Space is the final frontier, but under current law manned commercial space flight is a largely unregulated frontier in the U.S. <\/p>\n
The destruction of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during a test flight last week, which killed one pilot and injured another, is a reminder that even as we rush towards commercial space tourism and travel, the industry is fraught with dangers -- dangers some experts say the current regulatory framework is not yet prepared to handle. <\/p>\n
While decades of NASA's space program resulted in a framework for dealing with the aftermath of accidents involving publicly funded missions that involved major commissions and the input from multiple agencies, the SpaceShipTwo accident serves as the trial run for investigating manned commercial space accidents. <\/p>\n
The Federal Aviation Administration does have the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, also known as AST. However the office does not certify the safety of spacecrafts the same way the FAA certifies the safety of passenger airliners. Instead, it licenses launches, but that licensing is all about the safety of people on the ground or making sure the spacecrafts do nothitothercraftsin the air. <\/p>\n
\"What AST does is protect third parties and property from damage byactivities in space -- they do not regulate the actual space flight and payloads except to require enough insurance of safety that third parties will not be injured,\" said John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University. <\/p>\n
\"The FAA is prohibited from regulating launch or reentry vehicle occupant safety until late in 2015, barring a death, serious injury, of or close call that can be attributed to a design feature or operating practice, under Commercial Space Launch Act,\" said FAA spokesperson Hank Price in a statement. \"The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 extended this prohibition on occupant safety regulations to October 1, 2015.\" <\/p>\n
Until the SpaceShipTwo accident, no activity that AST licensed or permitted had resulted in serious injury or a crew fatality, he said. <\/p>\n
Licensing does include insurance requirements for the \"maximum probable loss\" of covered claims from third parties, which is calculated by the FAA after operators provide them with information about pre-, post-, and in-flight processes. <\/p>\n
The investigation into the SpaceShipTwo accident is being handled by the National Transportation Safety Board. The roughly 400 NTSB employees split between its headquarters in Washington and four regional field offices investigate every civil aviation accident in the U.S., along with major accidents in other modes of transportation such asrailways or even natural gas pipelines. <\/p>\n
But the agency has no formal authority to regulate the transportation industry -- instead, it is charged with conducting independent investigations and making safety recommendations. The agency did its first investigation into a commercial rocket launch in the early 90s and assisted the investigation of the Challenger and Columbia disasters, but the crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is thefirst time it is leading an investigation into a manned spacecraft accident. <\/p>\n
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Manned commercial space flight: The final unregulated frontier<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Space is the final frontier, but under current law manned commercial space flight is a largely unregulated frontier in the U.S. The destruction of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during a test flight last week, which killed one pilot and injured another, is a reminder that even as we rush towards commercial space tourism and travel, the industry is fraught with dangers -- dangers some experts say the current regulatory framework is not yet prepared to handle Continue reading