DAYTON, OHIO For companies and individuals building suborbital rockets aimed at the civilian transportation market, government indecision and bureaucratic wrangling about flight certification, licensing, and overall regulations is proving to be a greater obstacle than either the laws of physics or financing their sky-high projects.
Permission to fly the proposed suborbital crafts in the United States rests at the Office of the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST), an arm of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Established in 1984 as the Office of Commercial Space Transportation in the Department of Transportation, AST was transferred to the FAA in November 1995.
However, part of the difficulties now facing both the AST and the rocketeers is the very uniqueness of the projects, said Patricia Grace Smith, Associate Administrator for AST.
The AST is dealing with suborbital spaceship designs that are hybrid in nature, Smith said. In other words, these craft have operational characteristics that fit in one world, aviation, but they also have operational characteristics that make them spacecraft-like.
"How we blend the two, so that we enable them to go forward, and not hinder themthats very challenging right now to an agency like the FAA," Smith said.
Smith spoke with SPACE.com at The Next 100 Years, an International Air & Space Symposium and Exposition which was held here last week and sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
"A lot of the work that AST has been doing for the last four or five years is trying to get ready for emerging sectors in space transportation," said Smith. "We see suborbital rockets as one of those sectors."
Definition derailed
The AST has scripted a definition of suborbital rockets, but now finds that characterization being challenged.
"The corporate view inside the FAA is that there are far more questions around the definition than there are answers. Some of the questions have to do with jurisdictional questions, as opposed to operational or technical objections to the definition," Smith said.
What is needed is the ability to foresee and accommodate emerging technologies as they come along. "There are lots of varieties of airplanes. They dont all look exactly alike. The same is now true in the space world," Smith said.
"I hope that this could be decided soon. As soon as possible," Smith said.
Stable regulatory environment
Yet while the government works to create guidelines that facilitate the safe launching and landing of civilian sub-orbital spacecraft, the logjam has spurred into being a new coalition of rocket entrepreneurs, citizens' groups, and public policy experts to join forces to speed up the process.
The coalition is pressing Congress to clarify and strengthen the original intent of the U.S. governments Commercial Space Launch Act by defining key terms such as "suborbital rocket" in law and putting these vehicles exclusively under the jurisdiction of AST.
Quickly needed, they argue, is a clear and stable regulatory environment.
Without such action, the coalition warns, American reusable launch vehicles are stuck on the ground, or remain little more than drawing board fantasies, instead of flying toward space.
Thrust greater than lift
How best to untangle these issues is contentious. There is support by some in the reusable launcher business for certification of designs. Others advocate launch vehicle licensing as the path to take.
The recent unveiling of aircraft designer, Burt Rutans White Knight/SpaceShipOne configuration -- now undergoing first phase flight tests -- has caused a stir in certification and licensing camps.
Rutan has filed an application for launch license with AST, Smith said. "We are working with him. Weve got a tiger team thats working pretty hard at that reviewing his application, assessing whats there and what more we need."
White Knight, the carrier vehicle, will be operating under experimental certificate. For SpaceShipOne, thats another matter.
"We say when it starts operating like a launch vehicle -- with fully turned on engines and thrust is greater than lift -- itll have to operate under a launch license," Smith said. Under its own rocket power, SpaceShipOnes ascent to the edge of space and its plunge toward Earth makes it more launch vehicle than aircraft. And that puts it into ASTs oversight role, she said.
Next page: Distinct Differences
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