On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 22:18:36 GMT, in a place far, far away,
h (Rand Simberg) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:


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.

I also note that nowhere in the legislation is the acronym "FAA" used.
Based on conversations with some people involved in drafting it, I
believe that this is quite deliberate.

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

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