The attorney general of New Mexico has concluded that a local tax increase passed this spring should not be collected starting January 1 as originally planned because of a lack of a mechanism to spend the revenues. Voters in Doña Ana County, which includes the city of Las Cruces, passed the quarter-cent gross receipts tax increase in April; at the time the tax was set to take effect on January 1. However, county officials had asked that the introduction of the tax be delayed because the money can’t be spent until a spaceport tax district is created, and that district can’t form until at least one other county also approves a similar tax. Two other counties in southern New Mexico, Otero and Sierra, also plan to hold tax referenda, but not until spring 2008 at the earliest.
Earlier this week the Select Committee on Science and Technology of the British Parliament issued a report on UK space policy. What’s noteworthy about this report is that it includes a section about space tourism. This section outlines the recent developments in vehicles and companies to serve primarily the suborbital market, including Virgin Galactic, of course. The report also deals with the potential environmental impact of space tourism (previously discussed here), offering the views of both those who think emissions from suborbital spacecraft is a major concern and those who think it isn’t an issue. (The former UK science minister, Malcolm Wicks, takes a compromise stance, saying, “the environmental impact in terms of carbon emissions might be something that should be looked at most carefully in judging whether this is a societal priority.”)
The report doesn’t conclude that the British government should be spending money to help develop space tourism vehicles specifically, or on the industry in general. However, the report does suggest that the UK should do more to create a supportive regulatory environment, citing in particular current law in the US, which is “leading the world in this area”. (The report goes a little too far when it claims that the 2004 Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act (CSLAA) “created an Office of Commercial Space Transportation under the auspices of the US Federal Aviation Administration that is responsible for regulating the industry.” That office had existed, either as part of the FAA or as a standalone entity, for about two decades before the CSLAA was enacted; the bill simply gave the existing office the authority to regulate commercial passenger spaceflight.) The report recommends that the British National Space Centre “use its consultation on regulation to discuss the establishment of a regulatory framework and responsible body with the relevant authorities.”
How influential and effective this report will be isn’t clear, particularly for an observer like myself on the other side of the Atlantic. The report does suggest that former science minister Wicks wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about space tourism: he’s quoted in the report as saying, “of all the things I am excited about space tourism is not at the top of my list.” It’s not clear what level of interest the new science minister, Ian Pearson, has in space tourism, or space in general, as he’s been on the job since only early this month.
Today’s Wall Street Journal features a discussion on space tourism safety issues between Patti Grace Smith, the associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the FAA; and Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation. (This is one of WSJ.com’s free features today, so no subscription should be required to read it.) It should be little surprise for people who have been following this topic that the two are essentially in total agreement on the issue: there is some risk to passengers, but that the safety of the uninvolved public is paramount. It is a good summary of the thinking on the topic, and Diamandis makes some interesting comments towards the end on economics and the need for advanced technology for “airplane-like ‘care-free’ transport in space”.
Recently, the Space and Advanced Communications Research Group at George Washington University issued a report titled “Space Planes and Space Tourism: The Industry and the Regulation of its Safety”. The report is primarily a regurgitation of existing information about companies developing suborbital and orbital vehicles, the spaceports existing or under development to host those vehicles, and some general information about the emerging personal spaceflight industry. There’s not much new in the report in that regard, and some of the information looks to be a little stale.
One area where the report makes an original contribution, however, is in its assessment of what it considers potential “showstoppers” for space tourism. “At this stage, our studies suggest only that these are serious issues requiring urgent attention and perhaps creative problem solving so as to avoid these concerns becoming barriers to the development of the space tourism industry,” the report explains. The report identified three such showstoppers: environmental concerns caused by the effects of high volumes of vehicles passing through the stratosphere and ozone layer, orbital debris, and the weaponization of space.
However, are these concerns really showstoppers? Orbital debris is a real concern, although it touches upon all uses of space, not just tourism; moreover, it would have virtually no effect on suborbital spaceflight, given the likely altitudes and flight durations of such vehicles. Why space weaponization would be that big of a concern isn’t fleshed out in the report: it merely states that “the policy issue could well have an adverse impact on the development of space tourism as well as on the safety concerns of future passengers.” Yet, people rarely think about the weaponization of land, sea, or air when they take terrestrial vacations (unless, say, they’re venturing into war zones or are worried about terrorism).
That leaves the environmental issue. Here, the problem is that the effects of hundreds or thousands of suborbital and orbital passenger flights a year will depend on their method of propulsion: what sort of exhausts are they spewing into the stratosphere and what effect would it have there. The report recommends: “It would therefore seem to be a subject of some urgency for a regulatory agency to immediately investigate the implications of the environmental impact of such space plane flights to very high altitudes on a recurring basis—and just as soon as possible.” Such a study would probably be of interest, although not necessarily with the degree of urgency requested in the report given the low levels of flight activity in the immediate future and the uncertainty about what environmental impacts, if any, such flights would have.
In an article in The Space Review a couple weeks ago, I discussed the challenges companies in the personal spaceflight and related industries were experiencing getting insurance, particularly for liability coverage for passengers. An article in last week’s Space News notes that the topic also came up, fittingly, at a space insurance conference in Milan last month. Attendees warned, in the words of the article, that “the creation of a viable, affordable insurance regime for future space tourists remains an unresolved issue that could ultimately scuttle the space-tourism industry before it has a chance to prove itself.” Much of the article discusses concerns about liability insurance in the event of an accident involving passengers, and the likelihood that in the event of such an accident, waivers and other measures to limit exposure would not deter lawsuits.
Some of the more interesting comments came from Brian Binnie of Scaled Composites, who spoke at the conference. He said that the insurance premiums on SpaceShipOne were “exorbitant”, but didn’t discuss what exactly that insurance covered. (Since SS1 never carried passengers, the liability insurance discussed above wouldn’t apply here—perhaps he meant third-party maximum probable loss insurance, required for an FAA license?) Another company, he claimed, “paid more in insurance premiums than it spent on developing its vehicle”, although he didn’t specify which company and what kind of insurance: a tidbit that is both tantalizing and puzzling.
The FAA announced today that it has formally released regulations governing experimental permits for suborbital RLVs. Congress gave the FAA authority to grant such permits (analagous to experimental airworthiness certificates in aviation) in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. These regulations formally codify how such permits will be issued, although FAA has already issued permits to both Armadillo Aerospace and Blue Origin prior to the release of these regulations. I have not had an opportunity yet to review the final regulations; the FAA did release a fact sheet about commercial human spaceflight in general today, along with a press release, which I have included below:
To facilitate research, development and testing of new design concepts for commercial vehicles intended to carry people into space, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today issued regulations governing the issuance of experimental permits for the launching of reusable suborbital rockets.
“These rules represent another step forward for commercial human space flight,” said FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey. “To help move this exciting industry from concept to reality, our goal is to streamline and facilitate the licensing process for flight testing under the experimental permit while maintaining public safety.”
A critical component of any reusable launch vehicle development program is flight testing. To help facilitate those tests, the allowable processing time for issuing a permit determination is 120 days compared to 180 days for a license.
A single experimental permit will cover multiple vehicles of a particular design and allow an unlimited number of launches. The FAA will identify the type of design changes that may be made without invalidating the permit. The one-year permit is renewable following an FAA review. None of the test flights covered by an experimental permit can carry passengers for compensation or for hire.
The new rules establish criteria for the physical area in which a vehicle with an experimental permit can operate. The area, among other things, must be large enough to contain planned trajectories. It cannot contain or be adjacent to a densely populated area.
As part of the application for a permit, a vehicle developer will need to provide a program description, a flight test plan, and operational safety documentation, including a hazard analysis and a plan for response to a mishap.
The new rules were mandated by the Congress in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. Final regulations for crew and space flight participants were issued in December of 2006.
Apologies for the late notice, but tomorrow morning the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington will be hosting a presentation on “Space Tourism Regulations”, featuring Patti Grace Smith of the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST). From my understanding it will be a fairly high-level discussion of the topic for those unfamiliar with AST’s licensing, permitting, and other regulatory activities.
An AP article yesterday reports that Rocketplane Kistler is considering setting up suborbital flight operations in Hawaii. The flights by the XP spaceplane could start as early as 2010; in one approach mentioned in the article, the vehicle would take off from Honolulu but land at the Kona Airport on the big island. The flights, as well as the creation of a “space-themed” training center, would be in addition to flights from Oklahoma; company officials had previously expressed interest in setting up flight operations at a number of different locations, including Japan.
There are two interesting items of note in the article. The article mentions in passing that, in order for RpK to carry out the Hawaii flights, the state would have to get spaceport license(s) for the airport(s) the XP would fly from. A bill introduced in the Hawaii State Senate last month, SB 907, would create an Office of Aerospace Development (originally to be called the Office of Space Industry) within the state’s economic development and tourism department and set aside $500,000 for “Establishment of an international commercial spaceport”. However, when the legislation was reported out of committee the accompanying report to the president of the state senate stated that “Your Committee also has concerns regarding the establishment of a commercial spaceport, which has generated considerable community opposition in the past.” (A reference to past efforts to establish a spaceport on the southern tip of the Big Island). Therefore, the committee decided to “delete all references to a commercial space launch, international spaceport, and the appropriation for a spaceport” in the bill.
The second item of note in the article is the state of RpK’s financing for the XP vehicle program. Chuck Lauer, VP for business development for RpK, told the AP that the company has raised only $25 million of the $150 million it believes it needs “to field a commercial fleet of space planes.” RpK has been spending a lot of time lining up several hundred million it needs to develop the K-1 vehicle as part of NASA’s COTS demonstration program; will it be able to win a somewhat smaller amount in addition to support the XP?
It will happen, sooner or later: a commercial suborbital passenger spacecraft will have an accident, injuring or killing some or all of the people on board. What sort of reaction will the accident trigger among the general public and members of Congress? How should the industry and its regulators, the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), react? The Space Frontier Foundation announced last night that it is working with FAA/AST to solicit ideas on how to respond when such an accident occurs. “Nobody wants to think about it, and yet we must be prepared to deal with the consequences,” said Space Frontier Foundation executive director Jeff Krukin in an email message last night. The Foundation has created a five-question survey to collect ideas for the messages, audiences, and methods of communication in the event of an accident. The surveyis open through 5 pm EST January 30th.
[Disclaimer: while my employer performs work for FAA/AST, we are not involved in this survey.]
The three counties that are proposing gross receipts taxes to help raise money for the construction of Spaceport America are considering a joint hearing to discuss the proposed tax, the Alamogordo Daily News reported Thursday. The purpose of the joint hearing of the county commissions, according to Doña Ana Commissioner Bill McCamley, is to demonstrate regional support for the project, making it more likely voters will approve the taxes. Doña Ana County, home to Las Cruces, is planning an April 2007 referendum on the tax; Otero and Sierra Counties have yet to schedule similar votes.