You say companies will have to jump through regulatory hoops (which I guess is supposed to be comforting), but they won’t fall under any FAA safety standards and rules for 10 years. So, how much protection does that give to people paying the bill.

But, I guess as you say, they’ll spend the first decade using wealthy customers as guinea pigs for their systems. Then what? You’re assuming the regulations will be customer friendly and not simply what the moguls want to max out their profits. History is replete with technology that got pushed ahead for reasons of profit and regulators not doing much to safeguard passengers. The railroads killed a lot of people. It didn’t stop them from making a lot of money in the process. Or look at steamships; the companies pretty much controlled the British Board of Trade, which made the regs that allowed the White Star Line to go to sea without insufficient lifeboats and emergency training.

Scaled Composites has already lost three people on the ground doing a supposedly routine and safe test. I guess we’ll find out soon how liable the Scaled folks for these deaths. Wonder if the prosecutor will bring criminal or civil charges.

Historically, progress must go on and we must learn and people must die. OK. But, some of these people who may go are my friends. The thought of having to scrape their remains off the desert floor while the billionaires who launched them are granted almost complete immunity is a bit disturbing.

Vladislaw wrote @ February 29th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
How many TONS of space junk have come down to earth so far since the inception of the space program? How many people have been killed so far to date from falling space junk?

You have a better chance of winning the lottery then getting hit by space junk.

I sorta already had stated that I do not think we have to worry about falling space junk anymore then we worry today about a plane crashing into your house, does it happen? Yes, often enough that anyone gives it a second thought? No.

The way the current law is written I believe it is only a ten year period that companies get a moritorum on liability, they still have to jump through reglatory hoops BEFORE any launches, so it is not going to be Billy Bob, welding up some tanks in his garage and launching them in the back yard.

He is talking about:
gross negligence
n. carelessness which is in reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, and is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people’s rights to safety. It is more than simple inadvertence, but it is just shy of being intentionally evil.
http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?selected=838

If someone did that with a rocket launch you are talking about prison time. For to be gross negligence they would almost have to be pointing the rocket at your house. Passengers will be signing a wavier to ride rockets to space, they have to accept the risk themselves but it has been regulated that it has to be “informed” concent. You will literally have to take a risk assetment class BEFORE you ride.

After this ten year period the launch companies will then fall under FAA safety rules and standards which will be defined during this initial ten year period, as we have actually LEARN what the risks are and the margins in a totally knew industry. How can you assign insurance risk without launching and learning the curves. All transportation systems go through these shake out periods. Transportation vehicles that kill passengers fail, those that don’t succeed, but in order to find out WHICH is which, we FIRST have to let it happen. Will people die? Yes. Tomorrow will there be an automobile accident in one of the 50 states and will someone die? Yes. Will some be innocent bystanders? Yes. Will some of the drivers not have insurance? Yes.

For me, I can just not imagine someone trying to launch customers with the willful intent of killing them, or killing the launch crew, or dropping rockets on houses. Not with the hoops the government makes a launch company jump through.

I reject the either-or thinking you’ve trotted out here.

As to your points, I do carry liability insurance as a driver. Auto manufacturers are liable for defects in their products. So are organizations involved in mass transit. Airplanes are extremely safe – despite living near airports on and off for the last decade, the only plane that crashed nearby was the one terrorists flew into the Pentagon.

So, you didn’t answer the question. Do you think the “gross negligence” and “willful harm” provisions of these laws are such that almost nobody would be able to prove them in court?

If you do not want the economic activity to take place at all, you raise the entrance costs so high in both monetary and personal risk that no one would be willing to assume them and the investment does not take place.
How do you raise those cost? Increase the amount of insurance, red tape, financing requirements, personal liability et cetera.

The USA has had auto accidents resulting in death from 25,000 to 50,000 per year and no one bats an eye, year in, year out, over and over and over. Plane crashes, boats sinking, people die in every form of transportation we have, year in year out. Why are you not complaining about the planes that fly overhead? Planes crash all the time, people die in plane crashes all the time, why no complaints about the poor taxpayers that fund airports? Why no complaints about every other form of transportation?

You can not have it both ways, because all transportation industries got subsidies in one form or another over the years, trains, planes and automobiles. So to single out private commercial space flight and not every other industry and their histories of subsidies makes your whole point moot.

“Yeah, a shift of tax and legal liability away from billionaire investors like Paul Allen and Richard Branson and large companies like Northop Grumman onto taxpapers and customers. Governments are also taxing people directly to pay for facilities like Spaceport America in New Mexico.
Very interesting. Do you guys that under these types of bills that anyone would be able to actually prove something like gross negligence? Or would it just be a bar too high for almost anyone to meet”

Very interesting. Do you guys that under these types of bills that anyone would be able to actually prove something like gross negligence? Or would it just be a bar too high for almost anyone to meet.

You have a better chance of winning the lottery then getting hit by space junk.

http://spaceports.blogspot.com/2008/02/zerog-zerotax-passes-in-virginia.html