If you haven't been paying attention to the current state of play in the regulation of suborbital vehicles over the past few months, Jeff Foust has a good, up-to-date summary today.

And yes, I am very busy, with some consulting on the Vision for Space Exploration. And I don't get President's Day (which I think is an atrocity to the memory of Lincoln and Washington) off.

About that President's Day thing - you do realize there is no such federal holiday, don't you? It's officially George Washington's Birthday and only a dozen or so states actually recognize President's day. The real kicker for me is that here in Florida, the state holiday schedule has nothing for Presidents Day, Washington's birthday or Lincoln's.

From the article:

Oberstar was unconvinced. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to wait until there’s a crash, a fatality, to issue such regulations?” he asked. When Blakey noted that these vehicles are, by their nature, risky and far from the routine flight offered by commercial jetliners, Oberstar was visibly incensed. “Experimentation with human lives, we don’t allow that in the laboratories of the Food and Drug Administration or the National Cancer Institute, why should we allow it with space travel?”

I hope Congressman Oberstar gets informed here. The FDA and the National Cancer Institute do experiment with human lives. They call these experiments "clinical trials" and they are a essential part of developing new medical treatments.

However, it does seem spurious to compare space travel to heavily regulated medicine. Everyone who hitches a ride will do so voluntarily (they aren't desperate victims of some degenerative disease) and should be aware of the risks. Given that people are permitted to do incredibly risky things like climb Mount Everest or bungee jump, it's not clear to me why space travel should be treated differently from those activities.

Finally, the article mentions that the US government retains considerable regulatory authority due to the need to mitigate third party risk. Frankly, this addresses Oberstar's concerns.