Regulating the Space Frontier

摘要

When the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) assumed responsibility for licensing the commercial space transportation industry in 1995, the telecom boom was the big driver of its regulatory activities, as U.S. companies took steps to boost their share of the global market for launching communications satellites. Since then, however, that business has largely become an overseas affair: Of the 13 FAA-licensed launches conducted over the last 18 months, seven involved communications satellites; six of those were carried out by Sea Launch, which operates from an oceangoing platform using a Russian-Ukrainian rocket.