Should you pay an organization like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, or Boeing to enter space, even perhaps perform your personal spacewalk, should those corporations be sure by safety regulations issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)?
Currently, the reply is “no,” due to a law that bans federal regulation of economic space enterprises.
Consequently, individuals who decide to go to space, and most of the people, may not have sufficient information to reasonably assess the security of economic spaceflight. It’s time to permit the moratorium on regulation to run out and permit the event of safety standards, led by the FAA.
Since 2004, federal law has barred most participant safety regulations and leaves nearly all problems with safety procedures, equipment, and standards for industrial spaceflight participants like amateur astronauts as much as the discretion of the corporate providing the service. Consequently, corporations voluntarily determine and decide to apply safety standards that they deem appropriate. These include basic, critical safety elements like when passengers ought to be strapped into the vehicle’s cabin, after they should wear pressurized suits in case of a lack of oxygen and what risk tolerance for serious injury or death they may encounter.
There have been several the reason why Congress imposed the moratorium and continued to increase it up to the current. Lawmakers, the industrial space industry, and other stakeholders believed that a “learning period” was mandatory to be certain that any regulations eventually issued would necessarily “think about the evolving standards of the industrial space flight industry.” In other words, since the industry was so recent, and the number of economic spaceflights continued to be limited, there was insufficient data, information, testing, and experience to craft effective safety rules.
It’s time to permit the moratorium on regulation to run out and permit the event of safety standards, led by the FAA.
One more reason is that as different corporations designed and developed unique kinds of vehicles, systems, and equipment to enter space, it might be impractical to impose a single algorithm that might have broad applicability. This has definitely develop into the case as even the essential designs of the present crop of economic space vehicles differ significantly.
For instance, SpaceX and Blue Origin employ various kinds of crew capsules, and Virgin Galactic employs a fuselage-type crew vehicle somewhat than a capsule. Each vehicle would naturally require safety standards specific to its design.
Moratorium Memento Mori
On Oct. 1, 2023, the moratorium on federal regulation is ready to run out. RAND was asked by Congress to evaluate the state of the event of voluntary safety standards led primarily by industry in coordination with private standards development organizations and the FAA’s Business Space Transportation Advisory Committee. RAND was also asked to evaluate if industrial spaceflight is prepared for presidency regulation.
One significant finding that drove our conclusions is that the present state of participant safety is basically unknowable because sufficient data and knowledge should not available.
Three aspects contribute to this lack of transparency.
- First, corporations that provide industrial spaceflight services should not required to share their safety data and knowledge publicly, including incidents or anomalies which will indicate risk. Moreover, corporations are reluctant to share this data voluntarily because it could disclose proprietary information that, if revealed, could harm an organization’s repute, or allow its mental property to be appropriated by others unfairly. This fact is despite the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) suggestion after the 2014 crash of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo that the FAA should work in collaboration with the spaceflight industry to develop a database of lessons learned from industrial space mishap investigations, and encourage industry members to voluntarily submit lessons learned.
- Second, current regulations direct corporations to supply “informed consent” notification to individuals who pay to go to space on their vehicles. The assumption underlying the informed consent rule is that if corporations provide information to would-be spaceflight participants concerning the risks and hazards of spaceflight, individuals can judge for themselves whether or not they are willing to just accept the risks. Nevertheless, these notifications are also not publicly available.
- Third, industry and interested stakeholders take part in public and semi-public forums to develop voluntarily agreed-upon, industry-wide, safety standards, but consensus has been elusive. Due to the various kinds of corporations and stakeholders involved, and since of the varied interests at stake, some who participate are incentivized to slow the event of safety standards out of a priority that they could be disadvantaged compared to competitors. Consequently, there have been only a few safety standards published that relate to participant safety.
Based on these aspects, it will not be possible to independently assess and analyze whether policymakers, spaceflight participants, industry, or the general public have sufficient information to make reasonably informed decisions concerning the safety of economic spaceflight.
Clearing the best way for rulemaking
Allowing the moratorium to run out would clear the best way for the FAA to start informal, publicly accessible, rulemaking activities. As a part of these activities, the FAA, industry, standards development organizations, and other interested stakeholders could work in collaboration to find out next steps for the event of safety standards—whether or not they proceed to be developed voluntarily, or whether binding rules ought to be considered.
While we’re not suggesting any specific kinds of regulations at the moment, our research generally supports considering rules that might increase transparency with respect to the identification, collection, reporting, and evaluation of key safety data and knowledge. The present practice of nondisclosure and siloing of knowledge and knowledge may end in gaps or blind spots that would increase the likelihood of a catastrophic event.
A system that might enable the FAA, industry, and stakeholders to develop safety standards more collaboratively, while also providing sufficient protections for sensitive corporate information, may help to boost the sustainability and growth of the industrial spaceflight industry.