The coming private space age...
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And thus the era of the Aeroplane came to a sudden end
(StevenR - for future reference cite Zepplins or the Concorde if you want to try and make a point)
Hardly, but look at all the regulation in place to fly any type of aircraft. Now throw in the the handwringing politician who has to "do something" with kneejerk legislation in response to the thousands of hours of sensationalist news coverage sure to exist in the wake of SpaceBus 1 crashing into a city or PrivateProbe 1 exploding on take off and putting toxic fuel into the oceans.
Now think about how much worse it gets when a private spaceship crashes into a whole other country.
And now we can factor in NASA, ESA, and JAXA bureaucrats afraid that their private little fiefdoms will cease to exist, so they lobby to their governments for more regulatory power over the private space programs. And now we can think about the bribes, I mean campaign contributions, legislators get from various special interest groups.
But everything is going to be a-ok in the private space industry.
Fairly common-sense stuff for the most part. Like requiring pilots to have a certain minimum amount of skill and experience before being licensed, no flight below 500 feet or within 2000 horizontal feet of an obstacle except during normal takeoff and landing, etc.
And you're hardly going to want less regulation to operate a space vehicle! It's literally rocket science!
Show you evidence what will happen? That a spaceship will eventually be destroyed while in flight? See Soyuz 1, Shuttles Challenger and Columbia
Evidence that legislators are stupid and write up kneejerk legislation to look like they are doing "something" about the issue of the week? USA Patriot Act.
Evidence that things that go up sometimes don't land in their country of origin? Skylab.
Evidence that bureaucrats are petty and don't want to lose power? Pre-9/11 CIA and FBI not sharing information with other agencies. You can also look at the ATF worried about losing funding and staging the raid on the Branch Davidians for an infomercial to show Congress why they should still exist.
Or evidence of special interests buying off legislators with campaign contributions? I can give you 535 names on Capitol Hill and one in the White House.
Evidence that legislators are stupid and write up kneejerk legislation to look like they are doing "something" about the issue of the week? USA Patriot Act.
Evidence that things that go up sometimes don't land in their country of origin? Skylab.
Evidence that bureaucrats are petty and don't want to lose power? Pre-9/11 CIA and FBI not sharing information with other agencies. You can also look at the ATF worried about losing funding and staging the raid on the Branch Davidians for an infomercial to show Congress why they should still exist.
Or evidence of special interests buying off legislators with campaign contributions? I can give you 535 names on Capitol Hill and one in the White House.
The argument isn't the necessity of regulation, but the idea that anyone business is going to be able to go to space and we'll enter a new age of exploration is shortsighted. It's hard enough now to get the approapriate licences and permissions to do those things. How much harder do you think it'll be after a few incidents where Ma and Pa Kettle call their congresscritter and demend that they "do something"?
All these were destroyed in the same way were they?
Again bad example, the USA Patriot act wasn't knee jerk legislation, it was opportunistic legsilation. When you want to cite knee jerk legislation, the UK's Dangerous Dogs Act is always the go to piece of crappy legislation - passed in a day and containing breeds of dogs that don't exist...
Again, once...and all this legislation you're worried about will no doubt protect against the falling space junk...
Those are investigative agencies...not NASA...and it's not like the CIA and FBI and ATF were refusing to share with private entities...
That's not evidence, that's a government...
I can give you the names of 650 Members of Parliament and 800 members of the House of Lords...(It's like Top Trumps - my parliament is bigger so I win!)
FUD. Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. Stop the spread of it.
Congress/the government/NASA actually has reacted very favorably in trying to foster the privatization of space. Hell, even the FAA, which is a fairly conservative organization has managed to avoid smothering the nascent industry in regulations.
They all recognize that in the long run private industry has a good chance to lower costs and save the government money.
StevenR - Space exploration, whether private or government run, is seen as a fairly patriotic endeavor in the U.S.. Ma and Pa Kettle have historically voted to continue on after past tragedies such as Challenger and Columbia.
Congress/the government/NASA actually has reacted very favorably in trying to foster the privatization of space. Hell, even the FAA, which is a fairly conservative organization has managed to avoid smothering the nascent industry in regulations.
They all recognize that in the long run private industry has a good chance to lower costs and save the government money.
StevenR - Space exploration, whether private or government run, is seen as a fairly patriotic endeavor in the U.S.. Ma and Pa Kettle have historically voted to continue on after past tragedies such as Challenger and Columbia.
That's already happened more than a dozen times in the past twenty years, mainly in China and Russia. The few American launchers/satellites that have landed near populated areas wound up in places like Iran or Saudi Arabia (mainly spent Delta rocket stages) as the upper stages of those rockets wind up tumbling back to Earth after a single unstable orbit.And thus the era of the Aeroplane came to a sudden end
(StevenR - for future reference cite Zepplins or the Concorde if you want to try and make a point)
Hardly, but look at all the regulation in place to fly any type of aircraft. Now throw in the the handwringing politician who has to "do something" with kneejerk legislation in response to the thousands of hours of sensationalist news coverage sure to exist in the wake of SpaceBus 1 crashing into a city or PrivateProbe 1 exploding on take off and putting toxic fuel into the oceans.
The reason it hasn't caused an international incident is because rocket launch companies pay fantastic amounts of money to the underwriters to cover exactly this kind of situation. When a rocket stage falls out of the sky and lands on some guy's house, the insurance adjusters show up within a couple of hours, buy him a new one and slice off a few pieces of the rocket for him to keep as a souvenir. Only once or twice has the spent rocket come down with enough power to cause deaths, when (IIRC) the upper stage of a Chinese rocket landed on a nearby town, destroying it completely.
It won't be a problem in America because we already have layers of regulation specifically designed to prevent that sort of thing from happening, and we have plenty of launch sites where that sort of incident is next to impossible. The only thing we'd really need to worry about is the incredible longshot scenario if a returning spacecraft veered wildly off course and crashed into a building or something, but in that case the big story would be a couple of dead astronauts, not the damage caused by the crash.
That's already happened more than a dozen times in the past twenty years, mainly in China and Russia. The few American launchers/satellites that have landed near populated areas wound up in places like Iran or Saudi Arabia (mainly spent Delta rocket stages) as the upper stages of those rockets wind up tumbling back to Earth after a single unstable orbit.And thus the era of the Aeroplane came to a sudden end
(StevenR - for future reference cite Zepplins or the Concorde if you want to try and make a point)
Hardly, but look at all the regulation in place to fly any type of aircraft. Now throw in the the handwringing politician who has to "do something" with kneejerk legislation in response to the thousands of hours of sensationalist news coverage sure to exist in the wake of SpaceBus 1 crashing into a city or PrivateProbe 1 exploding on take off and putting toxic fuel into the oceans.
The reason it hasn't caused an international incident is because rocket launch companies pay fantastic amounts of money to the underwriters to cover exactly this kind of situation. When a rocket stage falls out of the sky and lands on some guy's house, the insurance adjusters show up within a couple of hours, buy him a new one and slice off a few pieces of the rocket for him to keep as a souvenir. Only once or twice has the spent rocket come down with enough power to cause deaths, when (IIRC) the upper stage of a Chinese rocket landed on a nearby town, destroying it completely.
It won't be a problem in America because we already have layers of regulation specifically designed to prevent that sort of thing from happening, and we have plenty of launch sites where that sort of incident is next to impossible. The only thing we'd really need to worry about is the incredible longshot scenario if a returning spacecraft veered wildly off course and crashed into a building or something, but in that case the big story would be a couple of dead astronauts, not the damage caused by the crash.
Plus - consider how much safer they're going to want to make commercial space flight...it's not in their interests!
^ Right. At this stage in the game they're too new to the field and have too much to prove to risk any sort of negative press. They have different stakes than NASA, of course, but in their case as well, failure is NOT an option.
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