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A Bad Idea

10 Comments

This is a couple weeks old, but I just noticed it.

The airline analogy is fundamentally flawed. Barring catastrophe (or skydiving), when you take off in an aircraft, you remain in it for the entire flight, until after landing, so it makes sense for a unitary entity to regulate the process. But in spaceflight, once we have orbital destinations, the “launch” ends when the destination is reached. So (setting aside the fact that the FAA should never have been involved in regulating launches) there is no reason for the same agency to regulate safety on orbit as the one that regulates trips to and from space. The project on which I’m currently working proposes that the Department of Commerce regulate on-orbit activity, and while I’m open to discussions whether or not that’s the right place for it, the notion that it should be the FAA is absurd.

[Update a while later]

I’ve been reliably informed that this isn’t just an op-ed; DOT is apparently actively lobbying Congress for this role. I’ll be in DC next week, and trying to find out more about what’s going on.

10 thoughts on “A Bad Idea”

  2. Wouldn’t maritime commerce and transport be a better regulatory baseline? I know different standards apply between different flagged vessels. But isn’t that they way it’s always been? Why should space be treated any differently than the seas? (Well, other than weather I suppose).

    1. DOT is apparently actively lobbying Congress for this role.
      Yeah, a department run by the former mayor of a land-locked city. Sounds like the perfect fit.

    2. I suggest you visit a library and get a copy of the hearings on the Commercial Space Act of 1984 as it will explain why the Reagan Administration gave the task to the FAA instead of the Department of Commerce as a way to lower the regulatory barrier.

      Also keep in mind that under the OST and Registration Convention there is no legal difference between a launch vehicle, satellite, space station or facilities on a Celestial Body as all are required to be registered with the UN. Again, reviewing the transcript of the Hearings in the Senate will explain the reasoning for this decision.

      Understanding the justification of the original decisions will enable you to develop the strong legal arguments you need to change them into something else.

  3. Will the FAA be pro-Progress, Pro-Innovation and, lastly, pro-Industry like the NRC was? The Nuclear Industry sure “flourished” under a bureaucratic regulatory agency so ‘why not spread the Joy’ with the FAA? I will go out in the countryside and hug a tree while this works out…

  4. The FCC recently issued directives about disposal of satellites after they stop functioning, so who’s to say they shouldn’t also regulate orbital habitats? After all, space stations transmit and receive data using radios, so surely the FCC is the right agency. Or, since some of the experiments involve growing plants in space, why not let the Department of Agriculture get in on the action? I’m sure the Food and Drug Administration would like a piece of the action regarding medical research in space.

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