Twin Failures Draw Attention To Regulator's Limited Resources

摘要

The low-profile approach that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's commercial space office had taken to two launch accidents in less than a week has won praise from industry, but some worry the concurrent investigations may be putting a strain on the small office. The FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) licensed the Oct. 28 launch of an Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket that failed seconds after liftoff from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia. AST also issued an experimental permit to Scaled Composites for test flights of SpaceShipTwo, which crashed Oct. 31 near Mojave, California, killing one of the vehicle's two pilots and injuring the other.