ENTREPRENEURS FEAR EXCESSIVE REGULATION.Byline: Staff and Wire Services WASHINGTON - Space entrepreneurs say they believe they are on the brink of developing a vibrant tourism industry, but worry that government regulation may stifle it before it can take off. To prevent that, they have formed a group, the Industry Consensus Standards Organization A standards organization, also sometimes referred to as a standards body, a standards development organization or SDO (depending on what is being referenced), is any entity whose primary activities are developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, , to set standards for space fliers. ``If government regulates safety aspects of space fliers themselves, it would be tantamount to killing the industry,'' a group member, Michael Kelly This could refer to:
While acknowledging the entrepreneurial spaceflight will be deadly, Kelly said the industry needs the chance to learn from its mistakes. He predicted the safety standards Safety standards are standards designed to ensure the safety of products, activities or processes, etc. They may be advisory or compulsory and are normally laid down by an advisory or regulatory body that may be either voluntary or statutory. set by space entrepreneurs for rocket ships will work as well as the Underwriters Laboratories' stamp of approval on electrical devices. ``We believe the same stamp of approval will provide the same level of safety,'' said Kelly, who also is chairman of the Reusable Launch Vehicles This is a list of space launch vehicles sorted by country/operator in alphabetical order, commercial vehicles are listed under their corresponding country.
Brazil
A law signed by President George W. Bush in December requires that the government license launches of privately built spacecraft. It also says the Federal Aviation Administration Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), component of the U.S. Department of Transportation that sets standards for the air-worthiness of all civilian aircraft, inspects and licenses them, and regulates civilian and military air traffic through its air traffic control may not issue safety regulations for passengers and crew for eight years unless specific design features or operating practices result in a serious or fatal injury. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., objects to that approach, which he said amounts to a ``tombstone mentality Tombstone mentality is an aviation informal term that notes aviation safety is often improved only after somebody has died, which points out a fatal defect. Strictly speaking, tombstone mentality decisions are examples where there is no incentive for an economic actor to be a .'' Oberstar has introduced a bill requiring that the FAA include in its licenses minimum safety and health standards for spacecraft passengers and crew. ``We need at least a framework of safety around commercial space travel,'' Oberstar said during the hearing. On Thursday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said draft guidelines prepared by the FAA call for people who want to travel into space to get a physical and sign consent forms stating they understand the danger. The draft guidelines also suggest that operators of reusable launch vehicles inform their passengers of the safety record of the vehicle they are using, and provide safety training before the launch, Mineta said. Pilots of reusable launch vehicles would need to hold an FAA pilot certificate, and meet medical standards. They also should be trained to operate their vehicle so that it will not harm the public, with emphasis on responding to abort (1) To exit a function or application without saving any data that has been changed. (2) To stop a transmission. (programming) abort - To terminate a program or process abnormally and usually suddenly, with or without diagnostic information. scenarios, emergency operations and procedures that direct the vehicle away from the public in the event of a problem during flight, Mineta added. Bush has called for NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. to return to the moon and eventually to send a spacecraft to Mars. Entrepreneurs, meantime, are working to develop spacecraft that can take regular citizens into space. A watershed event was Burt Rutan's winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize The Ansari X PRIZE was a space competition in which the X PRIZE Foundation offered a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. in October, which he accomplished by sending his SpaceShipOne rocket plane rocket plane n. 1. An aircraft powered by one or more rocket engines. 2. An aircraft designed to carry and launch rockets. into space above Mojave twice in five days. The X Prize flights followed a historic June launch in which the craft, funded by billionaire Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen (born January 21, 1953 in Seattle, Washington) is an American entrepreneur. With Bill Gates, he formed Microsoft. , became the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space. ``The genie is out of the bottle, the fuse has been lit,'' Peter Diamandis, X Prize founder, said in a telephone interview. ``We are really at the birth of the personal space flight revolution.'' Elon Musk, chairman of SpaceX, said in a telephone interview that government needs to respect the human spirit. ``If somebody understands the risks and puts their life on the line because they think it's worth it, we should applaud that,'' said Musk. The company in El Segundo plans to send a $30 million Navy satellite into space using a small launch vehicle within the next few months. FAA chief Marion Blakey agreed that government oversight of commercial space enterprises - ``astropreneurs,'' she calls them - must evolve along with the industry. ``It was more than 20 years after the Wright brothers' first flight before government regulations concerning aviation were put into place,'' Blakey told the subcommittee, noting that modern airlines began with barnstorming
Barnstorming aviators Well-known aviators People largely known for their contributions to the history of aviation While all of these people were pilots (and some still are), many are also noted for contributions in areas such as aircraft design and manufacturing, navigation or . Last year, the FAA licensed the Mojave Airport as a launch site as a prelude to the historic SpaceShipOne flight. Blakey said the agency also is talking with Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico about their license applications for launch sites. Starting in 2007, New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), formerly known as the White Sands Proving Grounds, is a rocket range in New Mexico operated by the United States Army. The range covers an area of almost 3,200 mi² (8 287 km²), approximately three times the size of Rhode Island, making it will be the site of the X Prize's successor, the annual X Prize Cup, which will be awarded to the winners of five categories of rocket races. Diamandis predicts a golden age of space tourism, where hundreds and possibly thousands of paying passengers will fly to the edge of space every year. Four months after Rutan's rocket darted into space, British entrepreneur Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic company boasts that thousands of reservations already have been made for a ride on a spaceship modeled after SpaceShipOne - at $200,000 a pop. Diamandis said the cost of a personal space flight will fall because today's space entrepreneurs run such lean operations. It took 20 people to support Rutan's flight, he said, compared with the 100,000 needed for the space shuttle. What's needed for the industry to flourish, he said, is balance. ``We need reasonable guidelines with the understanding that this is risky business,'' he said. |
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