Commercial Space Transportation

The commercial space tourism started at April 28, 2001, the first space tourist American business man Dennis Tito successfully completed his first trip to the space, he payed his own way to the international space station of a Russian spacecraft. The estimated amount of money he spent for this trip was almost about 20million dollars.(Wall, 2011)  Dennis could be consider as the pioneer of the commercial space travel,  now a day there are several companies that are currently operating commercial space tourism business. Only a few of them are currently operating, most of they are in testing and concept stage. There six company that are currently very close from launching and begin their final testing stage which include, SpaceX, Orbital Science, Blue Origin, Bigelow Aerospace, Space dev and Virgin Galactic (Fox, 2010)  The virgin Galactic claim themselves  as the first commercial space travel company, however their recent test flight was ended in a disastrous result. The recent news states that the space X companies had successfully completed their testing flight and landed successfully their falcon 9 aircraft.

According to my research, NASA and FAA will be working together to share responsibility to regulate the commercial spaceflight. In the future FAA will be issuing the license to companies which can provide safety standard for their flight launch. And NASA will be responsible for overseeing and the safety of the operation. (Chow, 2012)  According to FAA, they have an office of commercial space transportation, their responsibility include the licensing launches, permitting  launches, and licensing reentries, safety approval of activities. (FAA, 2015). FAA also published Chapter III, Parts 400 to 460, of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The regulations implement statutory requirements to help to overseeing the safety of operation.

Currently I’m still seeing commercial space travel as a concept, and it is still in the testing process. I can see it may succeed in the future but in turn of opening into general public, I still think it is a leisure experience for billionaires and only very small percentage of general public will be able to afford it. It is definitely different from commercial airlines industry, since airlines industry is providing a transportation service, which is almost mandatory for the public to get around places for different kinds of reasons. However for space travel, it is mainly of leisure and experiences, it is not necessary for general public to travel to the space.

The qualification should be controlled by FAA, which include different type of licensing. Which should be operating under 14 CFR Chapter III (FAA/AST Regulations. For the management side, the operation must be obtaining different type of licenses and approval FAA, which include experimental and launching license, and also safety approval. (FAA, 2015) For pilots, the FAA regulation 14 CFR 406.5 gives detailed explanation of operators the crews must complete all related training, the pilot must carry an FAA pilot certificate with an instrument rating, Receive vehicle and mission-specific training for each phase of flight,  and be Informed with all the risk involved with the operation and competed all emergency situation training. (FAA, 2015) 

Chow, D. (2012, June 18 ). NASA & FAA Set Rules for Private Space Flights. Retrieved from http://www.space.com/16183-commercial-human-spaceflight-nasa-faa-regulations.html

Fox, S. (2010, June 24). 6 Private Companies That Could Launch Humans Into Space. Retrieved from http://www.space.com/8541-6-private-companies-launch-humans-space.html

Licenses & Permits: Commercial Space Transportation. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/licenses_permits/media/Part_400_compilation.pdf

Office of Commercial Space Transportation. (2010, September 03). Retrieved from http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/regulations/

Wall, M. (2011, April 27). First Space Tourist Retrieved from http://www.space.com/11492-space-tourism-pioneer-dennis-tito.html