A half century of regulating satellites made government regulations bulky and nearly impossible for entrepreneurs. Kwast analogizes the current regulatory environment to needing to submit an itinerary for every item you plan to bring on a flight from D.C. to Los Angeles – one year before the flight.
"You have to detail everything in your suitcase – each item's material, manufacturer, weight and more – the government takes a year to go through it and then tells you what you can and can't take," Kwast said. "And, if you have to update your request, then you have to start all over."
He continued, "When you finally get approval you have to spend your entire life savings for the airplane, which, when you land, you have to burn to the ground."
Officials want to evolve regulatory methods but must placate taxpayers that discarded rockets will not begin falling on suburban rooftops.
"You need technological innovations to reassure Congress that this is safe and effective, as the FAA cannot do this unilaterally," Kwast said. "Low-cost access to space is the first domino to making this possible."
SpaceX has also criticized the regulatory process, with President Gwynne Shotwell noting the process takes six months "and then you re-apply at 90 days, 30 days, and then 15 days to file a flight plan."
"If we want to achieve rapid progress in space, the U.S. government must remove bureaucratic practices that run counter to innovation and speed," Shotwell said.
weta_10 on November 11st, 2017 at 01:02 UTC »
Please be another space race. Please be another space race!
moon-worshiper on November 10th, 2017 at 23:13 UTC »
What the Air Force general is trying to say is the Chinese are advancing five times faster than the US, trying to catch up to the US, during the equivalent time span.
The Chinese have a functional orbital Crew Capsule, their first space stations, and a lander on the Moon (rover didn't run long enough to qualify as functional). This is NASA, the US, around 1965, so the Chinese still have a lot of catching up to do. They have stated the manned Moon landing is 2036, and one thing about the Chinese, they tend to keep their schedules. They are basically approaching the ISS stage with their next space station and a Hubble-equivalent space telescope. They have the advantage of a society that rapidly embraces science and technology, a leadership that is all scientists and engineers, with an educational system that has no resistance against absorption of science discoveries and almost immediate implementation. They also had the advantage of basically buying up the entire Soviet Union space program for bargain basement prices.
ioncloud9 on November 10th, 2017 at 21:01 UTC »
They might be "advancing faster" but its still catch-up from the last 50 years, and our commercial space is leading the technology charge here.