This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
China

Export Restrictions On Satellite Technology Eased

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 19, 2012
Filed under , , ,

U.S. defense bill lifts barrier on satellite exports, Reuters
“Tucked into the annual U.S. defense budget bill making its way through Congress this week is a long-fought and potentially lucrative reprieve for U.S. satellite manufactures and suppliers to export their products, officials said on Wednesday. Since 1999, spacecraft and their components have been grouped with ammunitions, fighter jets and other defense technologies and subject to the nation’s most stringent export controls. The restriction followed a 1996 Chinese rocket launch accident that claimed a U.S.-manufactured satellite. In the course of the investigation, the company was accused of inadvertently transferring restricted technology to China. Before 1999, the State Department had the option of processing satellite and spacecraft component export requests under more lenient commerce control guidelines. “We are going to give the president back that power,” space attorney Michael Gold, who headed a Federal Aviation Administration export control advisory group, told Reuters.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

6 responses to “Export Restrictions On Satellite Technology Eased”

  1. Marc Boucher says:
    0
    0

    Considering the importance of ITAR I’m surprised no one has chimed in on this yet. This is a victory and important step forward.

    • NewSpacePaleontologist says:
      0
      0

      No victory – yet.

      Bill is not passed and it only gives the authority to make changes.
      With the obvious use of US technology by China and the stated threats by Iran and North Korea to use space systems against us, changes will probably be slow.

      And – we will still have to get licenses.

    • Jeff Smith says:
      0
      0

      Marc,
      Seeing how much of a stink the New Space community has made over ITAR, you’d think they would be dancing in the streets to see any improvement.  My fear is that our community creates various “boogeymen” that we can blame for our lack of progress.  Now that ITAR starting to fade away, we’ll need a new reason why we haven’t made progress.

      • Michael Reynolds says:
        0
        0

        Not, “Now that ITAR starting to fade away”, but, “Once ITAR fades away”. This bill hasn’t been passed yet, let alone when and if it does the time necessary to see whether any progress is made.

    • Michael Mahar says:
      0
      0

       I certainly hope this is good news.  The company I work for decided to stop selling one of our products because it might have qualified under ITAR.  The penalties are so grave for violation and the cost for compliance are so high, that management deemed it not worth the effort.  We had to leave our current customers high and dry and scrambling for alternatives.  The major customers for this product were a NASA lab and JPL.  So, in some sense, the government shot itself in the foot.

      The only way to know that you might be selling an ITAR listed technology is to go look at the list published by the Government and then then try to see if what you are doing fits into any of the categories. If you guess wrong, you can go to jail.  Of course, you only look at the list if you think there is a chance that what you are doing could be there.  If it never occurs to you that you might be making an armament, why would you look?  An analogy is if the only way to find out if your had been summoned to jury duty would be to go down to the court house and look at a posting on the bulletin board.

  2. Charles Chapman says:
    0
    0

    Can we please take the blinders down from the observation widows in the O&C Building at KSC?  Do we really think the terrorists are going to build an Orion capsule and attack us with it?