* fixes a technical issue with current law to allow vehicle manufacturers to use individual vehicles as test platforms while other individual vehicles are being used in commercial service. Current law requires all vehicles of the same design either to be used for one purpose or the other.
If that’s so, I can’t imagine how the existing law ever had any connection to common sense. I suppose it might stem from the very mature field of commercial aviation, where exploring and radically expanding the flight envelope of an aircraft already in commercial service (to the extent of needing a dedicated “experimental” airframe) just doesn’t happen, because it doesn’t need to.
Actually, companies like Boeing produce several experimental prototypes that aren’t delivered to customers but instead are maintained as test articles. Once the initial type certification work is finished, they use the prototypes to test potential upgrades and modifications that may later be incorporated into production aircraft. A company like Virgin Galactic might want to take an SS2 and use it in the same way. The article sounded like current law prevented that.
If that’s so, I can’t imagine how the existing law ever had any connection to common sense. I suppose it might stem from the very mature field of commercial aviation, where exploring and radically expanding the flight envelope of an aircraft already in commercial service (to the extent of needing a dedicated “experimental” airframe) just doesn’t happen, because it doesn’t need to.
Actually, companies like Boeing produce several experimental prototypes that aren’t delivered to customers but instead are maintained as test articles. Once the initial type certification work is finished, they use the prototypes to test potential upgrades and modifications that may later be incorporated into production aircraft. A company like Virgin Galactic might want to take an SS2 and use it in the same way. The article sounded like current law prevented that.