Today's edition of The Wall Street Journal signals what may be the first public salvo in the bureaucratic regulatory infighting between the FAA-AST and NASA over who will determine what safety standards are to be used for future commercial human spaceflights - with one Senator perhaps planning to seek to cancel the FAA human-rating spaceflight safety oversight.
George Nield, the official in charge of commercial space transportation at the FAA, told the Senate Commerce subcommittee on science and space that his agency sees such oversight as practically inevitable because "we have a regulatory environment that works right now." But Senator Bill Nelson responded that he did not intend for the FAA to be regulating spaceflight safety in an immediate response to Nield's testimony.
Bryan O'Connor, the head of NASA's safety and mission assurance office, told the subcommittee that his agency is developing its own, independent safety requirements covering proposed commercial transportation of astronauts. With "appropriate respect for out safety lessons learned in the past," he said, NASA intends to seek comments shortly from industry on the issue of future safety standards.
The regulatory issue will make for some interesting policy reflection over the next several months as the issue of human spaceflight safety between the civil and commercial sectors takes shape on Capitol Hill.
No comments:
Post a Comment