No, not a proposed solution to our current infestation, nor the new movie starring Miss Piggy. Rand Simberg reports on how the safety fascists are trying to gut the nascent private space industry. Essentially some idiot is proposing that XCOR, SpaceShipOne and the rest should be held to a standard of risk that makes development of the industry impossible. That crew and passengers should be exposed to the same level of risk as the general public. This is absurd. There haven’t been enough private flights to give us a real risk level but I doubt that it’s very different from NASA’s one in a hundred or so. That’s just the way it is with new technologies.
The real point is that the bureaucrats don’t want to lose power over such a new technology. The very idea that it could prosper (in fact, can only prosper) in the abscence of armies of pencil sharpeners threatens the very existence, the reason for being, of those very armies of pencil sharpeners. It looks like this particular bill won’t go through but they’ll be back folks, they’ll not rest until they have the industry locked down in chains, unable to innovate, unable to risk anything more than a hangnail.
There were hundreds if not thousands of deaths in crashes as our forefathers worked out the aviation industry. Harsh as it may sound that’s what is going to happen in the space industry as well. This generation of astronauts are going to face risks, high risks, so that the next generation can have it easy, just like we do with jet travel.
What really needs to happen is simple. Launch the flights from outside the US (and the EU, of course). Stick the spaceport in some poor country (one with a more realistic view of the value of human life, or if you prefer, one that acknowledges the right of the individual to do whatever damn crazy fool thing they want to) on the equator. Preferably on a high plateau. And tell the Federal bureaucracy to go sit and swivel.