The FAA’s reauthorization bill, H.R. 302, passed the House last week and is in front of the Senate for consideration now. The bulk of it, of course, applies to aviation matters, but it also addresses space issues.
ATO coordination. If the bill passes the Senate section 520 will have some interesting effects, most notably in the emphasis it places on making the FAA’s Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) the primary liaison between industry and the FAA. The bill would also require ATO to make available to AST agreements between a launch licensee or permit holder and ATO, while at the same time requiring AST to coordinate with ATO.
Obstruction evaluations. Section 539 would expand the FAA’s conduct of its obstruction evaluations of structures potentially interfering with air commerce to include structures that might interfere with space navigation facilities and equipment. Additionally, the FAA would have to consider the impact of the structure’s construction or alteration on launch and reentry of launch and reentry vehicles arriving at or departing from a licensed spaceport.
Space support vehicles. The creation of a new category of aircraft would direct certain space-related aviation activities to licensed spaceports. The bill defines a space support vehicle to mean a vehicle that is a launch or reentry vehicle, or a component of a launch or reentry vehicle. This would include, for example, a White Knight, a SpaceShipTwo, or a Lynx. Under the bill, a launch or reentry operator would be able to charge compensation for a space support flight even if it were operating under an experimental certificate, which normally prohibits flying for compensation or hire. This bill appears to exclude aircraft that are not part of launch or reentry vehicles.
The operator of a launch or reentry vehicle using it in aviation flight would have to satisfy certain conditions. It would have to fly out of and return to a licensed spaceport , and the flight would have to be conducted by or for a space licensee. It would have to simulate space flight conditions in support of training crew, government astronauts, or space flight participants; the testing of space flight hardware; or research and development requiring that aircraft’s unique flight capabilities.