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Should America regulate manned commercial spaceflight?
In late December 2012, the world could change dramatically. No, not that.
Congress passed a law in 2004 saying essentially that the FAA, which regulates commercial space launches, should not put any regulations in place to address the safety of crew or spaceflight participants. (They're not called passengers, because the government doesn't want to imply the level of safety you could expect from a commercial airplane.) Part of the intent of that law was to let the industry develop on its own.
On December 23rd, 2012, that provision is set to expire.
To date, there has been one private manned launch vehicle, SpaceShipOne, and it flew into suborbital space three times, carrying only a pilot on each flight; it is now retired. SpaceShipTwo is planned to begin flight tests in 2010, and enter commercial service with Virgin Galactic in 2011. I am not aware of any other commercial manned vehicles planned to enter service before the law expires.
So, should the FAA begin regulating commercial manned spaceflight? If so, to what extent? And if you were flying to space, how safe would you expect to be?
I apologize for the confusion, I was referring specifically to manned spaceflight in America or by Americans. Virgin Galactic is planning to operate from the Mojave Spaceport in California and the New Mexico Spaceport; even though they're British, they will fall under American authority if they do.
Nyx, the FAA has its roots in the Air Commerce Act, passed in 1926 at the urging of aviation leaders who thought that growth of the industry would require safety standards imposed by government. Before that, there was no regulation that I'm aware of.
(See http://www.faa.gov/about/history/brief_history/ and http://www.faa.gov/about/history/historical_perspe... - careful with that last one, it's a 22 MB pdf.)
4 Answers
- 1 decade agoFavorite Answer
The situation hasn't changed that much. Space tourism is still adventure tourism and anyone participating should understand and accept the risks. It would be seriously jumping the gun to try to introduce a regulatory system now.
After all, what would you regulate? Regulations only work well when the technology is well-understood. Even then, as with automobiles, the regulations serve to stagnate the industry making it difficult for new players to introduce alternative approaches. That's one reason cars have not been fundamentally improved upon in the last fifty years -- the only people who can afford the regulatory process are established corporations who are happy with the status quo.
The only organization in that position with respect to space (in the US) is NASA. And that's certainly not a desireable situation.
We need independent space development. So, I'd say "no" to regulations.
- Anonymous1 decade ago
I say no. At the current state of the art, spaceflight is risky. We don't even know how to make it safe. To impose safety regulations at this point would be to prevent the field from developing. Once a real industry has developed, and you start getting fly-by-night operators . . . but for now, we're in the tall ship era of spaceflight, it's going to be risky the way an ocean voyage was back then.
- Anonymous1 decade ago
They can regulate US manned spaceflights if they like but it would be arrogant in the extreme to suggest that they should regulate the whole world. Virgin is a British company and may not launch from US soil.