Here's an interesting bit from Will Whitehorn's (of Virgin Galactic) testimony this morning on the Hill:

Mr. Chairman, let me now turn to the question the Subcommittee asked about what preparations we presently are undertaking for the use of the spaceships we plan to purchase from Mr. Rutan. We are focused on complying fully with the letter and spirit of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. Scaled Composites will have sole responsibility to certify the spacecraft. However, together, we are engaged in an active dialogue with the Federal Aviation Administration on other aspects of our business.

Emphasis mine.

This does not compute. If he complies with the CSLA, there will be no spacecraft certification--just a launch license. So the question is, was this a deliberate attempt to insert the C-word into the discussion (since Burt has been agitating to do this for some time), or was it simply sloppy usage by someone who doesn't know better? One would think that company lawyers would vet a submitted Congressional testimony from someone representing a company like this, but it could be that they didn't realize the significance of it. And in fact, it may have no significance at all, and I'm just being hypersensitive.

He may also be refering to potential future regulations. So today, certification by Scaled Compositions is trivial, but there may be a real certification process in the future.

I think that Virgin and Scaled Composites (sorry for mispelling above, those other guys fly essays :-) probably worked this out. My guess is that Scaled deals with any certification or regs that need to be dealt with on the designer's (and perhaps manufacturer's) end.

Sorry, I didn't mean to break up my post.

If you read Burt Rutan's comments, he wants FAA to certify his craft, but FAA is saying no thank you until we get 300 more staff.