I want to see some politico try to spin this:
R 3752 has been amended in the Senate Commerce Committee to put crew and passenger safety on an equal footing with public safety. This sounds like motherhood and apple pie, but if you think about it for a second or two, you discover that this is a Bad Thing.
If crew and passenger safety were put on an equal footing with public safety, FAA would have no choice but to hold crew and passenger safety to an EC of 30 per mission. If this were only for passenger safety, it would mean that no operator could carry passengers until after he had flown several tens of thousands of consecutive safe missions. That would be financially burdensome, and prohibitive to all but the largest operators, but it is not obviously impossible.
But the amended bill also requires the same standard of crew safety. That’s impossible. No experimental vehicle is so safe right out of the box that it can fly 33,000 missions without harming its crew. Any flight test program, of any manned air vehicle, poses more risk than that to its crew. This bill would prohibit flight test of manned space vehicles.
Bottom line: HR 3752, as amended, would stop all manned private space flight in the United States.
Seems the fledgeling private space industry has been a shade too successful of late, and some existing agency/industry is trying to stop it, through accomplices in the Senate. Can there be a legitimate reason for this legislation?
Some wonder why I insist on voting Libertarian.
Posted by Walter at October 7, 2004 05:26 PM