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Space United States Science

Suborbital Rocketeers Ask FAA For Fair Rocketry Rules 257

Posted by timothy from the buggy-whip-bureaucrats dept.
HobbySpacer writes "John Carmack, Dennis Tito, Eric Anderson of Space Adventures, Brian Chase of the National Space Society and other notables in the world of rocketry and space activism issued a call today for the FAA to cut the regulatory tangle that threatens to hold a nascent fleet of suborbital space vehicles firmly on the ground. The FAA needs to make it clear that these rocket vehicles fall under the jurisdiction of its own Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) and not let intra-agency bureaucratic squabbles over control and power stall the development of this promising new industry."
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Suborbital Rocketeers Ask FAA For Fair Rocketry Rules More

Suborbital Rocketeers Ask FAA For Fair Rocketry Rules

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  • It's no wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by deman1985 ( 684265 ) <dedwards.kappastone@com> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:39AM (#6451969) Homepage
    The space industry is stuck at a standstill. Too many regulations are cutting into innovation anymore... Not that I want to see one of these suborbital crafts get plastered on the windshield of a 747, but geez.
    • Or more to the point, not that you want to see a 747 get knocked out of the air by one of these sub-orbital crafts and the people who built it end up in prison as terrorists.

    • Re:It's no wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by deman1985 ( 684265 ) <dedwards.kappastone@com> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:48AM (#6452025) Homepage
      Forgot to add the rest of my message..

      Why is it that the FAA can't create designated no-fly zones for general public research purposes? Seems like they could easily spare some airspace in several locations across the country-- just a couple square miles worth here and there.. That would be more than adequate for a good bit of lower end rocketry research and testing. Just make sure any test craft are equipped with self-destruct mechanisms in case they go off course and endanger commercial aircraft.

      • Re:It's no wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Smallpond ( 221300 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:55AM (#6452073) Homepage Journal
        "Just make sure any test craft are equipped with self-destruct mechanisms"

        You are suggesting that in the current climate, the US Gov. will encourage people to build rockets with warheads and fire them in the US?

        Yeah. Right.

        • Re:It's no wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by chrysrobyn ( 106763 ) * on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @11:20AM (#6452819)
          You are suggesting that in the current climate, the US Gov. will encourage people to build rockets with warheads and fire them in the US?

          There's a difference between a gaggle of people out in the middle of Nowhere, South Dakota huddling up in shacks in the middle of the woods with their automatic weapons just in case the IRS comes and a gaggle of rocket geeks paving some land for a good rocket pad. I'm not sure how to tell the difference, aside from the fact that the idiots trying to secede from the union have the right to bear arms and the geeks with the rocket are insisting that their manned vehicle isn't an arm but they still have rights.

          I'm interested in private space flight, but I think the legislative obstacles are severe on mainland US, whereas an abandoned oil rig in the middle of the south pacific or something would be ideal. Sure, getting there may be fun, but even if it goes haywire and doesn't explode, killing a sperm whale is different from levelling a town of 100.

          Personally, I'd trust John Carmack (whom I've given probably $150 at this point, from Quake III, Quake I and Doom II) with the rocket more than the tax evading guys enforcing their own rights.

      • Re:It's no wonder... (Score:5, Informative)

        by PhantomHarlock ( 189617 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:18AM (#6452237)
        We have one! It's this wonderful place called the Mojave Civilian Flight Test Center [mojaveairport.com] that sits next to an Air Force test range called Edwards Air Force Base. :)

        -Mike

      • Re:It's no wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by D0wnsp0ut ( 321316 )
        And do I get to file a big ol' lawsuit when one of those burning chunks lands on my roof top, 20+ miles away, and burns down my homestead?
    • In a way, those regulations are a good thing: they're designed to keep the public from harm. At least in my opinion -- I'm sure other more paranoid people will claim ulterior motives ;).

      I mean... what would happen if we removed the regulations surrounding, say... automobiles? Nobody needs a license to drive. No stop lights. No speed limits. Ok, that'd probably be a good thing in many cases, but still.

    • Re:It's no wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:02AM (#6452123) Journal

      It's the US way fo handling things: Fear.

      They are simply affraid that someone, somwhere, MIGHT aquire a SAM missile capapble of reaching commercial airline cruising altitudes and that (communist/drug warlord/terrorist/muslim) MIGHT just blow a 747 full of innocent little children out of the sky.

      Of course, the biggest ceiling of any commonly available (read: soviet runion) SAM system is 8000 meters. (roughly 24000 foot) Oh, and that is for a mounted system; I'm not sure if the US police would appreciate anyone driving around in a cold war missile-launcher. Shoulder-launcher SAM systems having an amazing range of 10k feet, for the most common SAM system for ground personell, the US Stinger.

      • It's the US way fo handling things: Fear.

        They are simply affraid that someone, somwhere, MIGHT aquire a SAM missile capapble of reaching commercial airline cruising altitudes and that (communist/drug warlord/terrorist/muslim) MIGHT just blow a 747 full of innocent little children out of the sky.

        What a crazy thing to be afraid of! Someone needs to tell these people that there isn't a huge surplus of cold-war armaments on the world market! Right.

        Uh, sorry, but this isn't just FUD or paranoia.

        Shoulder-lau

  • Wrong story. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think this was meant to be a post under "Engineering From Science Fiction", not a story in its own right.

  • Never forget the FAA's motto (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:42AM (#6451986)
    "We're not happy until you're NOT happy."

  • The project is doomed. (Score:3, Funny)

    by scottcha+4 ( 643890 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:44AM (#6452002)
    They want CONGRESS to help cut through the bureaucracy?

    Once they get done forming the committe to form the committe to investiage the possiblity of feasiblity the Chinese will all ready have colinized Mars.

  • Intra-agency or interagency? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:46AM (#6452014)
    The FAA needs to make it clear that these rocket vehicles fall under the jurisdiction of its own Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) and not let intra-agency bureaucratic squabbles over control and power stall the development of this promising new industry."

    I think the author meant interagency, in other words squabbles between different agencies, rather than intra-agency, which would refer to arguments where all participants were part of the Federal Aviation Administration.

  • Time to spin-off the FAA? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cyclopedian ( 163375 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:47AM (#6452017) Journal
    From the article:
    Different parts of the Federal Aviation Administration regulate the 100-year old aviation industry and the emerging commercial space transportation industry. Unfortunately, the aviation guys want to regulate these new space entrepreneurs the same way they regulate huge corporations like United Airlines or Boeing. If the Wright Brothers had faced such a burden, they would never have gotten off the ground.

    Wouldn't it make sense to spin off a portion of the FAA and make it (just an example) the Federal Space Administration? At least then you'd have a separate and wholly defined department to handle both public and government-level space flight regulation.

    In it's current form, the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) is stuck under the umbrella of the FAA. With the increasing popularity and usage of private/commerical space flight, the AST is continually limited in its scope from the head guys at the FAA. Spinning that department off into it's own regulatory agency frees it from the burden of having to look over their shoulders.

    -Cyc

  • keep in mind (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    if one of these rockets does fuck up, a LOT of people could wind up dead or injured. Not just the people in the rocket.

    • Re:keep in mind (Score:4, Insightful)

      by number6x ( 626555 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:23AM (#6452279)
      "...a LOT of people could wind up dead or injured.

      'a LOT' is kind of ambiguous. Do you mean 'a LOT' like the 150 people that day that die in auto accidents on American roads each day? Or do you mean the 1 or 2 people per day that die in airplane related accident (small and large planes)?

      You are much more likely to be killed by an auto than you are to be killed by a commercial sub orbital rocket. So maybe we should regulate those cars more.

      Perspective is everything.

    • Re:keep in mind (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PhantomHarlock ( 189617 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:23AM (#6452281)
      The whole idea behind this is not to eliminate regulations entirely, but establish regulations that are just enough to keep the industry from hurting the uninvolved general public. Too much rules are bad, not enough rules are bad. There is a terrific middle ground. In fact, a lot of us would PREFER regulation, so that the image of the industry isn't tarnished with really bad accidents that could have been prevented with a little sanity checking and due dilligence.

  • Conspicious by their absence (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BiggerIsBetter ( 682164 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:47AM (#6452021)

    There's a pretty good list of names there, but funnily enough, no mention of Lockheed, Boeing, NASA or the other Government funded big boys of the space industry. Surely they're not afraid that deregulation might allow a little competition?

    And another thing, who on earth are the Objectivist Center and Reason Foundation??

    • No idea who the Reason Foundation is but the Objectivist Center would be a group following the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
    • Objectivist Center [objectivistcenter.org] and the Reason Foundation [reason.org]. The Reason Foundation publishes the libertarian magazine Reason and as Doom Ihl' Varia said in a previous post, the OC is concerned with promoting Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Both are entities which support laissez-faire capitalism.

      I am surprised they joined in on this. Not because the project is in line with their ideas, but because they should (according to their beliefs) be promoting the removal of the state from regulatory functions such as th
    • > And another thing, who on earth are the Objectivist Center and Reason Foundation??

      Followers of Ayn Rand (affectionately known in some circles as "Randroids"). You gotta read Atlas Shrugged, or at least The Fountainhead to get into Rand's philosophy known as Objectivism, which is not without its merits, but is predicated on an interesting mixture of shoddy logic (it loves tautologies) and vitriol toward fictional strawmen constructions of opponents (anyone who doesn't believe in absolutely unregulated
    • One thing I did notice about the letter to the US government is the distinct absence of support by Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites.

      I think I know why: the White Knight/SpaceShipOne combination will be flying in the same airspace around Edwards AFB that was used during the X-Plane research projects, an airspace that is closed off to the general public and has huge factor of safety margins in case something does go wrong. Why do you think NASA and the USAF were able to test the X-15 safely in the range, give
    • And another thing, who on earth are the Objectivist Center and Reason Foundation?

      In addition to publishing Reason magazine [reason.com], the Reason Foundation supports a lot of public policy studies through the Reason Public Policy Institute [rppi.org], which is basically a libertarian-leaning think-tank. It's not surprising they'd have a postltion on this issue; they have a position on every transportation-related issue one could imagine, and Poole is probably more politically savvy than most of the other signatories.

      Here's

  • In other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by BabyDave ( 575083 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:48AM (#6452026)
    The FAA needs to make it clear that these rocket vehicles fall under the jurisdiction of its own
    Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST)...

    In other news, they're also searching for a suitable 'A' word so that the acronym doesn't look so stupid.

  • liability concerns? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ed.han ( 444783 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:51AM (#6452041) Journal
    is it possible the stalling is a result of liability concerns?

    consider: spaceflight is the transportation method w/ which humanity collectively has the least experience. if the US government licenses [x] business to ferry humans into space and some horrible mishap occurs, who's thinking that the families of the deceased* won't slap the mother of all class-action suits against, among others, the licensing body?

    i mean, that kind of liability would have any bureaucrat shaking in his/her proverbial space boots, but added to that the incredibly high-profile nature of this type of work and the risk...

    ed

    *and survivors of course, although the likelihood of there being any is mighty small)

    • Re:liability concerns? (Score:5, Informative)

      by guacamolefoo ( 577448 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:37AM (#6452387) Homepage Journal
      who's thinking that the families of the deceased* won't slap the mother of all class-action suits against, among others, the licensing body?

      Two words: sovereign immunity. You can't sue the king except under certain limited circumstances where the king agrees to let you sue him.

      Also, do you have any idea what a "class action" is? It's a lawsuit brought by members of a "class" that usually cannot be individually identified. In almost any case I can possibly imagine, any harm resulting from the destruction of a plane or of property on the ground would result in specifically identifiable and ascertainable victims. A mass tort would not be an appropriate remedy in such a situation.

      In the event that there is a pollution release-type event that causes some minimal level of harm to a large number of people, a class action may be a realistic possibility.

      In any case, I don't see why the government would be involved in any of this. Giving someone a license hardly subjects you to liability when a third party is harmed by the licensee. For instance, do you see victims in auto accident cases suing states when they are hit by careless drivers? Do you see victims suing state licensing authorities (successfully) when doctors commit malpractice?

      If you're going to bitch about lawyers and some nebulous fear of lawsuits, at least understand what you are bitching about. /. is a great place for reading about clueless tech users. Let me be the first to inform you: you are equally clueless about the legal system. So are the people who modded your clueless post up to +5, so you need not feel as though you are alone here.

      If there's one thing tech people do not understand, it is tort law.

      GF.

      • Re:liability concerns? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:48AM (#6452503) Homepage
        If there's one thing tech people do not understand, it is tort law.

        Hah! They also don't seem to understand contract law, copyright and patent law, and the difference between microwaves and gamma radiation!

      • Re:liability concerns? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bigpat ( 158134 )
        "/. is a great place for reading about clueless tech users. Let me be the first to inform you: you are equally clueless about the legal system."

        And an great place for informed people to slap down the mistaken and uninformed with all due clarity and contempt.

        "If there's one thing tech people do not understand, it is tort law."

        Stereotypes are very useful for making yourself feel smarter than you are. But thanks for the nice explanation of sovereign immunity.

  • Piss on the FAA! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cpt_Kirks ( 37296 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:51AM (#6452043)
    Move the tests to southern Mexico, or even further south. I'm sure they have lighter or even no regs covering this.

    IIRC, it's easier to get into orbit from close to the equator. Does that apply to suborbital flight too?

    • Re:Piss on the FAA! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by b-baggins ( 610215 )
      Doesn't Arianne operate out of some nowhere place in Central America for that very reason?

      --
      Slashdot minimum post times. Celebrating slow readers and slow typists for years.

      • Re:Piss on the FAA! (Score:4, Informative)

        by xdroop ( 4039 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:19AM (#6452247) Homepage Journal
        No.

        Arianne operates out of some nowhere place in Central America because:

        1. Being closer to the equator means it is cheaper in terms of rocket fuel requirements to deliver payloads to geosynchronous orbit; and
        2. they are French, and therefore care very little what the US thinks.

        • Re:Piss on the FAA! (Score:3, Informative)

          by Buran ( 150348 )
          That location is Korou, French Guiana. And it was chosen due to its proximity to the equator because the faster rotation of the Earth at the equator gives launchers a significant "free" boost. This is also why Soyuz rockets will begin launching from Korou soon -- they will be considerably more powerful than they are when launching from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, which is much farther north.

          Florida was chosen for the US space center because launch accidents will only drop debris in the ocean rather than on pop

      • Re:Piss on the FAA! (Score:2, Informative)

        by Dun Malg ( 230075 )
        Doesn't Arianne operate out of some nowhere place in Central America for that very reason?

        Ummm....no, Arianne launches from FRENCH GUIANA (which is in south america) because they are a FRENCH COMPANY. French Guiana is essentially a colony France has held on to for the purpose of launching space vehicles. They used to have a nasty prison there too.

        • Re:Piss on the FAA! (Score:3, Informative)

          by b-baggins ( 610215 )
          I was just positing that perhaps Arianne operated outside of France to escape French regulations as an example of how an American company could operate outside of the U.S. to avoid U.S. regulation.

          Apparently the point was too subtle for the slashdot crowd. I'll make sure to write in crayola next time.
      • yeah and thats the same reason the Russians got stuck with having their launch pads in kazakstan.
    • United States citizens cannot launch outside of the United States without FAA approval according to the AST panel at the Space Access conference in Arizona this past April. For suborbital flights, this seems excessive; for orbital flights, I'm not surprised in the least.

      The FAA has threatened fines and possibly jail for anyone who violates that order. Whether that will hold up in court is a whole different story.

      Seems to me that a private company incorporated in an equatorial third-world country would
      • This is correct. The way the game of nations work, at least for the United States, is that the country is responsible for what its citizens do abroad.

      • ICBM? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by nlinecomputers ( 602059 )
        Seems to me that a private company incorporated in an equatorial third-world country would be better situated than any company in the U.S. I don't see why U.S. citizens cannot own a stake in a foreign enterprise of this type.

        Because the US doesn't want it's citizens to fund, indirectly, some third world nation's ICBM program?
    • It's closer to get into geostationary orbit which is directly above the equator itself, but not orbit itself. That geostationary belt is pretty crowded [satsig.net] airspace. It doubt it makes the trip up any easier since you still need to hit the same escape velocity (25,000 MPH / Mach 34) regardless of where you launch from. The challenge lies in achieving that speed as cheaply as possible, not an easy task.
      • It doubt it makes the trip up any easier since you still need to hit the same escape velocity (25,000 MPH / Mach 34) regardless of where you launch from. The challenge lies in achieving that speed as cheaply as possible, not an easy task.

        Equatorial launch from, say, Ecuador (high elevation which reduces weight and air resistance at launch. Rotation of the earth has to be a benefit, too, as compared to regions closer to the poles. Same deal with the shape of the earth (slight equatorial bulge).

        While thes
        • Damn good point about the rotation, you get a 1000 MPH head start as compared to a stand-still start on the poles. Every little bit counts so I stand corrected, it would be easier to get into orbit from the equator.
      • You know, the geosynchronous belt is a big place, 224000km long big. Those ~300 satellites could easily be ~750 km apart, which should be no problem because they are all traveling at 0km/s relative to each other along their orbital paths.
        • I think it's actually 264789.92km long. You have to account for the Earth's diameter(12,756km) too.
    • Actually, for orbital flights, it IS better to be closer to the equator. At the equator the earth's rotation adds a free 1,000 mph to the launch velocity. Boeing and a Russian firm actually launch rockets from a platform in the middle of the Pacific for just this reason.

      Thus companies already have a great reason to relocate launch facilities further south. Making it difficult to obtain launch permission just adds another reason to ship more jobs out of the country.

  • Dear US government... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zemran ( 3101 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @09:57AM (#6452086) Homepage Journal
    I am having trouble with all this red tape and would like your help with my rocket programme. I think that you should slacken the rules for us hard done by amateur rocket makers...

    I also wonder if you could help fund my rocket programme like you have helped with my other projects in the past?

    Regards

    Osama b. Laden

  • Range Safety (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:05AM (#6452140) Homepage
    While I don't think regulations should be more intrusive than needed, there is a definite need for government regulation of space launches.

    Range safety is an integral part of government and commercial launch vehicle operations in the United States. Range safety ensures that the launch vehicle, or its components, impact in a safe area if there is a problem with the launch vehicle. This involves redundant systems to monitor the velocity, position and health of the launch vehicle, impact prediction systems (where do the pieces land if it blows up), and thrust termination systems (the big red button). The operator of the launch vehicle has to provide a high degree of assurance that no failure mode will result in injury, death or property damage in areas outside the range. This is not a trivial task, and not something to be built from bubble gum and bailing wire.

    • Range safety is okay for big expendable and some reusable launch vehicles, but not for small, winged reusable launch vehicles. There are sufficent abort modes to eliminate the need for this in all but extreme cases.
    • I think if you want to safely fly the X-Prize contenders without being a threat to people on the ground and NOT need fly it out over the ocean, there are two places to do this.

      The first is the flight test range operated by Edwards Air Force Base east of Mojave, CA. If NASA and the USAF can fly the X-15 inside this range even though the X-15 can fly at over Mach 5 top speed and 350,000-plus feet altitude, it sure can accommodate the X-Prize contenders. Why do you think the White Knight/SpaceShipOne combinat

  • When Dealing with the FAA... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pi to 8 Faces ( 689921 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:06AM (#6452148)
    it's best to keep pressure on them. When I wrote software for the Air Force a couple years ago, we had to test out new system with the FAA. As lead programmer, I was put in charge of test coordination. The problem with the FAA is that no one will actually make a decision. If you get stuck in a loop where person X says "Sorry, person Y will have to make that decision," and person Y tells you it's person X's call, you're in trouble. And this happens frequently. I was able to call NOT EMAIL them repeatedly until they got so sick of dealing with me that they made it happen. I was working with people at the GS-14 level. I don't know if this helps at all, but don't worry, others have been there and made it work!

  • Personnally (Score:3, Funny)

    by s4ltyd0g ( 452701 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:13AM (#6452207)
    I don't care who's juristiction they fall under, it's who they fall on that worries me (-;

  • Shuttle's competition (Score:3, Interesting)

    by linuxislandsucks ( 461335 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:17AM (#6452233) Homepage Journal
    ah why do they think that Nasa wil allow them to comepte eventually with the shuttle?

    NASA wil kill this movement if we let it..

  • FSA? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nicodemus05 ( 688301 ) <nicodemus05@hotmail.com> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:27AM (#6452303)
    (This is a bit rambling, but please read before you mod off-topic)

    Wouldn't it make sense to spin off a portion of the FAA and make it (just an example) the Federal Space Administration?

    I think that this is a great idea, but good luck getting anyone to fund it. What, exactly, would this agency do right now? We have no shuttle flights (nor do we have any planned for the near future), Mars continues to be a pipe dream, and the ISS is serviced by Russian craft. There's not much to regulate right now. I agree that we'll need one in the future, it's just that the future seems an awfully long way away right now.

    I think that the only real chance we have for space exploration, at least until China starts kicking our asses in the race to Mars, is commercial. How about a lottery where a couple of people get a ticket to Mars? Zubrin proposes a $30 billion long term Mars program. At $1000 a ticket, that means we have to sell 30 million tickets (assuming absolutely 0 investment, 0 government aid, and 0 commercial sponsorship (The Pepsi Landing Module, anyone?)). I'm just a poor college student, but you can be damn sure I'd scrape up the cash. Many of the rich and famous would by several tickets, I'd bet. Maybe we couldn't sell 30 million tickets here. Our population is about 280 million, so that's about one person in 9 buying tickets. Pretty unlikely. Our chances get better, however, when we open the lottery up world-wide.

    So, before I get modded off-topic, I guess what I'm trying to say is that the space exploration of the future needs to be a cooperative effort.

    The government needs to deregulate. Anyone who tries to make space something other than the Wild West is a bit delusional. By stepping back and letting explorers take over their doing nothing that we didn't already do in Tennessee, or Montana, or California.

    Commercial ventures need to come up with the money. With all of the MBAs pouring out of Harvard alone you figure that someone could come up with a viable business model. Keep the lottery idea in mind, it's a quick way to make the cash roll in.

    Citizens need, at the very least, to vote for Pro-Space Exploration congressmen. How are you going to get Joe Sixpack to vote at all, let alone for such a seemingly trivial issue? Make it exciting again. We need imminent, impressive goals. Mars doesn't count. Even now a landing is 15 years away.

    What can we do to:
    A) Help the plight of commercial space programs bogged down in bureaucracy?
    B) Increase funding to government space programs?
    C) Let congress know that there are people interested in space exploration?

    Why, I'm glad you asked. Write your congressman. [marssociety.org] The Mars Society has a well developed lobbying system, including mailing lists and meeting reports. Don't know whether your congressman stands on this issue? Get their report card. [vis.org]

  • without letting out information that could jeopardize security. Surely, rocketeers would be overjoyed to have a javascript applet of where every plane is at any time, but clearly that would cause problems, even if it could be implemented. For my money, it should be really, really hard to get a permit to shoot things into space. NORAD has enough to worry about without having to nuke JoeBob's CO2-propelled trashcan with fins.
    • You don't look at where the planes are and try to shoot where theyre not. You tell the FAA where your shooting, and they coordinate planes to fly around it, if possible.
    • "...letting out information that could jeopardize security... (T)hat would cause problems, even if it could be implemented"

      News Flash: the information is already out there and available to the public.

      A product called Flight Explorer [flightexplorer.com] allows you to "... retrieve aircraft information from our data center and to provide you with a real-time picture of all IFR aircraft over the US (including Alaska and Hawaii), Canada, the Caribbean and parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans."

      A nice review (with lots of
      • I'm afraid the updates are way too slow to allow anybody shooting off rockets to miss the airplanes overhead. It's every three minutes, I believe (can't remember precisely, but I know it's measured in minutes). On the other hand, that's precisely why it's not considered a security risk--too slow to be useful for terrorist activities (though I harbor a suspicion that it has caused the military to occasionally obfuscate their flight plans--and even ignore the system entirely when it suits them).
      • I'd never seen this before... And it's Way Cool!!! Wow.

  • Proliferation... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:28AM (#6452306)
    One reason that private rocket programs have always hit lots of bureaucratic tangles may be behind-the-scenes interference by the DoW^HD. There is no difference between an ICBM and a suborbital rocket, except maybe what you put in the cargo compartment.

    Interesting though it may be, commercial space flight is a nuclear proliferation nightmare: what if anyone with (say) $50M to spend could put any payload he wanted, anywhere on the planet, reliably?

    As Gen. Pete Worden (former head of U.S Command) used to say, "We're more concerned about people sending surprise packages...".

    • Interesting though it may be, commercial space flight is a nuclear proliferation nightmare: what if anyone with (say) $50M to spend could put any payload he wanted, anywhere on the planet, reliably?

      Though this is certainly a legal problem--there are restrictions in place on rocket technology for precisely this reason--it is nonsense from a realistic standpoint. I can put any payload anywhere I want to, anywhere on the planet, for a lot less than fifty million dollars. The delivery isn't as fast, but co

    • Interesting though it may be, commercial space flight is a nuclear proliferation nightmare: what if anyone with (say) $50M to spend could put any payload he wanted, anywhere on the planet, reliably?

      Oh, you mean like FedEx? Yeah, that would be scary.

  • Damn. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @10:29AM (#6452316)
    For a moment I thought this article was about how new regulations threaten to ban [space.com] the sport of model rocketry. It would be good for that issue to get a little more airplay...
    • Did you read the article you're linking to?

      There's no regulation threatening to ban model rocketry, there's a requirement for shipping companies who deliver the larger motors to have their employees undergo background checks and the like, because the larger motors are classed as dangerous/explosive objects.

      If you can get the motors, there's nothing new stopping you from firing them off. It's the delivery of the big motors that's the issue.
      • It's a de facto ban because no shipping company is going to be willing to pay for employee training and certification just to ship a small quantity of rocket motors. As a result nobody will be able to acquire the motors unless they live close enough to the factory to go over and pick them up themselves. Since there aren't many such people, the number of motors sold will plummet, and the industry will probably go out of business.

        Whether intended or not this is going to destroy model rocketry.

  • Anyone else having a "Kings of the High Frontier [amazon.com]" moment lately? It's quite a time to be alive.

    --grendel drago

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:01PM (#6453191)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Carmack:

    "Hey gov, I'm the developer of BFG, BFG 10, and the rail gun, please now let me have my private rocket launcher."

  • fall under? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Wilk4 ( 632760 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @03:18PM (#6455143) Homepage
    "The FAA needs to make it clear that these rocket vehicles fall under the jurisdiction of its own Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST)..."

    if they are suborbital,
    don't they fall under the law of gravity?
    (the ultimate authority in such matters... ;-)

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