I just got an email from Jeff Greason at XCOR Aerospace:

There is a last-minute move by some staffers in the Senate to heavily amend HR 3752. The amendments would completely change the charter
of the office of commercial space transportation (AST), placing the safety of the crew and passengers on equal footing with the safety of the uninvolved public. Since that is well beyond present technology, it would effectively stop development of the industry in the U.S.. It is too late to fix the bill before the session adjourns, but not too late to stop it. If you or people you know have connections to any Senator, please ask them to put a “hold” on HR 3752. That prevents it from passing by unanimous consent. We may have less than 24 hours.

If the bill is “held” there may be opportunity to fix it in a post-election session — but if not, we would still rather the bill die than pass with these poison-pill amendments.

I’m now wondering if the AIAA was aware of this, and if so, whose side they’re on.

[Update at 11 PM EDT]

Alan Boyle at MSNBC has the latest on the issue. Bottom line: the bill is almost certainly dead for this session, and will have to wait for next year. But:

That’s just as well, said Andrew Case, the acting director of the Washington-based SubOrbital Institute and a research associate at the University of Maryland at College Park.

“It leaves us with continuing uncertainty,” Case told MSNBC.com, “but it’s better to have continuing uncertainty than the certainty of bad regulation.”

Perhaps more tomorrow, but thanks to Alan for quickly getting to the bottom of what’s going on in the murky labryrinth of what’s going on inside the Beltway in this matter. That’s why we have professional journalists with the resources and sources to ferret this stuff out. Too bad they don’t all do as good a job.

[And thanks to commenter “gs” for the tip to the MSNBC piece]

[Update on Friday afternoon]

There are some more follow-ups in this more recent post.