Regulations Could Delay or Prevent Space Tourism 186
schwit1 writes "This report explains how Virgin Galactic space tourists could be grounded by federal regulations. From the article: 'Virgin Galactic submitted an application to the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation in late August 2013, says Attenborough. The office, which goes by the acronym AST, has six months to review the application, meaning an approval may come as early as February. Industry experts, however, say that may be an overly optimistic projection. "An application will inevitably be approved, but it definitely remains uncertain exactly when it will happen," says Dirk Gibson, an associate professor of communication at the University of New Mexico and author of multiple books on space tourism. "This is extremely dangerous and unchartered territory. It's space travel. AST has to be very prudent," he says. "They don't want to endanger the space-farers or the public, and they can't let the industry get started and then have a Titanic-like scenario that puts an end to it all in the eyes of the public.""
Re:extremely dangerous and unchartered territory (Score:2, Interesting)
"They don't want to endanger the space-farers or the public, and they can't let the industry get started and then have a Titanic-like scenario that puts an end to it all in the eyes of the public."
??? WTF ??? What business of theirs is it AT ALL, except to make sure that rockets don't crash into airplanes? It's private business, the government isn't doing shit to "ensure" the safety of passengers or anybody else... THEY aren't to blame if a "Titanic" event were to happen... and even if it did, people would probably take it in stride just like they did the goddamned Challenger Disaster, which WAS government's fault.
Who the hell do they think they are? And what world are they living in?
Re: Certainly the government can make sure it's sa (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, sort of like how all those private job creators got to the Moon in 1969! Yeah! Fuck that Fox News chicken you retard!
"Those private jobs creators" *were* the ones who got us to the moon. It certainly wasn't NASA bean-counters and administrative wonks. I know, I was there and worked for some of those companies. Don't try to rewrite history.
NASA would put out a contract for a launch system/rocket engine/capsule/etc to accomplish "X" goals with certain requirements, private companies and their engineers and scientists went to work to research, design, test, and build it. Engineers and scientists who likely would have gone to school for something else if there was little demand for private sector science and engineering jobs.
Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty and made more people self-sufficient than any other system ever devised, as well as spurred and funded the greatest and most rapid advances in science and technology the human race has ever known.
It's not perfect. It's messy. Individual freedom and the individual responsibilities that come with it are likewise messy. People will disagree and argue. But capitalism and the individual freedom & self-sufficiency it empowers has through history, and still does, the most good for the largest number of the poorest people compared to anything else ever tried on a national or global scale, by orders of magnitude.
There's simply no other system that's even in the same league when it comes to empowering the poor and raising their standard of living.
Socialism, fascism, communism, and nearly all other ideologies/political systems put the individual secondary to a sovereign State/Collective. The US Constitution is unique in being the first time a nation was built on the basis of the State being secondary to the citizen.
Strat