Space Politics

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Breakthrough on an FAA reauthorization bill; will it extend a CSLAA provision?

January 21, 2012 at 11:10 am · Filed under Congress, Other

National Journal reported late yesterday that House and Senate negotiators had reached a compromise on long-delayed reauthorization legislation for the FAA. The compromise involves organized labor provisions in the bill that had forced a long series of short-term extensions. The compromise clears the way for drafting a version that both houses can pass, a task reported to be “manageable” with the labor deal in place.

The relevance to space policy is that the bill could resolve an issue for the commercial human spaceflight community: a provision in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act (CSLAA) of 2004 that limits the ability of the FAA to pass safety regulations for such vehicles. That provision is set to expire this December, but as noted here last month, some in the industry have been seeking an extension since the industry has built up less experience than expected when the CSLAA passed. The House version of the FAA reauthorization bill does provide an extension, while the Senate version does not.

It’s not clear yet if the final version of the reauthorization bill—which may take a few weeks to draft—will include CSLAA language, but one group of industry experts is skeptical. Earlier this week Special Aerospace Services (SAS) hosted the 2nd Annual Human Spaceflight Technical Forum in Boulder, Colorado. The event was closed to the media, but Wayne Hale, SAS’s director for human spaceflight programs and a former Space Shuttle program manager, talked about some of the issues raised at the meeting, including that CSLAA provision, in an interview on Friday. Most of the people at the meeting “were not actively lobbying for an extension” of that restriction, he said.

The discussion at the meeting instead revolved around what the FAA would do when its current restriction expires on December 23. Hale said there was an understanding that the FAA would not immediately promulgate a series of new safety regulations, citing the time it takes to develop and make open for public comment any new rulemaking. “No one at the FAA is working in a back office to deliver a bunch of new proposed regulations on December 24th,” he said.

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5 Comments »

Coastal Ron wrote @ January 21st, 2012 at 10:15 pm

So do Wayne Hale et al. feel that the FAA will not actively seek regulations that will be detrimental to an emerging commercial crew service sector?

I guess that’s trusting that the current incarnation of the FAA – I wonder if that would change with a change of administrations?

Rand Simberg wrote @ January 22nd, 2012 at 1:29 pm

Most of the people at the meeting “were not actively lobbying for an extension” of that restriction, he said.

I’m not sure that the people at that meeting were a useful sample of the people who care. As far as I know, CSF is still pushing hard to get the moratorium extended.

vulture4 wrote @ January 22nd, 2012 at 2:45 pm

It’s unlikely a Republican administration would be any more eager to stifle growth in this sector with regulation than the Obama administration.

However all the Republican candidates have promised massive cuts in non-defense federal spending, so it is unlikely they would put as much as Obama into NASA commercial crew, which is currently the anchor customer for all commercial HSF.

vulture4 wrote @ January 22nd, 2012 at 2:52 pm

I should point out that, IMHO, the regulations that really are detrimental to commercial HSF are not the regulations of the FAA, but of the DOD Eastern Range, which simply have to change if the Cape is to be commercially competitive.

The best thing that could happen to commercial space would be to take non-DOD commercial launches away from the DOD entirely and let the FAA manage them. Hey, what a revolutionary idea!

Byeman wrote @ January 22nd, 2012 at 9:18 pm

“the regulations of the FAA, but of the DOD Eastern Range,”
What would the FAA do any different than the USAF?
People who bad mouth the range usually don’t know what is going on. The FAA would keep the same type of regulations as the USAF. It isn’t the regs constraining anyone.