Hello, and thanks to Timothy for graciously sharing the Freespace podium with me during the coming week. Based on the daily high quality of Timothy's writing, as well as the similarly worthwhile contributions of his other guest-bloggers, I am honored to be here. If you want to reply to any of my posts this week, please feel free to email me. If you're not familiar with my blog, please go check it out, too.
I have been thinking of Freespace topics for this week, and the news has provided me a good jumping-off point with the House's passage of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. Alan Boyle has been following this legislation and has a comprehensive article explaining the pros and cons of the bill.
Despite some shortcomings, the bill provides clearer guidance for the FAA, which has so far been working on an ad hoc basis in licensing experimental spaceships like Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne. In principle, I would prefer no regulation at all. But both the aviation and rocketry industries are already subject to onerous regulatory schemes, which could have been extended to strangle the suborbital tourism business while it is still in the cradle. So this is an improvement on the pre-existing legal framework. I might write up more on this later, but Alan Boyle's article is a good place to start.
