On 9 Oct 2003 15:05:06 -0700, in a place far, far away,
(Edward Wright) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

(Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..

The issue will be whether or not AST (or as
the legislation seems to require, a newly-resurrected OCST) does it
properly...

Rand, can you tell me why you believe this legislation would transfer
regulatory authority from AST to OCST (now the Office of Space
Commerce)? That's not my reading of the bill. Is there something here
I'm not seeing? Or are you perhaps mistaking remote-sensing licensing
for launch licensing in the final section?

Office of Space Commerce is not now, nor has it ever been OCST. It's
an office in the Department of Commerce. I'm saying that OCST will be
resurrected, restoring the situation prior to the Clinton
administration.

I'm inferring that from the fact that the language in the
authorization reads:

"AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS FOR OFFICE OF COMMERCIAL SPACE
TRANSPORTATION"

whereas in previous years it read:

"There are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary of
Transportation for the activities of the Office of the Associate
Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation"

which I believe is Patti's current official title.

Morover, I read this directive:

"The Secretary of Transportation shall clearly distinguish the
Department's regulation of air commerce from its regulation of
commercial human spaceflight, and focus the Department's regulation of
commercial human spaceflight activities on protecting the safety of
the general public, while allowing spaceflight participants who have
been trained and meet license-specific standards to assume an informed
level of risk."

It doesn't explicitly call for pulling it out of FAA, but that would
certainly be the sensible way to do it (considering that the move to
the FAA occurred under the Clinton-Gore administration for no good
reason other than attempting to streamline the bureaucracy). It's
clear to me that the intent is to make it very clearly not aviation
related. Resurrecting the original OCST, which reported directly to
the SecDOT, would give the office more clout in any potential turf
wars with AVR.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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