As for colonizing the moon, mars, etc – there is no political drive: ain’t gonna happen in my lifetime.

The ITAR concern stems from the inclusion of both launch vehicle and satellite component technologies on the US Munitions List, which results in a more restrictive and onerous export control process for developers of spacecraft and launch vehicles (orbital and suborbital). This is a prime example of the Law of Unintended Consequences: while designed to prevent high technologies from ending up in the hands of the “bad guys”, it also ends up hurting US companies as customers turn to other sources, like Europe, as Mr. Robertson noted above. In another case, ITAR could require operators of suborbital space tourism vehicles to obtain export licenses for each individual passenger who is not a US citizen, depending on the amount of technical information the operators have to divulge to those passengers. Export control is something that worries just about everyone in the aerospace business, from the small entrepreneurial firms to the giants. See this article by Taylor Dinerman for some more background.

One of the problems of export control laws that it does not treat nations nominally allied with the US (like the UK, Canada, etc.) any differently than other countries. Virgin Galactic has run into this, and it working through its export control paperwork just so it can access the technical details of SpaceShipTwo. (See this article I wrote about a month ago for The Space Review on this particular example.) There has been some discussion on Capitol Hill of establishing a “two-tier” export control regime that would treat allied nations differently, but there’s nothing to suggest anything will be done on this in the foreseeable future.

The ones that treat civilian communications satellites as weapons while we happily sell things that actually are weapons to almost all comers. I have no problem with banning the sale of satellites for launch on Chinese rockets. But, I have a big problem with saying you cannot sell a civilian comsat to, say, England, without it going through the same review that, say, the explort of a flighter plane would have to go through.

I’d be more sympathetic if the United States were not the world’s largest exporter of arms. Why don’t we ban civilian airliners since they can be easily converted to tankers and thereby increase the range of China’s fighter force? Does it make any sense at all to hand the Europeans the comsat market, thereby removing any opportunity we do have for control of this technology?

No, this was an opportunity for some supposedly free-trade Republican lawmakers to undermine the Clinton Administration, and a great example of ideology and the persuit of power trumping the national interest — especially our interest. If we make it hard to export civilian space technolgy, just who are all of these commercial space companies we hope to foster going to sell their wares to?

— Donald

What part of ITAR regs do you find “insane”?

“..the Republican Congress fosted on us in one of their more silly attacks on the Clinton Administration”

Should US technology be sold to China so that they can modernize their ICBM fleet?

On the other hand, Jeff’s analysis fails to mention the European drive to develop satellite components so as not to rely on US components. This is a direct result of the insane ITAR regulations the Republican Congress fosted on us in one of their more silly attacks on the Clinton Administration that are slowly but surely strangling the United States’ commercial satellite industry.

— Donald

Whatever the French people will decide in their poll of the constitution of the European Union we will see a developing space sector with its goal to become a major player in space exploration and space exploitation. If the constitution will come into force it will be the first constitution worldwide which mentions space exploration and exploitation (in this order) as tasks for a country.