GAO Urges Deeper FAA Insight into Aerial and Suborbital Vehicles
FAA Should Examine How to Appropriately Regulate Space Support Vehicles, GAO
“Company officials GAO interviewed identified potential uses for “space support vehicles”- which include a variety of aircraft from high-performance jets to balloons and the aircraft portion of a hybrid launch systems (a vehicle that contains elements of both an aircraft and a rocket-powered launch vehicle) – but the size of the market for these uses is unclear. Company officials said they plan to use space support vehicles to train spaceflight participants and to conduct research in reduced gravity environments. For example, some company officials said they would like to use high-performance jets to train future spaceflight participants by exposing them to physiological and psychological effects encountered in spaceflight. Other company officials said they would like to use space support vehicles to research how objects or people react in reduced gravity environments. It is difficult to know the size of the market for spaceflight training and research as GAO found no studies on these markets. However, stakeholders said they expect interest in research to increase.”
My experience with the FAA office of spaceflight suggests that they are fully aware of space-related aviation activities, and making a rational decision to limit regulation of a new industry to those areas necessary to protect the public so as not to create roadblocks that aren’t needed.
The real issue here seems to be that some companies want to charge passengers for rides in aircraft currently certified under an experimental type certificate, which currently isn’t allowed as it is considered commercial service.
This is a real issue, but it is NOT the responsibility of the FAA spaceflight office. Rather it is a problem with the aircraft certification process itself, which is indeed very time-consuming and expensive. A streamlined process for evaluating and certifying commercial aircraft would require significant funds to implement and support, both to apply new technology and to reduce user fees. Spare taxpayer dollars are not in evidence, but maybe this could be proposed as an area for infrastructure spending.
“While officials from two companies GAO interviewed have received standard aircraft certification for their space support vehicle, others said the standard certification process is lengthy and not designed for the type of vehicles they would like to use, such as unique, single-production aircraft or retired military jets. In addition, FAA regulations do not allow companies to receive compensation for carrying people or property on an aircraft operating under an experimental certificate. As a result, some of the companies we interviewed have training operations in other countries where they can receive payment for the activity.”
Now that you mention it, these companies are operating in an environment which is more like pre-FAA aviation in the 1920s. The vehicles are either one-of-a-kind or limited productions. FAA regulations aren’t really set up for that sort of thing. I’m not even sure if it’s possible to get certification without half a dozen vehicles to test.
So where do we go from here? Has the standard certification process been significantly simplified in the past half century, i.e. since the advent of computational fluid dynamics, computational stress and fatigue analysis, 3-D composites, etc? At least we now have the “light sport aircraft” category. Maybe we need “light sport spacecraft” as well? I know of a case where one simple component that would obviously improve safety and reduce cost was not incorporated because the cost of certifying the change would have been at least $1M and the manufacturer could not afford it.
The same sort of thing happens with spacecraft hardware: Sometimes you could redesign a part and make it 20% lighter, but then it would be a new design (low TRL) and you’d be required to add 30% to the estimated mass, as margin in case the new design work didn’t pan out.
But for the FAA regulations, aren’t “light sport” aircraft specifically private rather than commercial aircraft? If it’s a hobby vehicle, that regulatory niche wouldn’t fit the current need.
As far as where to go, this is inherently a political process. I’d personally favor a category of commercial certification which was all about the licenses between the service provider and the customer. That is, require the customer be informed about the risks involved and that they accept them. Then have the FAA look over the contracts to make sure that information is honestly and accurately communicated. But I’m not sure how easy or difficult passing the appropriate legislation would be. At the moment, I’m not sure about much of anything regarding federal legislature.