X-33 would have presumable led to Venture $tar which would have been
privately funded and which was supposed to be much more reliable (tongue
firmly in cheek)


"Dan DeLong" wrote in message
om...
"Jon G" wrote in message
...
Ironic thing is that FAA regulations won't be enough to stop a coming
space
toruism market. They'll just be enough to make the industry stillborn in
America, while other countries get a toehold on an emerging market.

[snipped much of discussion of LockMart X-33] No one else would have
been
able to compete because no one else would have had the money to get an
RLV
with manned capability certified.

They would not have had to. X-33 was a NASA procurement, with separate
"human rating" requirements, different from FAA's licensing commercial
vehicles. The current problem is whether AST (Associate Admin for
Space Transportation) will keep the authority, or whether AVR (the
airplane certification people) will take over.

There is a huge difference. AST has been licensing ELV launches, where
you expect the thing to fail. Their new foray into reusables and
manned reusables is an effort to stretch that licensing environment.
AVR has been certificating aircraft for commercial operations, and
trying to stretch that to reusable space launchers will certainly kill
the nascent industry.

A few of the reasons:
1) AST has a congressional mandate to promote the industry, AVR does
not.

2) AVR's certification is to ensure that serial production of aircraft
matches the tested serial #1. This makes no sense in an industry where
each vehicle will likely be an improvement over the previous.

3) AVR certifies that materials and fabrication processes conform to
industry accepted practices. For RLVs, there are no industry accepted
practices.

4) AVR certification developed starting 20 years after the first
commercial aircraft operations started, when the manufacturers had
cash flow to pay for certification, and flight experience to point to.

5) AVR deals with common carriers. When Aunt Martha buys a ticket to
visit Grandma for Christmas, she has no interest in the aircraft that
gets her there, but she does have an expectation that she will not get
killed enroute. AVR is good at this. It's going to be several
generations of vehicle design-build-test before this level of
reliability can happen. Until then, if we aren't allowed to make
money, we can't get investment.