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New Bill Directs NASA Back to the Moon By 2022
- ChuckMcM 15y agoI encourage you to write your Congressional representative and rather than exhort NASA to go to the moon, make it easy for private enterprises to launch vehicles into space. Export permits? Import permits? I listened to a talk on Falcon9 at Google where the presenter went into a small bit of the paperwork that was needed to fly their rockets. Here was an interesting point. If you were crazy enough to ride in a Dragon capsule on its first trip, signed a waiver that basically said "I hold everyone harmless for this crazy act I undertake" and something went wrong and you died, they could be charged with man slaughter at a minimum and murder at worst. So write your representative and suggest that they change the rules to 'will license' from 'may license'. That simple change means that if a company meets the published requirements for a space going vessel the FAA is then required by law to issue them a license to fly it. Combine that with a durable and quick issue resolution process (where once an issue is resolved it stays resolved) and people like Elon Musk can be much more aggressive about moving these programs forward.