Development of FAA/AST Space Tourism Regulations and Guidlines

Abstract

The Federal Aviation Administration’s Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST) provides the regulatory regime for and the safety oversight of the U. S. commercial space transportation industry. With the enactment of the Commercial Space Launch Act (CSLA) in 1984, the Office was established in the U.S. Department of Transportation in the Office of the Secretary of Transportation as the Office of Commercial Space Transportation (OCST). OCST was transferred to the FAA and became AST in November of 1995 and is the only space related line of business in the FAA. Besides having the responsibility of regulating the public safety of the U.S. commercial space transportation industry, the CSLA of 1984 also requires the Secretary of Transportation to encourage, facilitate and promote this industry. The original legislation was crafted when commercial space transportation was provided almost exclusively by expendable launch vehicles (ELVs). In the mid 1990s, the commercial space transportation industry began to look at developing reusable launch vehicles (RLVs) as a way to reduce the cost of access to space and, thereby, to expand the markets for commercial space transportation. Since the CSLA did not specifically refer to RLVs, Congress passed legislation in 1998, the Commercial Space Act, which gave the Secretary of Transportation, as delegated to the FAA/AST, the authority to regulate the operation of reentry and reusable launch vehicles and reentry sites. In response to this legislation, AST developed and published in the Federal Register, a Final Rule for Commercial Space Transportation Reusable Launch Vehicle and Reentry Licensing Regulations on September 19, 2000, with an effective date of November 20, 2000. This rulemaking effort, though far reaching and ground breaking in its scope, did not address, as stated in its preamble, the human factors that may affect crew and passenger-bearing RLVs. _____________ *AIAA Associate Fellow, Aerospace Engineer, Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) This paper is declared a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States Therefore, anticipating that the commercial RLV industry would soon pursue the use of crew on RLVs (for example to win the $10 million Ansari X-Prize competition) and to develop vehicles capable of carrying passengers, AST initiated its efforts to promulgate regulations for commercial human space flight. This entailed forming a small team of engineers within AST and contracting with the Aerospace Corporation to perform an outside study.