Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: would a private shuttle be licenced
Message-ID: <1989Apr17.152700.2379@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Apr14.212447.4524@utzoo.uucp> <231@umigw.MIAMI.EDU>
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 89 15:27:00 GMT

In article <231@umigw.MIAMI.EDU> steve@umigw.miami.edu (steve emmerson) writes:
>>I'd guess that certification as an experimental vehicle should not be
>>a problem.
>
>Hmmm.   How confident are you in your guess.
>I suspect that a private enterprise shuttle would not be licenced 
>because the common consent necessary to by-pass licencensing would 
>only be engendered for a federal project.

I never said it could  bypass the licensing.  The shuttle got away with
that mostly because it was clearly a government project; if it had been
private, several agencies would have been vying for the right to regulate
and license it.  I don't know who would have won, but I would guess the FAA.
In which case, no problem:  getting an experimental aircraft okayed is not
a big deal.

(Nowadays, it would be not the FAA but the Office of Commercial Space
Transportation in the Commerce Dept.  They're said to be okay.)

>Assuming it wouldn't be licensed, I wonder what a private, manned 
>program would look like.  Indeed, I wonder if one would even exist ...

Much would depend on who was building it.  If it was a standard US aerospace
company, government approval would be a practical necessity:  those people
depend too much on the government to risk offending it.  If the company came
out of left field, on the other hand, the private shuttle might simply have
a Panamanian flag on it instead of a US one.
-- 
Welcome to Mars!  Your         |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
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