I know that this proposal by Greg Zsidisin isn’t serious, but it does demonstrate just how deranged some otherwise intelligent people have become at the prospect of Democrats no longer being in power. It’s not particularly clever satire. I think it’s just sad.

And by the way, Greg, perhaps in your conspiratorial dreamworld in which the new Inquisition with corporate sponsorship by Enron and Halliburton will start any day, Tom Delay is a senator, but in this universe, he’s the majority leader of the House.

Things were a little too frenzied in the past few days to actually spend much time analyzing the legislation, but now that the shouting is over, Nathan Horsley has an analysis of the legal effects of the launch legislation passed by the House this weekend. I agree with it, and share his concern that the compromise language inserted in the bill may cause the good people at FAA-AST to be more (and possibly too) concerned about passenger safety, to the detriment of a fledgling industry.

As Nathan says:

Well, shouldn

The House has passed the new regulation bill (HR5382) with the required 2/3rds majority. Alan Boyle (who properly owns this story, with his diligent reporting over the past couple days) has the latest. As he says, now on to the Senate.

[Update at 6 PM EST]

Alan Boyle now has the full story up.

Jeff Foust says that it’s this morning or never. Or, at least, next year.

Keith Cowing has a copy of the letter from Chairman Boehlert to his colleagues, which lays out the issues.

A final email from Jim Muncy:

The House Leadership just announced that there would be no more votes tonight.

The House of Representatives will convene at 9am on Saturday morning to consider outstanding votes plus the Omnibus approps bill, etc… so phone calls, faxes, and emails to House Members, especially House Democrats, should continue until at least mid-morning Eastern Time on Saturday.

Remember: HR 5382 is a bipartisan bill that was developed as a compromise between the House-passed HR3752 and the Senate Commerce Committee

From Jeff Greason at XCOR:

As of 1:19 Pacific time, the compromise version of the commercial human spaceflight bill is expected to come to a vote in the House today under a new bill number, HR 5382. The compromise in this bill allows passenger safety regulation by AST — but only after a significant safety problem has been revealed in flight. The bill is currently opposed by a Representative who wants the FAA to have unlimited authority to regulate passenger safety. We encourage timely support for this bill. Text is available at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3217961/

[Update at 5:25 PM EST]

Michael Mealing helpfully points out in comments that:

Oberstar’s number is (202) 225-6211
DeFazio’s number is (202) 225-6416

(these are the congressmen dragging their heels)

And here’s an email from Jim Muncy:

Continue reading Legislative Emergency →

Reports of the suborbital passenger launch legislation’s demise were greatly exaggerated, but it’s still on life support. According to Alan Boyle, here’s the problem:

Goldston said it was not clear to him whether the bill would be acceptable to Rep. Oberstar, the ranking Democratic member of the Transportation Committee. But Jim Berard, communications director on the panel’s Democratic staff, made Oberstar’s view quite clear to MSNBC.com: Oberstar believes the bill still does not go far enough to safeguard the safety of crew members and passengers on future suborbital spaceships, he said.

“If the bill is brought up under unanimous consent, Congressman Oberstar would most likely object, unless something can be done to address that particular language,” Berard said.

In a straight up-and-down vote, the opposition of just one member wouldn’t pose a problem. But so little time remains in this lame-duck session that congressional rules have to be short-circuited in order to approve the suborbital spaceflight bill. The easiest way would be through unanimous consent, and Oberstar’s objection would close off that avenue.

Rep. Oberstar apparently thinks that he has to destroy the industry (or prevent it from coming into being at all) in order to save it.

I hope that they can do a rules change to get around him, but I don’t think that they should capitulate to him. I have a feeling that no bill will be better than one worded the way he would want it.

Reports of the suborbital passenger launch legislation’s demise were greatly exaggerated, but it’s still on life support. According to Alan Boyle, here’s the problem:

Goldston said it was not clear to him whether the bill would be acceptable to Rep. Oberstar, the ranking Democratic member of the Transportation Committee. But Jim Berard, communications director on the panel’s Democratic staff, made Oberstar’s view quite clear to MSNBC.com: Oberstar believes the bill still does not go far enough to safeguard the safety of crew members and passengers on future suborbital spaceships, he said.

“If the bill is brought up under unanimous consent, Congressman Oberstar would most likely object, unless something can be done to address that particular language,” Berard said.

In a straight up-and-down vote, the opposition of just one member wouldn’t pose a problem. But so little time remains in this lame-duck session that congressional rules have to be short-circuited in order to approve the suborbital spaceflight bill. The easiest way would be through unanimous consent, and Oberstar’s objection would close off that avenue.

Rep. Oberstar apparently thinks that he has to destroy the industry (or prevent it from coming into being at all) in order to save it.

I hope that they can do a rules change to get around him, but I don’t think that they should capitulate to him. I have a feeling that no bill will be better than one worded the way he would want it.

Reports of the suborbital passenger launch legislation’s demise were greatly exaggerated, but it’s still on life support. According to Alan Boyle, here’s the problem:

Goldston said it was not clear to him whether the bill would be acceptable to Rep. Oberstar, the ranking Democratic member of the Transportation Committee. But Jim Berard, communications director on the panel’s Democratic staff, made Oberstar’s view quite clear to MSNBC.com: Oberstar believes the bill still does not go far enough to safeguard the safety of crew members and passengers on future suborbital spaceships, he said.

“If the bill is brought up under unanimous consent, Congressman Oberstar would most likely object, unless something can be done to address that particular language,” Berard said.

In a straight up-and-down vote, the opposition of just one member wouldn’t pose a problem. But so little time remains in this lame-duck session that congressional rules have to be short-circuited in order to approve the suborbital spaceflight bill. The easiest way would be through unanimous consent, and Oberstar’s objection would close off that avenue.

Rep. Oberstar apparently thinks that he has to destroy the industry (or prevent it from coming into being at all) in order to save it.

I hope that they can do a rules change to get around him, but I don’t think that they should capitulate to him. I have a feeling that no bill will be better than one worded the way he would want it.

My promised (well, actually, hoped for) rebuttal to Alexander Tabarrok’s mistaken hit piece on the space tourism industry is up at TechCentralStation.

[Update at 10 AM EST]

I have to say that I’m underwhelmed by Professor Tabarrok’s response to my rebuttal. He seems to have read it, or at least glanced at it, since he complains about my use of the (admittedly overused, but appropriate in this case, I believe) word “paradigm.” However, he doesn’t seem to have comprehended it, or if he did, he chose not to provide a substantive response.

He is still apparently unable to discern the distinction between orbital and suborbital, and between reusable and expendable, and why such a distinction is important. He accuses me of relying on “faith,” when in fact I made a very clear and rational case as to why these new vehicles are different than the ones from which he mistakenly draws his misleading statistics.

In this last graf, he displays a fundamental lack of understanding of the economics of the space industry (disappointing–one would hope that as an economics professor, he could get that right, even if he doesn’t understand the technical issues):

What’s so great about space tourism anyway? Even though an increase in rocket safety of a factor of ten is not much when considering the safety of large numbers of people it is very significant when thinking about satellite launches or temporary low-orbit launches. A reduction of risk of this amount means much lower insurance costs that will open up space to new private development.

What’s so great about space tourism is that it is the only market, or at least the only one that doesn’t require some technology breakthrough beyond the development of low-cost vehicles themselves, that is sufficiently large to get us to the scale of operations necessary to reduce costs and improve reliability.

And if he believes that the high cost of launch insurance is the barrier holding back private space development, he understands nothing at all about the current launch industry, either technically or in a business sense.

David Masten isn’t impressed, either.