Marcia Smith at SpacepolicyOnline.com has an excellent and thorough write-up of what happened to the Senate’s Space Frontier Act, which would have reformed NOAA’s remote sensing licensing. The Act passed the Senate last Thursday. It did not make it through the House, facing objections from Congressman DeFazio, the likely next chair of the House’s Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee, which oversees aviation and other terrestrial modes of transportation. The House Science Committee oversees space travel, but T&I has long asserted joint jurisdiction with Science for “passenger” travel. (Space, of course, doesn’t have that yet. Instead, it has space flight participants rather than passengers).
As Ms. Smith explains:
Some view DeFazio’s effort to derail the bill as an indication that he plans to try to assert more authority over commercial space launch issues in the new Congress. The T&I committee has held few hearings on these issues over the years, but its Aviation Subcommittee did have one this summer addressing the specific topic of commercial space launches and the NAS.
However, legislation on commercial space launch issues like the American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act, H.R. 2809, was not jointly referred to both committees, illustrating that the House Parliamentarian considered House SS&T to be the committee of jurisdiction.
Whatever DeFazio’s effort means in terms of jurisdictional fights in the new Congress, he was successful in killing the Space Frontier Act. It passed the Senate on Thursday, but with the 115th Congress drawing to a close, time likely has run out for further negotiations. Support for the bill by the Republican and Democratic leadership of the House SS&T Committee was tepid yesterday, but Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) did call for its passage. Smith is retiring. Johnson is expected to chair the committee next year.
Whether commercial space issues will be a top priority for her remains to be seen. In her floor statement yesterday, she said one reason she was supporting the bill despite disappointment in the process that brought it to the floor was her desire to see the commercial space industry “flourish.”
The Space Frontier Act itself would have reformed NOAA’s timelines for responding to applicants for a remote sensing license, and would have required NOAA to reduce its regulation of small remote sensing systems, much like NOAA proposed to do in its NPRM. SpacePolicyOnline has Congressman DeFazio’s letter. In it he expresses safety concerns for the national air space.