{"id":346,"date":"2017-03-17T14:54:14","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T18:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/groundbasedspacematters.com\/?p=346"},"modified":"2017-03-20T08:00:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-20T12:00:14","slug":"a-request-to-the-regulators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/groundbasedspacematters.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/17\/a-request-to-the-regulators\/","title":{"rendered":"A Request to the Regulators"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How we write things matters.\u00a0 How we write regulations really matters because regulations can influence design and make people spend money.\u00a0 One small but important area of regulations is the definitions.\u00a0 If you are going to regulate something, you need to define and identify what you are regulating.\u00a0 That&#8217;s all you need to do.\u00a0 After you&#8217;ve defined the object, you can impose any design requirements or operational restrictions in a different paragraph, a different section, somewhere else, just not in the definitions.<\/p>\n<p>This is a nice, clean approach that avoids legal problems, brain-breaking confusion, and just plain stalling out when it&#8217;s time to administer the regulations.\u00a0 Waivers and exemptions illustrate this point nicely.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s say someone asks you for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/cfr\/text\/14\/404.3\">waiver<\/a> from a requirement.\u00a0 If you&#8217;ve loaded the requirements into what should only be a description, how do you waive a definition?\u00a0 You don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>In order to avoid pointing fingers, I will indulge my fondness for science fiction to illustrate the concern.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s say that someone has invented a time machine.\u00a0 As a well-informed TSA (Time Stream Administration) regulator you know that sending people back in time more than a year wreaks havoc with the space-time continuum, creates alternate timelines in which the internet is not invented and you might have to live there, and sends vast waves of energy pulsing out from the sun to engulf your home planet in radiation.\u00a0 So, that&#8217;s all bad.\u00a0 You don&#8217;t want to approve a time machine that travels back more than ten months because you like margin.\u00a0 How do you go about it?<\/p>\n<p>The right way would be to define a time machine with enough precision and clarity that the time machine operators know you are talking about their machine, but not so much that machines that don&#8217;t fit the definition but still accomplish time travel are left out.\u00a0 Thus, you can say something like &#8220;a &#8216;time machine&#8217; means a machine that travels forwards or backwards in time.&#8221;\u00a0 This definition may require some tweaking, but it will do for now.\u00a0 Then, over in a different section of the regulations you can say something like &#8220;No person may operate a time machine to travel farther back in time more than ten months.&#8221;\u00a0 (I know, I know:\u00a0 what if she takes it back 8 months and then another 8 months?\u00a0 This post isn&#8217;t about that.\u00a0 But if you want to write a guest post&#8230;..?).\u00a0 This very hygienic approach avoids all sorts of problems.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, however, regulators focus on the ultimate approval, and if you do that, you might not want to give your\u00a0 approval to a time machine that will take people back to visit London in the 18th century where they&#8217;ll win the Longitude Prize years early, and then, somehow, the internet won&#8217;t get invented.\u00a0 If that is your sole focus you might be tempted to define a time machine as &#8220;a machine that travels backward in time by ten months and forward in time.&#8221;\u00a0 (Traveling to the future does not bring about the heat death of our home planet.\u00a0 Everyone knows that.)\u00a0 Please resist this temptation.\u00a0 Later when someone invents a time machine that doesn&#8217;t do all the bad things you addressed in the preamble to your notice of proposed rulemaking, you might legitimately want to waive the ten-month prohibition.\u00a0 Now you can&#8217;t, because it&#8217;s not a prohibition.\u00a0 It&#8217;s part of the description of what a time machine is.\u00a0 Also, all those other requirements and prohibitions that you put into the right place in the regulations won&#8217;t apply to time machines not meeting your definition.\u00a0 This will matter if you want to approve something that&#8217;s perfectly safe without going through a whole new rulemaking.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, my plea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How we write things matters.\u00a0 How we write regulations really matters because regulations can influence design and make people spend&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":true,"_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":[83,84],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-drafting","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ 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