? I would be interested in how the media would cover that...

    I actually don't mind the DOD being interested in such vessels, but they likely they need to (re-)assess its internal processes into how it will track, monitor and authorize vessels heading into space.

    --
    Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
    1. Re:Take'm down! by kaiser423 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, considering that the US DOD is just about the only agency that tracks everything into orbit (other than Russia but we cooperate and share significantly with them, so it's about the same) pretty much everyone has to ask their permission first. Otherwise they risk slamming into some piece of space debris, micro satellite or other very bad thing. The Europeans have a pretty good system now, but they don't track as many objects or as many small objects as the US does.

      So, really it's about practicality. No insurer and no sane person would put a space plane into orbit without first checking with the DOD that that orbit was safe. Given that most launches I've been party to have had to have their orbit adjusted some either in launch time or actual orbital trajectories due to the potential for collisions, I think that they would have a really, really hard time getting any insurance or any sane person to sign on if the DOD wasn't going to vet the trajectory before launch. Sure, a satellite could risk it, but not an orbital space tourism plane with people on board.

    2. Re:Take'm down! by Dahamma · · Score: 2

      No, of course not. And there would be no need for anything like that. All they have to do is arrest those who launched the craft and confiscate their equipment, same as any other violation. That would end it pretty fast (and the space tourism companies know that, so they wouldn't bother trying).

      What I think is absurd about this is when properly managed, it really shouldn't be much different from the commercial airline industry. I mean, several aircraft were used as munitions already, does that mean the FAA should now be placed under the DOD and commercial international flights banned?

  5. Re:Translation: An ICBM with a passenger cabin.... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's crazy talk. Everybody knows that warheads just shrivel up if you provide them with life support and cushy seats!

  6. So use Russian launchers... by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 3, Informative

    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).

    --
    Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
  7. Orbit fine: landing an issue by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 2

    According to the article satellites currently are counted as munitions and they end up in orbit so, regardless of how US law deals with it, it must be possible to launch "munitions" into orbit. My guess is that the problem will occur when you try to land after achieving orbit: you will need to land back i the US. However, since Virgin Galactic just gets you to the boundary of space and back without achieving orbit, the only human orbital capability at the moment is russian.

  8. No, it is very American by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    That one person or very few people in our government are exerting almost complete totalitarian control over what goes up and comes down from space.

    This is patently UN American.

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

    The DOJ decides that mexican drug lords can get all of the rifles we can ship to them while attempting to limit in any was possible U.S. citizen ownership and carrying of firearms.

    I'm not quite sure what makes you think one government group doing what all the others are doing in different ways is un-american? It seems quite the American fashion now for a small handful to dictate behavior for a nation.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  9. Re:Don't worry! by flayzernax · · Score: 2

    In soviet Russia it exports itself =)

  10. Re:Not dead by GrpA · · Score: 2

    This doesn't just affect the US - Australia and the UK are in lock-step with the US by treaty, and so will automatically implement the same restrictions under their own legislation. ( eg, US-Australia Defence Treaty, US-UK Defence treaty )

    GrpA

    --
    Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?