FAA the Last Roadblock For Space Tourism

An increasing number of average people—non-astronauts—might
finally have a shot at viewing the earth from suborbital space.
Virgin Galactic wants
to begin boarding space tourists SpaceShipTwo as early as 2014.
According to
CBC News, The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is the last
major impediment. It has not presented the suborbital spaceflight
company with a commercial operator’s license.

According to
CBC News “this little document is the final piece of the
commercial space travel puzzle that Virgin Galactic began
assembling in 2004.” It’s a critical piece. “Without it, only
test-flight personnel like former astronauts and military pilots
can fly aboard SpaceShipTwo, the most recent evolution of the
company’s supersonic craft.”

Virgin Galactic sent in a license application to the FAA’s
Office of Commercial Space Transportation in August of 2013 and
expects some sort of a response by February. But the FAA’s mouth is
shut until then. Optimists are eyeing the approaching deadline.
Stephen Attenborough, the commercial director of Virgin Galactic,
is “very confident the approval will come within the next few
months.” But other experts say, don’t count on it.

“They don’t want to endanger the space-farers or the public, and
they can’t let the industry get started and then have a
Titanic-like scenario that puts an end to it all in the eyes of the
public” says Dirk Gibson, an author of several books on space
travel
told CBC News.

In 2012 the U.S. Congress extended a suspension on regulations.
This gave spaceflight companies room to breathe. But it also this
means safety rules won’t be drawn up until October 2015. Experts
are worried that lax safety rules will facilitate an accident, and
that if an accident does occur, ongoing interest in
commercial flights will dampen.

But demand is pretty high. Already, 700 people have ponied up
$250,000 for the experience. Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard
Branson is very confident the spaceplane is safe. He and his two
adult children plan to board the first flight.

In a November 2013 Reason article, Competitive
Enterprise Institute space business consultant Rand Simberg

compares uncharted space travel to preceding frontier
explorations. “No frontier has ever been explored or opened by
making safety the highest priority” he explains. Simberg
favors a system based on informed consent. Participants should be
allowed “to make their own assessments of danger versus reward,
just as they do in other hazardous activities such as sky diving,
free diving (which kills a couple percent a year), wing-suiting,
and mountain climbing” he argues.

If the FAA doesn’t approve the license this time around, Virgin
Galactic will persist. Attenborough
told CBC News, “Of course, if we fail to get the licence, there
will be a reason and we will address that reason and keep moving
forward.”