Because of a legislation that forbids federal regulation of commercial space ventures, the answer is currently "no."

Because of this, the public and those who decide to travel to space might not have enough knowledge to evaluate the safety of commercial spaceflight. It's time for the regulatory moratorium to end so that the FAA can lead the creation of safety standards.

Since 2004, the majority of participant safety rules have been prohibited by federal law, leaving almost all safety-related decisions, equipment, and standards for commercial spaceflight participants, such as amateur astronauts, up to the discretion of the service provider. As a result, businesses decide for themselves what safety requirements are acceptable and choose to implement them. These include fundamental, important safety features such as when passengers should wear pressurized suits in the event of an oxygen shortage, when they should be strapped into the car's interior, and their risk tolerance for potential fatalities or major injuries.

Congress enacted the ban and has kept it in place to this day for a number of reasons. In order to guarantee that any regulations that were eventually released would inevitably "take into consideration the evolving standards of the commercial space flight industry," lawmakers, the commercial space industry, and other stakeholders felt that a "learning period" was required. In other words, there was not enough data, information, testing, or experience to create adequate safety regulations because the business was still relatively young and there were still few commercial spaceflights.

Another issue is that it would be impractical to enforce a single set of regulations with wide-ranging application because many companies have created and developed distinct kinds of vehicles, systems, and equipment to travel into space. Since even the most fundamental designs of the present generation of commercial space spacecraft differ greatly, this has undoubtedly been the reality.

For instance, Virgin Galactic uses a fuselage-style crew vehicle instead of a capsule, and SpaceX and Blue Origin use distinct kinds of crew capsules. Naturally, safety regulations tailored to each vehicle's design would be necessary.

Memento Mori Moratorium

The federal regulation moratorium will end on October 1, 2023. Congress requested that RAND evaluate the progress of industry-led voluntary safety standard creation, working with private standards development groups and the FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee. Additionally, RAND was asked to determine if commercial spaceflight is prepared for governmental regulation.

Our conclusions were influenced by several important findings, one of which is that there is currently insufficient data and information to determine the current condition of participant safety.

Chance by Going Out into Space

This lack of openness is caused by three things

  • First, businesses that provide commercial spaceflight services are exempt from disclosing safety information and data, including mishaps or anomalies that might point to danger. Furthermore, businesses are hesitant to freely release this data since it can reveal confidential information that, if made public, could damage a company's brand or permit unfair appropriation of its intellectual property by other parties. The FAA should collaborate with the spaceflight industry to create a database of lessons learned from commercial space mishap investigations and encourage industry members to voluntarily submit lessons learned, according to a recommendation made by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) following the 2014 crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo.

  • Second, existing laws require businesses to notify anyone who pay to travel to space in their vehicles of their "informed consent." The informed consent rule is based on the idea that people may determine for themselves if they are ready to accept the risks if businesses inform potential spaceflight participants about the dangers and risks involved. These notifications aren't accessible to the general public, though.

  • Third, industry and interested parties engage in public and semi-public forums to create industry-wide safety standards that are voluntary, although agreement has proven difficult to achieve. Some participants are motivated to slow the development of safety standards because they fear they may be at a competitive disadvantage due to the wide range of companies and stakeholders participating and the numerous interests at stake. Because of this, there aren't many documented safety guidelines that deal with participant safety.

It is impossible to independently evaluate and analyze whether the public, industry, spaceflight participants, and policymakers have enough information to make rational decisions on the safety of commercial spaceflight in light of these issues.

Read Also: The Benefits Of Space Exploration

Making Room for Rulemaking

The FAA would be able to start informal, publicly visible rulemaking activities if the moratorium were to end. The FAA, industry, standards-development organizations, and other interested parties could collaborate as part of these activities to decide whether more voluntary safety standards should be developed or whether mandatory regulations should be taken into consideration.

Our research generally supports the consideration of legislation that would promote transparency with regard to the identification, collection, reporting, and analysis of important safety data and information, however we are not currently proposing any particular forms of regulations. A catastrophic incident may be more likely as a result of gaps or blind spots caused by the current practice of nondisclosure and data and information silos.

The sustainability and expansion of the commercial spaceflight sector may be improved by a framework that would allow the FAA, industry, and stakeholders to work together more closely to create safety standards while simultaneously offering adequate safeguards for confidential company data.