Talk to Congress about Commercial Human Spaceflight

On 09 Oct 2003 03:10:33 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(GCHudson) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

Let me be clear that I have no problem with informed consent as provided for in
(2) and (3) but (1) means the end of both the suborbital and orbital
spaceflight "participant" industry before it begins.

It may or may not. It depends on what "received training and met
medical or other standards specified in the license" means. That is,
what are the training and medical standards? I agree that there is a
danger that they could be overly stringent, but there's a potential
upside, in that it could be a means of implementing Pat Collins' and
Peter Diamandis' concept of "certified space traveler," which could
obviate the liability issues, if implemented properly. And I suspect
that that's the intent. The issue will be whether or not AST (or as
the legislation seems to require, a newly-resurrected OCST) does it
properly...

--
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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"Regulation expands to fill the space available" is a physical law of
government.

Regulators given a task will keep at it, until they hit a limit. If
they're regulating an existing industry, either the corporations or
their customers will eventually push back when the regulations reach a
tipping point. For our almost nonexistent industry, we have no
substantive mass to push back with, so any regulatory train set in
motion will likely continue going well beyond what we'd consider to be
logical limits. So we have to be *very* careful what paths we start
the regulators down.

The only safe task to set before FAA is disclosure (ala food labeling,
or campaign contributions) so that anyone buying a flight is fully
informed of the risk.

What's not safe: enforceable medical standards and any "other"
standard that might appear to be a good idea to the fine professionals
at the FAA, whom I admire.

Why not medical standards: The medical conditions of the 500 or so
previous space travelers are secret. NASA is obsessive about
protecting all astronauts' medical privacy. Yet, the only logical
course for the FAA is to attempt to gain access to these very
sensitive records, and then make its own judgments about what they
mean. Rocket companies will *not* get to see them in detail and thus
will *not* have any way to influence their interpretation.

So what standards will the FAA adopt? Only conditions that have
failed to disqualify astronauts will fail to disqualify private
passengers? What about a condition that's OK for an astronaut who was
30, but the proposed private passenger is 60? Still OK? We all know
that many of the private firms' initial passengers will be older
because they've accumulated the most money, and their grown children
aren't responsibilities anymore... yet older people take more pills
and have more medical conditions. Do you want to be arguing with FAA
doctors about the medical status of most of your passengers, based on
a medical database you can't examine yourself... while trying to
equate the strains of a Shuttle or Apollo flight with whatever
stresses you believe exist for your perhaps quite different vehicle?
Yikes!

So consider the above for the straight-forward issue of Medical
Standards. Now consider what can happen if any "other" standard can
be thrown into the vetting of passengers.

Full Disclosure for Informed Consent -- that's how it is done when
testing risky new drugs, and it's the only sane way to approach the
issue of the government's role in passenger space flight.

(David Gump) wrote in message . com...

What's not safe: enforceable medical standards and any "other"
standard that might appear to be a good idea to the fine professionals
at the FAA, whom I admire.

You appear to be assuming that it will be FAA setting the medical and
other standards. It's a reasonable assumption. But the language
doesn't support it. The standards are specified in the license. But
the license essentially consists of the license application plus a
cover letter signed by the Licensing and Safety Division Manager of
AST. In essence, the applicant writes the license, and AST says yea
or nay. So the standards specified in the license are the standards
the applicant sets.

Surely, then, AST would deny the license application if they didn't
approve of the medical and other standards set therein? No; they
can't. They don't have the authority. The Commercial Space Launch
Act of 1984 requires the Secretary of Transportation to issue a launch
license if the proposed launch is consistent with the public health
and safety, safety of property, and national security and foreign
policy interests of the United States. Nothing in passenger medical
or other standards has any influence over any of those. Therefore
medical or other standards, or lack thereof, cannot be used to deny a
launch license.

What HR 3245 says is that the launch licensee: must have medical and
other standards for spaceflight participants; must specify those
standards in its launch license; and must comply with those standards.
It says nothing about AST adopting any medical or other standards.
Considering that the physical environments will be quite different
from one vehicle architecture to the next - compare Xerus and Black
Armadillo, for example - the appropriate medical standards will be
equally varied, and AST would have great difficulty adopting a uniform
medical standard. HR 3245 quite wisely leaves the development of
these standards to the vehicle developer.

So, to answer your question:

So what standards will the FAA adopt?

Yours.


Randall Clague
Government Liaison
XCOR Aerospace

wrote in message . com...
(David Gump) wrote in message . com...

You appear to be assuming that it will be FAA setting the medical and
other standards. But... the standards are specified in the license. ... In essence, the applicant writes the license, and AST says yea
or nay. So the standards specified in the license are the standards
the applicant sets.

So, to answer your question:

So what standards will the FAA adopt?

Yours.


Randall Clague
Government Liaison
XCOR Aerospace


Launch firms submit license applications that respond to very specific
requirements laid down by AST. For example, AST is extremely specific
about what numerical standards must be met for risk to the public for
overflights of populated areas. The applicant has *zero* leeway to
offer a different standard. So, you are right that launch companies
can sumbit a license with any content they dream up, but
non-conforming applications will be quickly rejected.

We don't want AST to start down the path of establishing similar
standards for medical and any "other" thing that might seem a good
idea. We want AST to do something very useful, which is get access to
the NASA and IMBP data bases on previous travelers, and to gather
stats on passengers taking the new vehicles, and make them available
to all space transportation companies in ways that protect privacy
while revealing issues and countermeasures that we ought to know
about. Passengers and their doctors then can use this background
information considering what it means to the specific passenger, and
whether to sign the informed consent forms that acknowledge that
orbital space travel will have risks unlike taking a vacation in
Bermuda.

(David Gump) wrote in message . com...

We don't want AST to start down the path of establishing similar
standards for medical and any "other" thing that might seem a good
idea. We want AST to do something very useful, which is get access to
the NASA and IMBP data bases on previous travelers, and to gather
stats on passengers taking the new vehicles, and make them available
to all space transportation companies in ways that protect privacy
while revealing issues and countermeasures that we ought to know
about. Passengers and their doctors then can use this background
information considering what it means to the specific passenger, and
whether to sign the informed consent forms that acknowledge that
orbital space travel will have risks unlike taking a vacation in
Bermuda.

I think there's going to be more to it than that, David. A spaceflight
operator will have to know that a passenger is compatible with the
vehicle systems, just like any other component. Things as simple as
fitting into an ejection seat, for example. Whether you call these
medical standards or human factors, an operator is going to have set
some limits on who they can accept. It can't just be left up to a
passenger and his doctor because certain conditions could endanger the
vehicle. I think operators could do this without AST involvement, but
if AST wants to see those standards as part of the license
application, I can live with that, as long as AST evaluates them in a
reasonable manner. Having those standards written into the license
might even provide some protection against nuisance suits, when an
operator has to turn someone down for medical reasons.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..

Let me be clear that I have no problem with informed consent as
provided for in
(2) and (3) but (1) means the end of both the suborbital and orbital
spaceflight "participant" industry before it begins.

It may or may not. It depends on what "received training and met
medical or other standards specified in the license" means. That is,
what are the training and medical standards? I agree that there is a
danger that they could be overly stringent, but there's a potential
upside, in that it could be a means of implementing Pat Collins' and
Peter Diamandis' concept of "certified space traveler," which could
obviate the liability issues, if implemented properly. And I suspect
that that's the intent.

Note that the wording is not yet set in stone. This bill was only
recently introduced (and will have to be reintroduced next term). It
is still possible to tweak the language. For Gary and anyone else who
has concerns: here is your chance to speak directly to Congressional
offices about those concerns. While the Suborbital Institute is
supporting this bill, that does not mean we wouldn't support
improvements.

In fact, even if this bill never passes, it might provide a useful
opportunity for public debate and discussion on what would be proper
training and medical standards for spaceflight participants. (It seems
unrealistic to expect that AST wouldn't take that into account when
deciding whether to grant a launch license for a crewed vehicle, and
while there might be some merit to Gary's idea of removing authority
from AST, that is beyond the scope of our activities at the present
time.)

At this point, I should add a few disclaimers:

1) I had nothing to do with the drafting of this bill or any of its
contents, which I only saw for the first time last week.

2) I have some fairly well developed ideas of what I think training
and medical standards might be, since my company intends to sell those
services.

3) That said, I had nothing to do with the drafting of this bill or
any of its contents, which I only saw for the first time last week.

h (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?

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..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

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

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 04:07:39 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:

On 09 Oct 2003 03:10:33 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(GCHudson) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

Let me be clear that I have no problem with informed consent as provided for in
(2) and (3) but (1) means the end of both the suborbital and orbital
spaceflight "participant" industry before it begins.

It may or may not. It depends on what "received training and met
medical or other standards specified in the license" means. That is,
what are the training and medical standards? I agree that there is a
danger that they could be overly stringent, but there's a potential
upside, in that it could be a means of implementing Pat Collins' and
Peter Diamandis' concept of "certified space traveler," which could
obviate the liability issues, if implemented properly. And I suspect
that that's the intent. The issue will be whether or not AST (or as
the legislation seems to require, a newly-resurrected OCST) does it
properly...

I've put up a blog post with a preliminary analysis of the proposed
legislation (and taken the liberty of incorporating David's
comments--I trust he'll tell me if that's a problem).

http://www.interglobal.org/weblog/ar...48.html#003148

--
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..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers: