Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Commercial Space Transportation Regulation

February 11, 2013 Rand Simberg 6 Comments

In my book, here’s one of my recommendations in the conclusion:

The Office of Commercial Space Transportation (OCST), currently located within FAA and often referred to by its internal code designation as FAA-AST, should be taken from under the FAA administrator and reconstituted as a separate agency of the DOT, reporting directly to the Secretary of Transportation as do normal DOT agencies. The OCST was originally constituted as a special office within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation as an interim measure under President Reagan’s executive order of 1983, codified by subsequent legislation in 1984. It was moved under the FAA early in the Clinton administration as a result of Vice President Gore’s “streamlining government” initiative. Giving it independent status would both elevate the national importance of space transportation, and remove it from the routine-transportation, common-carrier-oriented safety environment of the FAA, which (as previously mentioned) lost its role in the promotion of the aviation industry in the wake of the ValuJet crash in the late nineties. Additionally, consideration should be given to relocating to such an agency various routine space-transportation-related infrastructure and operational responsibilities located in other agencies where they are peripheral to those agencies’ main purpose and function and often suffer from inattention and low priorities.

Dana Rohrabacher has read a draft, and I suspect that’s partially what’s behind this:

Rohrabacher said that it remained vital that FAA recognize that commercial spaceflight is still an emerging industry and not over-regulate it. He noted that the Office of Commercial Space Transportation was originally placed directly under the Secretary of Transportation, and only later moved to the FAA. “The culture of the FAA is based on a mandate to protect passenger safety,” he said, but argued that commercial spaceflight, being far less mature than aviation, requires a different regulatory philosophy. “That’s a very different mandate and a very different approach, but it’s necessary for us to recognize that if we are to be successful in moving the industry forward.”

Rohrabacher said that FAA was, for the time being, doing a good job treating aviation and spaceflight differently, but warned he would seek action to move the office out of the FAA should the situation change. “Ultimately, if that proves too difficult for the FAA to reconcile, we may end up having to move this whole job back to the office of the Secretary of Transportation.”

Sounds good to me.

As a side note, the congressman has provided me with a book blurb:

Mr. Simberg makes the compelling case that great deeds and great rewards require great risks, but NASA and my colleagues in Congress have become so risk averse in the arena of human spaceflight that we are incapable of accomplishing great deeds. America must have the stomach to let explorers and settlers willfully take on the kinds of risk necessary for opening the frontier of space to settlement under the rule of law. If we continue to overvalue that risk, or prohibit those who would willfully undertake it, then other nations, with no respect for human life, will be more than happy to fill that void. Left unchecked, the well-meaning, but misguided, group that promotes “safety at all cost” will continue to establish hard ceilings that we can’t break through, require the expense of immense amounts of time and money, and will ultimately cost us our preeminence in space. We must not cede the high ground of space to those who do not believe in freedom. And we must respect the freedom of those individuals who are willing to put it all on the line to head over that next hill – even when that hill is in space. Mr. Simberg’s book Safe Is Not An Option handles this sensitive issue with skill, grace, and tremendous insight.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
Vice Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology; and former Chairman of the Space Subcommittee

I have several others as well, which I’ll put up at the book’s web site, perhaps this week.

Political Commentary, Space, Space History

That Didn’t Take Long

February 11, 2013 Rand Simberg 3 Comments

Paul Damphousse is out at NSS. As Michael Mealling notes, it really is a profoundly dysfunctional organization, not just because of its structure, but because of the tension between the constituencies within that has existed ever since the L-5/NSI merger in the eighties.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obama’s Latest Scheme

February 11, 2013 Rand Simberg 4 Comments

He wants Congress to fix the sequester he suggested with the new taxes he’s wanted all along.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

John Brennan

February 11, 2013 Rand Simberg 10 Comments

Is he a secret Muslim?

Given some of his statements in the past, it wouldn’t shock me.

[Update a while later]

Brennan’s evasions. Even if he’s a Zoroastrian, there are many reasons to not confirm him.

Political Commentary

The First Amendment

February 11, 2013 Rand Simberg 6 Comments

…recognizes the right to bear arms, according to our former Speaker of the House.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

I guess I should be happy that she at least feels compelled to pretend to believe in the right to bear arms, albeit incompetently.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Arming Foreign Forces

February 10, 2013 Rand Simberg 4 Comments

…does not make them allies.

The notion that it might is clueless to politics, history, and human nature.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

The Intrinsic Violence Of The Left

February 10, 2013 Rand Simberg 17 Comments

Andrew Klavan, with some thoughts on the invisible (and voluntary) versus the very visible hand of the Left, as most recently demonstrated by L’Affaire Chris Dorner:

The left has never bought into the central revelation of the Enlightenment: things are made to work perfectly fine without much control from above. This Enlightenment insight was inspired by the earlier work of Isaac Newton who discovered that God didn’t have to move the stars around in the sky or cause the apple to fall to earth. The Big Dude had cleverly put machinery in place that worked pretty much on its own. The economist Adam Smith translated this insight into economics when he pointed out that individuals working in their own interest frequently promote the interest of everyone as if by an invisible hand. The founders translated the idea into politics by creating a system in which individuals could act without too much government interference. These geniuses didn’t trust in individual goodness, not at all. They trusted in the handiwork of the Creator — that is, they trusted the overall human system was built to work without kings and aristocrats — or a democratic mob — forcing people to do what they wanted.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, the founding saint of modern leftism, rejected that Enlightenment wisdom. He hated the modern world and thought humanity had been better off in a state of noble savagery. In that state, Rousseau believed, men were truly free because their laws naturally followed the general will. If people in the corrupt modern age violated the general will, they had to be “forced to be free.”

The logic of Rousseau led to the guillotine.

As it led to the deaths of tens of millions over the past century. And of course, it is one of the reasons (but of course by no means the only one) that they don’t want us to have guns. They assume that they are as willing to kill for their ideology as they are, and we (or rather, they) can’t have that.

[Monday morning update]

More Huffpo readers who support mass murder. See, he’s got a grievance, so it’s perfectly understandable why he’d kill innocent people.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary

A Worthy Cause

February 10, 2013 Rand Simberg 3 Comments

Go help out the Sun News. Richard Warman is one of the most vile, illiberal people in the west.

Not that I want you to not care about my lawsuit, but this one is even more important that my foofaraw with the disgustingly litigious Michael Mann. Warman is at war with the enlightenment itself.

Transterrestrial Musings