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U.S. Agency Proposes Rules for Commercial Human Space Flights

13 January 2006

Federal Aviation Administration governs private space crews, passengers, spaceports

By Cheryl Pellerin
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington – The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), whose Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) is newly charged with regulating commercial space flight crew and passengers, has proposed requirements for crew qualifications and training and for passenger training and informed consent.

The proposed regulations – designed to ensure “an acceptable level of safety to the general public” and make passengers aware of risks associated with a space launch or re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere – were published in the Federal Register December 29, 2005, and could become final by summer.

The regulations would apply to any company licensed by the FAA as a launch operator or a launch site operator, and to crew and space flight participants on board a launch vehicle. The proposal addresses a range of issues, including medical standards and training for crewmembers; risk, informed consent and physical examinations for space flight participants; security requirements; and financial responsibility and waivers of liability for the U.S. government.

FAA’s authority for commercial space launches is laid out in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. The original statute, the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, requires U.S. citizens to be licensed to launch a commercial rocket.

The 1984 act, said George Nield, FAA deputy associate administrator for commercial space transportation, “gave us the authority to ensure the protection of the general public and the launches that are occurring, but it didn’t specifically talk about carrying people on board.”

In 2004, he added, “Congress gave the FAA responsibility to regulate the flight crews and any space flight participants or passengers they would fly on these rockets.”

OVERSEEING COMMERCIAL SPACE FLIGHT

From the beginning of the space age, NASA was responsible for all nonmilitary U.S. launches – everything from moon flights to communications satellites.

“But this country has a tradition of doing things in the private sector whenever that makes sense,” Nield said, “and as the technology improved and there was more of a business case to be made to do things in space,” people became interested in space flight as a potential industry.

One of the early space entrepreneurs, former astronaut Donald “Deke” Slayton, formed a Texas company called Space Services Inc. to develop rockets for small commercial payloads. He helped design and build a rocket called the Conestoga that eventually launched in 1982, but getting permission for that first commercial launch was complex.

“A whole array of government agencies stood up and said we have to give you permission to do that,” Nield said, “and [Slayton] had to knock on many doors and it just seemed like a whole lot of bureaucracy and red tape.”

In 1984, then-President Ronald Reagan issued an executive order and Congress passed the Commercial Space Launch Act, creating the commercial space sector.

“The intent was to form a single one-stop shop that would facilitate the process of a commercial entity conducting a launch,” Nield said.

The AST was created in 1984 as a staff office in the office of the secretary of the Department of Transportation. In 1994, it became part of the FAA.

LICENSING COMMERCIAL SPACE LAUNCHES

On April 1, 2004, AST issued the first launch license for a reusable launch vehicle to Scaled Composites, a Mohave, California, aerospace company founded in 1982 by aircraft designer Burt Rutan.

Scaled Composites built SpaceShipOne, a reusable launch vehicle that on April 8, 2004, completed the first private-sector human commercial rocket launch.

In October 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first private manned spacecraft to exceed an altitude of about 10,000 meters twice in 14 days and claimed the $10 million Ansari X-Prize, an international commercial space flight competition.

These were the first licensed commercial manned flights, but not the first time private citizens had been in space. American businessman Gregory Olsen paid millions of dollars to visit the space station in 2005, as did South African Mark Shuttleworth in 2002 and American Dennis Tito in 2001.

Such orbital missions – which travel outside the bounds of Earth’s atmosphere – are technologically more complex, require larger rockets and are more expensive than suborbital flights.

In suborbital flights, a spacecraft is launched from a spaceport or an airplane, as was SpaceShipOne, and spends a few minutes above Earth’s atmosphere before returning to the ground.

Suborbital flights “still can be pretty spectacular,” Nield said, “the blackness of space, the curvature of the Earth – and you experience several minutes of weightlessness. It’s very, very exciting.”

According to an FAA fact sheet on commercial human space flight, a recent space tourism industry study found that such passenger-carrying space flights could generate more than $1 billion per year in revenues by 2021.

The study also found that suborbital flights will constitute the biggest share of the emerging market, with the potential for 15,000 passengers and $700 million in revenues per year. Orbital flights could include up to 60 passengers and generate $300 million per year.

CREATING SPACEPORTS, GRANTING ASTRONAUT WINGS

Over the past 20 years, AST has licensed more than 170 launches and licensed the operation of five spaceports to conduct commercial launches, many of which have grown up in or near established government launching sites.

In the United States, there are licensed spaceports near Cape Canaveral, Florida; near Vandenberg Air Force Base, California; in Wallops Island, Virginia; in Kodiak, Alaska; and in Mohave, California, where the SpaceShipOne flight began.

“We have two kinds of licenses,” Nield said. “There’s a launch operator license to conduct a launch and a launch site operator license. Both have a number of aspects that we review, but certainly safety is on top of the list.”

AST is chartered to ensure that commercial space launch activities do not endanger the public on the ground, so requirements for launch site licenses involve the facility’s safe operation, the safe storage of propellants and toxic materials and similar factors.

Today, spaceports are essentially launch sites. Someday, Nield said, “they may include businesses and restaurants and intermodal transportation hubs, but that’s not part of the definition right now. We’ll see what they turn into 20 years downstream.”

The AST also has begun granting commercial astronaut wings – similar to pilot wings and NASA astronaut wings – to the flight crews of commercial human space flights whose spacecraft reach an altitude of 80.4 kilometers above the Earth.

The first award was made to Mike Melville for his April 8, 2004, SpaceShipOne flight, the second to Brian Binnie for his October 4, 2004, flight of the same craft.

PROTECTING THE PUBLIC, PROMOTING THE INDUSTRY

FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation is responsible for licensing, regulating and promoting the private-sector space industry. That is a new role within the FAA, which does not promote aviation generally.

“That’s one of the differences between the space side and the aviation side,” Nield said. “Aviation is strictly focused on safety responsibilities, but [AST has] a two-fold mission – protecting the public and encouraging, facilitating and promoting the industry.”

The reason, he added, “is that the [commercial space] industry is a lot less mature and it’s vulnerable to potentially being strangled right at the beginning if regulations are inappropriately strict.”

The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 allows a regulatory framework to be put in place for commercial human space flight.

That is important, Nield said, “because people don’t like to invest money in an endeavor if they don’t know what the rules are. The request for legislation came from the industry itself. They wanted to know what the rules were going to be so they could decide if they wanted to open up shop.”

The regulations deal with safety, but they also address how the inherent risk of space flight will be handled.

Space passengers will be informed about the risks of launch and re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, and will not legally be able to blame the U.S. government if something goes wrong.

“Congress,” the proposed regulations say, “requires that a licensed or permitted operator inform a space flight participant in writing about the risks of the launch and reentry, including the safety record of the launch or reentry vehicle,” and passengers must give their consent in writing.

“Space flight is still risky,” Nield said. “We just want to make sure that prospective passengers understand that risk. If they’re willing to accept it and still want to go, go ahead.”

The FAA will accept comments on the proposed regulations until February 27. The agency must consider all comments submitted prior to adopting a final rule, and changes to the proposed regulations may be made based on comments received.

The full text of the 30-page proposal may be reviewed on the Federal Register Web site in plain text and HTML formats.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)