Space is becoming more commercialized. Can regulations keep up?

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Space is becoming more commercialized. Can regulations keep up?
For now, going to space is largely “fly at your own risk”

By ELIZABETH HLAVINKA
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 21, 2024 5:30AM (EST)


(Salon) For hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can purchase tickets to board an aircraft and blast to the limits of the Earth’s atmosphere. While billionaires like Jeff Bezos have already experienced this view from above with his enterprise, Blue Origin, other companies promise to launch their first customers into space by the end of this year. They hope to offer memorial services, off-planet DNA storage and even wedding ceremonies.

While commercial space travel currently carries an expensive price tag, these costs are falling and getting off planet is becoming more accessible all the time. But questions remain about the rules governing space flights and protecting passengers, and some argue the cart is being put before the horse unless a consensus is reached before commercial space flight truly takes off as an industry.

As the commercial sector has emerged, there has been growing recognition that the federal government has to catch up with it, said John Logsdon, a professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University who has been studying space policy for 60 years.

As it stands, participant safety on commercial space flights is like “the Wild West,” Logsdon told Salon in a phone interview, noting that federal agencies are currently tied up in bureaucratic conflicts to determine which agency will be responsible for rulemaking. .....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/02/21/space-is-becoming-more-commercialized-can-regulations-keep-up/