Or at least without educating oneself on the subject. Over at this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists, the very first post is a libertarian (my guess) whining about government regulation of space tourism. This is always the knee-jerk response of small-government types (of which I’m one) when they’re completely unfamiliar with the history of commercial space and space law in general.

The FAA NPRM that Mr. Cohen is so exercised about was not a spontaneous power grab by the federal government, and didn’t appear ex nihilo, even if he wasn’t following the subject–it was the result of years of discussion with the industry, and a result of a consensus between them and the regulators (though there are a few dissenters, but even they don’t want no regulation–they just want a different set of rules and a different part of the FAA to regulate it).

Like it or not, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty obligates the federal government to regulate launches. It will continue to do so until we decide to renegotiate or withdraw from it (good ideas, in my opinion, but unlikely to happen soon). There was never any option for non-regulation–the only question was what form the regs would take. Absent any defined regulations for it, it was impossible to raise money for it (because investors hate uncertainty in general, and regulatory uncertainty in particular), which is why the nascent American space tourism industry fought very hard a couple years ago to get legislation to legally define this new flight regime, and expand the FAA’s legal authority to explicitly deal with space passenger launches, in a way that would green light investors and not stifle the industry. So far, it has been quite successful, since the money is now flowing, and no serious player (other than Burt) is complaining about the regulation level. If you look at the comments on the NPRM so far (and ignore the nutty ones), you’ll see that they’re constructive, and meant to fine tune a good first cut by the agency. So far, they seem to be in keeping with both the letter and intent of the legislation.

Before people let loose with their keyboards on this issue, they might serve their readers better if they review and familiarize themselves a little with the history first.

[Update on Monday evening]

Here’s an equally naive, but more optimistic (and realistic) take:

Last week, for probably the first time in my life, I got excited by the prospect of U.S. government bureaucracy. The Federal Aviation Administration took a step toward developing rules for space tourism, issuing more than 120 pages of proposed guidelines for

Of course it is. And, as Ron Bailey points out, there’s never been a time when it wasn’t, for all the reasons he describes and more, and the Dems are just as (if not more) guilty of this than the Bush administration (contra Chris Mooney’s ideologically blinkered thesis).

The same applies to space “science” (though in fact much of NASA spending has very little to do with science, despite the popular myth). And in light of how something as supposedly objective as “science” can get politicized, it’s foolish to think that major government-funded engineering projects (like the president’s Vision for Space Exploration) aren’t, or that the politics don’t drive the architecture decisions much more strongly than economics or the loftier goal of building a space-faring civilization.

It may indeed be the case that the “stick” and a Shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicle are necessary to maintain (at least in the short term) Congressional support for the overall program (though that’s not at all clear to me), but we shouldn’t fool ourselves that this will result in significant progress in our space capabilities, particularly relative to more flexible, versatile, diverse and ultimately lower-cost means of achieving the desired goals.