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Virgin Galactic’s space dream still needs FAA approval

What’s more, the FAA has not laid out safety rules like those for
airlines and their planes, and there are no plans to do so until at
least October 2015.

"We have to have an operator's licence to take people into space, and
it's obviously something that we need to deal with," says Stephen
Attenborough, the company's commercial director.

Known as a Reusable Launch Vehicle Mission Licence, this little
document is the final piece of the commercial space travel puzzle that
Virgin Galactic began assembling in 2004.  

Without it, only test-flight personnel like former astronauts and
military pilots can fly aboard SpaceShipTwo, the most recent evolution
of the company's supersonic craft.

"It's one of our remaining major milestones. We will be the first, I
hope, commercial operator to receive one of these licences for human
space flight," Attenborough says.

Even the company's billionaire owner, Sir Richard Branson, who has
said publicly that he and his two adult children will be passengers on
the first public flight, cannot legally fly in SpaceShipTwo until the
licence is obtained.

Virgin Galactic submitted an application to the FAA's Office of
Commercial Space Transportation in late August 2013, says Attenborough.

The office, which goes by the acronym AST, has six months to review
the application, meaning an approval may come as early as February.

Industry experts, however, say that may be an overly optimistic projection.

"An application will inevitably be approved, but it definitely
remains uncertain exactly when it will happen," says Dirk Gibson, an
associate professor of communication at the University of New Mexico and
author of multiple books on space tourism.

"This is extremely dangerous and unchartered territory. It's space travel. AST has to be very prudent," he says.

"They don't want to endanger the space-farers or the public, and they
can't let the industry get started and then have a Titanic-like
scenario that puts an end to it all in the eyes of the public."

The AST decision will set a historical precedent for the handful of
other companies – such as XCOR Aerospace, SpaceX and Blue Origin – that
are also developing their own manned space vehicles, Gibson says.

"I would be very surprised if anyone flies this year. At earliest, we are probably talking about sometime later in 2015."

Legislation directly addressing commercial spaceflights was first
tabled in 2004, the same year AST's mandate was expanded to include
privately financed manned missions.

Shortly after, the U.S. Congress ordered AST to suspend the usual
safety requirements for companies building spaceships until 2012 to help
the industry get started.

The move was part of an effort to nurture the nascent industry and
limit regulatory interference, says Frans von der Dunk, a professor of
space law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The suspension was subsequently extended to October 2015, when it
became clear that progress in private space travel was proving more
difficult than originally assumed.

But this means that if Virgin Galactic does indeed get their
commercial operator’s licence this year, the flights could take place
without the kind of safety rules that go into more conventional forms of
air travel.  

"When the rules were being written back in 2004, the FAA presumed
there would be thousands of manned test flights already occurring by
2012 from which they could draw data and author regulations that protect
the public and the people going into space," says von der Dunk.

To date, Virgin Galactic has successfully completed only three
rocket-powered test flights with a single pilot aboard SpaceShipTwo.
During the most recent flight on Jan. 10, the spacecraft reached 21,640
metres (70,997 feet) and fired its rockets for 20 seconds.

Paying customers, however, will fly at a maximum altitude of 110,000 m
(360892 ft) and the rockets will need to fire for one minute before a
parabolic free fall back to Earth.

"Now the FAA has found itself in a nearly impossible situation: they
have a mandate to protect the public, but also a duty to promote the
growth of the industry," says von der Dunk.

"They need to inform people about the risks they are taking, but how on Earth can you do that without more data?"

Gibson is quick to point out that it is not improbable that AST will
grant Virgin Galactic an operator's licence even before it is required
to have its spacecrafts approved for safety under federal standards; or
before there is more data to judge how safe commercial space travel
truly is.

"It really comes down to two words: informed consent. AST will likely
say to a company like Virgin Galactic, 'if you let people know to the
best of your current knowledge what the risks are, then it is their
decision to make and that's fine with us'," he says.

"That will go on until there is some sort of catastrophic accident
— and there will undoubtedly be an accident — and then the regulators
will update what information companies must provide to the public before
takeoff."

The FAA classifies 18 as the age at which a person can reasonably be expected to give informed consent.

So would-be space travellers like 11-year-old like Zainab Azim from Milton, Ont., who recently received a ticket from her father as a gift, will have to wait to float weightlessly aboard SpaceShipTwo.

Attenborough says Virgin Galactic is "very confident the approval
will come within the next few months" at the latest, but admits that a
"degree of prudence and conservatism" is required in the process due to
the inherent dangers of space travel.

"We have been working very closely with the FAA through each stage of
the development process, and it was late in that process that we were
able to put in the licence application," he says.

"If that licence doesn't come when we anticipate, then we will not be
able to fly. Of course, if we fail to get the licence, there will be a
reason and we will address that reason and keep moving forward."

In an email statement to CBC News, the FAA declined to comment on the
specifics of the application but wrote that "a decision will be made
when the review process is complete."