
FAA Considers Relaxing Licensing Requirements for Rockets - ga-vu
https://www.regulations.gov/docketBrowser?rpp=50&so=DESC&sb=postedDate&po=0&dct=PS&D=FAA-2019-0229
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dahart
It took me a minute to find the actual full proposal text:
[https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=FAA-2019-0229-0001](https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=FAA-2019-0229-0001)

The link here is to the comments, and definitely take a minute to read some
submitted comments from the space industry, congress, airlines & observers.
They are enlightening. Having read about a dozen extremely well thought out
letters so far, I’ve seen nothing but very serious concerns with the proposal.

Blue Origin, for example, created a diagram of the new licensing process, and
detailed why it’s not likely to result in the monetary savings that the FAA is
claiming.

[https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=FAA-2...](https://www.regulations.gov/contentStreamer?documentId=FAA-2019-0229-0096&attachmentNumber=1&contentType=pdf)

Many people commenting that the proposal isn’t adequately addressing the FAA’s
mandate to public safety. To me it seems like a curious move to deregulate in
the wake of the Boeing Max crashes that don’t look great for the FAA... but I
don’t know how the FAA is structured, is it fair to draw any lines between
rockets and airline regulation, or is rocket licensing a completely separate
group of people?

~~~
briandear
> that don’t look great for the FAA...

I am not sure I understand. The crashes where in Indonesia and Ethiopia and
those planes weren’t under the jurisdiction of the FAA: presumably they were
inspected by the relevant aviation authorities in those countries. There
weren’t any crashes in the US, so how does that make the FAA look bad? The US
commercial aviation safety rate is unsurpassed and exceptionally good. I’d say
the FAA has a pretty good track record. Just looking at the operational
history of Indonesian airlines — it’s clear that their regulatory body has a
serious problem. But the FAA? The American safety record is compelling.

~~~
dahart
Boeing is an American company and the FAA declared the Boeing Max safe to fly
in US airspace, and didn't require the re-certification it should have had
after major structural changes to the 737 design. What many people learned
after the crashes is that the FAA is essentially letting Boeing certify their
own airplanes, in an effort to be pro-business and soft on regulation. We are
only lucky a crash didn't happen in US airspace, those crashes do count
against the American safety record.

> Just looking at the operational history of Indonesian airlines — it’s clear
> that their regulatory body has a serious problem

"Problems" there, or not, it seems like a bad idea to try and blame the
Indonesian airlines for a known design flaw in a Boeing airplane that the
Boeing company tried to hide and cover with yet another known design flaw, the
sum of which are known to have been the cause of both crashes. Boeing tried
this tactic of blaming others, and it hasn't worked out well for them.

Edit: I was having deja-vu and realized I've answered this very same question
of you before.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837481)
What is your reason for continuing to deny the role of the FAA in the 737 Max
issue, and continuing to suggest that the crashes are the fault of the foreign
operators that Boeing hid information from?

~~~
sokoloff
> Boeing is an American company and the FAA declared the Boeing Max safe to
> fly in US airspace, and didn't require the re-certification it should have
> had after major structural changes to the 737 design.

There's a pretty strong argument to be made that the 737-600 (first of the
NextGen) was a far greater departure structurally from the 737 type
certificate than the 737-Max was from the immediately preceding 737 aircraft.
The Nextgen aircraft have a wingspan 16 feet wider, a wing area of 125% of the
Classic 737, and a length as much as 44 feet longer (even slightly longer on
the -Max).

Certification of derivative aircraft on a common type certificate is extremely
common and generally has proven to be safe over the years. This specific
certification has serious deficiencies, but that doesn't mean the practice in
general is wrong (IMO).

In fact, the costs of certification from scratch are so high that it in some
cases holds back development advances (because the optimization questions now
include regulatory optimizations like "what can we certify under the old type
certificate?" in addition to the actual physical engineering concerns.

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VLM
After reading the documents this seems to apply to industrial scale rockets,
space-X scale launchers; not hobby rocketry or amateur rocketry.

It would be interesting to see a rewrite of hobby/amateur rocketry laws but
this isn't it.

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SketchySeaBeast
Is that really the thing keep people from making their own rockets? Red tape?

> This action would also enable flexible timeframes, remove unnecessary ground
> safety regulations, redefine when launch begins to allow specified pre-
> flight operations prior to license approval, and allow applicants to seek a
> license to launch from multiple sites.

I feel as though we do want careful and deliberate launches. After all, this
IS rocket science.

> remove unnecessary ground safety regulations

Hmm.

~~~
aidenn0
There is a cost-benefit trade-off for any regulation. If the non-regulatory
costs of rocket launches are decreasing significantly, then it is worth
revisiting the regulatory costs; what makes sense for 5-6 launches per year
might not make sense for 50 launches per year.

~~~
bkor
Regulation and regulation costs are different things. Further, comparing costs
incurred for business vs regulation costs seems odd. Regulation should be
there for a reason. Just skimping on that because some other cost changed
seems arbitrary. Further, I fail to see why you cannot optimize on the
regulation cost; you can do this without changing the regulations.

Another way of looking at costs: eased regulations vs long time investigations
and associated costs when something goes wrong due to eased regulations.

~~~
aidenn0
I don't know what the FAA regulations are, but here's an example of how a
regulation can incur unnecessary costs:

If the regulation requires hand-inspecting part X and someone invents a
machine to inspect part X, you are now incurring costs solely due to
regulation.

The above is somewhat orthogonal to my main point. If you inspect something 10
times, then it is marginally safer than if you inspect something 9 times, and
so on and so forth. Everything can be made more expensive and safer or less
expensive and less safe. If there are benefits of increased spaceflight that
exceed the downsides of the reduced safety, _and_ lowering the costs will
encourage such increased spaceflight then it makes sense from a policy point
of view to reduce the safety.

This is in addition to the point that regulatory compliance tend to increase
costs by more than the amount needed to increase the safety (my example of
hand-inspecting a part that could be machine inspected is one example; paying
someone to check up that the regulations are actually being followed is
another).

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gilrain
If there's one thing I've been thinking about the FAA lately, it's that
they're regulating TOO much. /s

