{"id":2596,"date":"2020-02-14T10:37:53","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T15:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/groundbasedspacematters.com\/?p=2596"},"modified":"2020-02-14T10:38:27","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T15:38:27","slug":"we-launch-from-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/groundbasedspacematters.com\/index.php\/2020\/02\/14\/we-launch-from-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"We Launch from Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had occasion recently to read NASA&#8217;s Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) with its partners for the International Space Station.\u00a0 Article 16 speaks of launch vehicles returning to Earth, as if they&#8217;re launching to Earth.\u00a0 Not that there&#8217;s anything wrong with that, but the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of my students saw this, too.\u00a0 Would it break them for commercial space law?\u00a0 Would this glimpse of the Other mess up these two students for the FAA portion of the exam?\u00a0 Would they try to say that the FAA licensed launches <em>to<\/em> Earth?\u00a0 I sure hoped not, but it looked like another of those circumstances where&#8211;like the English and the Americans&#8211;the FAA and NASA might be separated by a common language.<\/p>\n<p>I worried because if you are a commercial launch operator (that is, you are a U.S. entity who is not the U.S. government and you are launching a rocket), you launch from Earth, not from space.\u00a0 The law says so.\u00a0 Specifically,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/51\/50902\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> 51 USC 50902<\/a>, which contains the definitions for the law that applies to how the FAA regulates commercial launch and reentry, says that launch means &#8220;<span class=\"chapeau\">to place or try to place a launch vehicle or reentry vehicle and any payload or human being from Earth<\/span>&#8221; in a suborbital trajectory or otherwise in space.\u00a0 Note that it says &#8220;from Earth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It is a rule of statutory interpretation that we must read all the words in a law Congress has passed.\u00a0 We can&#8217;t pretend they&#8217;re not there.\u00a0 So, when Congress says &#8220;from Earth,&#8221; Congress means &#8220;from Earth.&#8221;\u00a0 If you are a commercial operator returning to Earth, you are reentering, not launching.<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s the problem?\u00a0 This is the problem: not everyone knows that different laws, different agreements, might define things differently.\u00a0 Communications break down. People spend money unnecessarily or think that a law doesn&#8217;t apply.\u00a0 Or, worse, the government thinks a law applies when it doesn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>Persons gleaning from the IGA that they could launch <em>to<\/em> Earth might think they needed an FAA launch license.\u00a0 At one point, the Department of Transportation itself tried to say as much.\u00a0 (Before the space transportation regulatory office moved to the FAA, it was located in the Department of Transportation (DOT) as the Office of Commercial Space Transportation.)<\/p>\n<p>When Congress first passed what was then called the Commercial Space Launch Act in 1984 (CSLA), long before it became 51 USC ch. 509, the CSLA did not define launch as taking place &#8220;from Earth.&#8221;\u00a0 DOT took this as permission to try to license a reentry from orbit, under the theory that the vehicle was &#8220;launching&#8221; to Earth.\u00a0 The Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Space admonished DOT for its attempt to exceed its jurisdiction&#8211;in other words, for trying to exercise more authority than Congress had granted it.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.govinfo.gov\/content\/pkg\/FR-1999-04-21\/pdf\/99-9640.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span class=\"\">Commercial Space Transportation <\/span>Reusable Launch Vehicle and Reentry Licensing Regulations, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking<\/a>, 64 Fed. Reg. 19626, 19628 (Apr. 21, 1999).\u00a0 Congress then clarified the definition of launch by making it clear that launches take place from Earth rather than from orbit.\u00a0 Also, Congress revised its law to grant the FAA authority over reentry, which 51 USC 50902 defines to mean &#8220;to return or attempt to return, purposefully, a reentry vehicle and its payload or human beings, if any, from Earth orbit or from outer space to Earth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I think it was Winston Churchill who said that Great Britain and the United States were two people separated by a common language.\u00a0 (He was witty, Churchill was).\u00a0 The same concern appears to apply here.\u00a0 Yes, NASA and the FAA use the same words a lot of the time; but, no, they don&#8217;t always mean the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>I only have two students who&#8217;ve seen the IGA.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know what to do about them, but I won&#8217;t ask the rest of them to read it.\u00a0\u00a0 It&#8217;s not on the syllabus.\u00a0 I will keep them safe.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had occasion recently to read NASA&#8217;s Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) with its partners for the International Space Station.\u00a0 Article 16&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - 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