Berin Szoka is giving a talk on reforming ITAR, and makes the useful points that it will do no good to attempt to persuade someone on the basis that it’s bad for business, or impeding the development of space. They won’t care. ITAR is about national security, and any arguments against it must use ju jitsu–those defending it must be convinced that ITAR, as currently constituted, actually damages our national security. Fortunately, this is a case that can be made, and must.

Mike Kelly is announcing the formation of a new association to promote personal spaceflight, called (creatively enough) the Personal Spaceflight Federation.

Will represent the personal spaceflight industry–companies that will provide human spaceflight under the regulatory auspices of the FAA. Includes developers, operators, marketers, resellers, spaceports, and commercial space destinations.

Challenges for the industry:

• Safety
• Regulations
  • overly burdensome
  • Chaotic/Inconsistent
• Public Perception
• Long-Term Challenges

Purpose is to present a unified front on critical issues, such as FAA rules and environmental issues, industry standards, coordination of lobbying efforts, public relations, research, pool resources and expertise to deal with common issues, establish partnerships. There will be bi-yearly meetings of principals (assuming this means semi-annual, e.g., twice a year).

Non-profit 501(c)6 (Trade Association) in California with board of directors, chaired by Mike Kelly and staffed by John Gedmark. It is financed by membership fees. First official act was to produce consensus comments on the recent FAA-AST NPRM on human spaceflight participants. Managed to come up with unanimous set of comments (seventeen pages), which presumably the FAA will take seriously. One major issue was the nature and definition of “informed consent.” Another was potential for foreign passengers to be excluded due to ITAR issues. Another was definition of “crew.” They wanted to make a distinction between “safety-critical” and “non-safety-critical” crew (e.g., pilots versus people gathering data, such as the NASA equivalent of “mission specialists”).

Next area to be tacked is set of voluntary industry standards, once technology is mature enough to warrant them. This will provide better liability protection, since neither the developer or the FAA will be liable if they follow the industry standard. Use of AIAA seen as key here. Care has to be taken here–bad standards can cause as much harm as bad regulation. Premature to establish them now, because standards represent best practices, and industry is too immature to know what those are. Fortunately, it will take a while for them to evolve.

Future activities: Develop consensus document on NPRM on reusable expendables, continue research on liability waivers for passenger spaceflight, continue research on standards development, and develop ITAR strategy.

As Jeff Foust notes, there hasn’t been a lot of breaking news at this conference, but he has recovered sufficiently from last night’s pistonless-pumped margarita party to put up a summary of yesterday’s sessions.

The wireless is up in the room. For now.

George Nield of FAA-AST is talking, and describing the new rules for human spaceflight.

Here is Jeff Foust’s first post from the conference.

I’m posting this from the lobby after lunch. In theory the wireless is supposed to be up in the room Real Soon Now.

Clark Lindsey has some stuff up from the proceedings so far. And more here.

At least for a Space Access conference. There’s no broadband in the rooms. There is a wireless connection in the lobby, from which I’m posting this. Michael Mealing is attempting to set up a wireless connection in the room in which the proceedings are occuring, so we can blog from there, but there’s a problem with the network connection to the router, and there will be no resolution before tomorrow morning. The restaurant took half an hour to take out orders, and an hour to deliver them, then screwed up the check. Not to mention that my linguini was spaghetti., and overcooked.

Other than that, everything is great. Hopefully better news on the morrow.

I was hearing rumors of this last night through the grapevine, but some news outlets are now reporting the Scott Crossfield‘s private aircraft is missing, possibly (and even likely) with him aboard.

Jeff Foust has started up (yet another) new blog on personal spaceflight. He’s come up with a very creative and descriptive name for it–Personal Spaceflight.

Bookmark it. I’ll be adding it to the blogroll.

Clark Lindsey reminds us that the Space Access Conference starts on Thursday. Hope to see some of you there.

Eric Hedman has a column in today’s issue of The Space Review on whether or not ESAS is a good approach, or at least a good enough one. His bottom line:

After reading over the ESAS, I