The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration should work to get the international community to adopt its largely hands-off regulatory approach toward the developing commercial launch and space tourism markets, a key oversight group was told last month.
John Sloan of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation told the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) that it is in America’s best interest to promote the agency’s approach worldwide. In his presentation, he said it is:
Continue reading ‘FAA Seeks to Get World to Adopt its Commercial Space Regulatory Approach’
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson - a leading force behind Spaceport America - is a finalist to become the new Secretary of State, according to numerous published reports. President-elect Barack Obama is also considering Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the position.
Meanwhile, transition teams are busy at work preparing for new leadership at NASA and the Department of Transportation, which includes the Federal Aviation Administration.
Continue reading ‘Obama Transition Update: Richardson Finalist to Lead State’
I’ve got the skinny on the various discounts that preferred providers are offering for the Google Lunar X Prize:
- SpaceX : 10% Discount on all Falcon LVs
- Universal Space Networks: Offering 50% discount on communication services (passes) for the spacecraft while in transit to the Moon and for 30 Earth Days of operations on the lunar surface.
- SETI: Free downlink services through the Allen Telescope Array
- Space Florida: $2M Bonus Prize if winner launches from Florida
- AGI: Free seat license for STK (>$150,000 value).
This comes courtesy of X Prize Foundation Executive Director Bretton Alexander, who made a presentation to the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) on October 30.
The New Space blogosphere is buzzing over what the Obama Administration might do in terms of regulating commercial spaceflight. Will the new government follow Bush’s hands off, deregulatory approach - which requires only that millionauts sign a waiver acknowledging the risks - or will it demand that the FAA to certify space tourism vehicles before they fly passengers?
Nobody knows yet. Most of the NewSpace folks are hoping for the former. They believe that imposing regulations would kill the nascent industry at birth. Better to return to the early days of aviation, when bold inventors and their brave passengers took risks and the government stayed out. Innovate now, regulate later.
But, is this really the right approach? I’m not so sure.
Continue reading ‘Space Tourism Regulation: A Good or Bad Idea?’
Rob Coppinger has a couple of interesting stories over at Flight Global concerning divergent approaches to regulating space tourism. Europe is looking at certification while millionauts in America would be left with caveat emptor.
EASA’s Space Tourism Approach Requires Certification
“The European Aviation Safety Agency has unveiled its proposed regulatory approach for suborbital aircraft at a space safety conference in Rome. Its proposals are that designers and operators of such vehicles will have to be fully certificated before the first commercial flight, including operations, flight crew and passenger licensing and continued airworthiness.”
Little progress means no change for US space tourism rule
“For customers, only an informed waiver is required to show that the individual understands the risks involved and the vehicles they fly in do not have to be certificated by the FAA. Its office of commercial space transport is overseeing the nascent industry.”
MSNBC’s Alan Boyle has a Q&A with George Nield, the Federal Aviation Administration’s associate administrator for commercial space transportation.
“I think within the next three to five years we are going to see multiple companies carrying ticket-buying passengers up to the edge of space, so they can experience the blackness of the sky and see the curvature of the earth and experience the thrill of weightlessness. That’s going to mean hundreds of launches and thousands of people every year who are now going to be able to have that experience of going to space. That’s really going to change how we think about space….
“What that’s going to mean is, after the shuttle retires in 2010, and until we start seeing the human flights of Ares 1 and Orion in 2015 or so, the U.S. government is not going to have any vehicles that they own or operate that carry people into space. But it’s likely to be a very busy time for commercial human spaceflight, both suborbital and orbital. And that means it’s going to be a busy time for the FAA, because those flights are going to be licensed by our office. So we’re going to be right in the thick of that.”
Almost exactly one year after a fatal explosion that claimed the lives of three Scaled Composites workers, Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn has made an extraordinary safety claim about the as-yet-unflown SpaceShipTwo vehicle during an interview with The Independent.
“Q: New technology involves risk, space travel most certainly does. How can you manage the dangers?
WW: We’re trying to take the riskiest things out of the equation. Ground-based rocketry involves firing a massive explosion under somebody to leave the planet – we’ve eliminated that. So you’re launching in a very safe environment. We’ve hopefully eliminated some of the risks of re-entry, which is another of the most dangerous aspects.
We believe that this will be thousands of times safer than any previous human flights into space.”
The claim came during the same week that George Nield, head of the FAA unit that regulates commercial human space flight, warned space tourism companies to get serious about the risks faced by their wealthy clients.
Continue reading ‘Whitehorn Claims SpaceShipTwo “Thousands of Times Safer” on Eve of Roll-out; FAA Official Tells Tourism Companies to Get Real on Safety’
The X Prize’s Will Pomerantz has some notes from a recent closed-door confab held in Colorado between U.S. Air Force officials and members of the entrepreneurial space community just prior to the National Space Symposium.
The half-day session, co-sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration, gave military and business folks a chance to talk candidly about how to work together. The U.S. Air Force is interested in developing operational space response assets capable of deploying anywhere in the world.
The conclusions reached were fairly basic but sound: the military can’t ask companies for more than they can actually delivery, contracts must be adjusted to the realities faced by entrepreneurs, and businesses need to stay clued in on future military plans. Entrepreneurs must be aware that timing is essential when it comes to snagging government contracts to develop new technologies.
UPDATE: Pomerantz has published Part 2 of his report. The report has almost nothing to do with the RLV summit; it’s mostly about how the National Space Symposium is really cool.
The space tourism will face high prices and skepticism from the insurance industry during its early years, according to experts at a recent high hurdles from the insurance business in its early years, according to industry experts who spoke at the Federal Aviation Administration’s annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference.
Experts said that policy costs will be extremely high until a company flies safely at least three times. A string of failures could doom a start-up company, they said.
Read the full story here on Fox News.
