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Budget

FAA Commercial Space Launch Office Deep Budget Cut Possible

By Marc Boucher
NASA Watch
June 19, 2013
Filed under

House Appropriators Want Deep Cut to FAA Commercial Space Launch Office, Space Policy Online
“The House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) will meet tomorrow to markup the draft FY2014 Transportation-HUD (T-HUD) appropriations bill. As drafted, the bill would reduce AST from its requested level of $16.01 million to $14.16 million.”
“Mike Gold, Director of D.C. Operations & Business Growth for Bigelow Aerospace, said “These cuts are ill-advised to say the least. At a time when we’re depending so heavily on commercial space transportation to do this to the FAA-AST will have serious consequences, causing delays throughout the industry and even potentially putting lives in danger. It’s certainly my hope that all of the AST’s funding can be restored.”

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3 responses to “FAA Commercial Space Launch Office Deep Budget Cut Possible”

  1. Steve Whitfield says:
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    It seems to me that this situation is no different than a few hundred others. Looked at from their own presepective, anybody saddled with this kind of cut is going to be upset. However, the sequestration is an across-the-board adjustment that is going to affect almost everything. People, companies and agencies are all in the same boat — you can cut spending or you can borrow more money and pay more taxes, or the government can print more money and the devalued dollar will make things even worse. But you can only do one, and everybody has to do the same. The government has decided.

    Specific to AST, it seems to me that we’ve been waiting a long time for certain updated policies and regulations from them pertaining to “commercial” space flight activities (vehicles and launch sites), which will also presumably be needed for any new international space agreements involving “commercial” service providers as well. Are they still moving too slow or have I missed the announcements?

    • ProfSWhiplash says:
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      “…waiting a long time for certain updated policies and regulations from them … Are they still moving too slow or have I missed the announcements?”

      Weeeelllll… Welcome to the wonderfully-whacky-wacky-world of the regulatory side of government — the U.S. FEDERAL Government!! This is not like the NASA or Air Force launch ranges (pertaining to updating their own space-related policies & requirements)… nor in fact to any military service with its own pol’s & req’s. Those practices by Non-Regulatory agencies only seem to take a long time, but they’re actually grease-lightning in comparison.

      It is an obscenely slow and difficult process for an actual Federal Regulations to get developed, revised, reviewed & coordinated (by peer/ management/ legal/ more management/ standardization/ etc.), then go through the Federal Register, with public noticies for JohnnyQ LLC’s own turn to review and give “feedback” (and the involved Fed agency has to look at all of them and address). Then, they have to go through ANOTHER cycle of revise/review (by the same fun parties), and …. YEARS GO BY! This is the Way it is, by DELIBERATE DESIGN (and I am NOT being sarcastic!!).

      These rules are treated by the courts as being as legally binding as statutory law! It’s meant this way to make sure what ends up on the Books, belong on the Books!! (Yes, we can point at examples of what we feel are stupid or wrong, but imagine what we’d have without this slow & methodical process!!)

      I’m certain that AST is working on those “updates” you’ve mentioned, but being so small an office (teeny-tiny, compared to its brethren offices in the FAA) they’ve gotta be multi-tasking this activity with all the other Congressionally(!)-mandated actions: facilitate the industry, ensure public safety with timely evaluating, licensing and safety inspecting.
      – And do this all for an ever increasing number of launch operators and launches (and more on the horizon).
      – And do it with a budget that hadn’t really changed much in years (from what I read, they were asking for a slight increase to help with this bigger load).
      – And so now, they’ve gotta do all that, while seeing themselves targeted for about a 12% budget cut?!?! Sheeeeesh!!!

  2. dogstar29 says:
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    Shifting oversight of commercial launches from DOD (Eastern Test Range) to FAA is vital if the US commercial launch industry, including human commercial launch, is to be cost-competitive with launch sites in other countries. Sequestration is not a rational process, it was a political expedient that both parties felt would be so damaging that it would never be implemented. Sometimes the best long-term strategy is not to cut taxes when they fund vital programs.