This is a couple weeks old, but I just noticed it.

The airline analogy is fundamentally flawed. Barring catastrophe (or skydiving), when you take off in an aircraft, you remain in it for the entire flight, until after landing, so it makes sense for a unitary entity to regulate the process. But in spaceflight, once we have orbital destinations, the “launch” ends when the destination is reached. So (setting aside the fact that the FAA should never have been involved in regulating launches) there is no reason for the same agency to regulate safety on orbit as the one that regulates trips to and from space. The project on which I’m currently working proposes that the Department of Commerce regulate on-orbit activity, and while I’m open to discussions whether or not that’s the right place for it, the notion that it should be the FAA is absurd.

[Update a while later]

I’ve been reliably informed that this isn’t just an op-ed; DOT is apparently actively lobbying Congress for this role. I’ll be in DC next week, and trying to find out more about what’s going on.