FAA to Issue Draft Human Spaceflight Guidelines

The Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) plans to issue a set of draft guidelines for the safe operations of human space flights later this year.

Randy Repcheck, deputy manager of AST’s Office Regulations and Analysis Division, said that after public comments are received on the draft document, the office will issue a set of final guidelines in 2014.

The regulations are being promulgated to protect passengers and crew members flying on the commercial space systems expected to begin flying in the next few years. The FAA may not propose bind regulations covering occupant safety until October 2015.

In a presentation before the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) earlier this month, Repcheck said the guidelines will be based on a series of 8 teleconferences the FAA conducted with industry officials and other interested parties. Forty to 60 participants were involved in each call.

Each of the eight teleconferences focused on a specific technical topic, including:

• Level of safety
• FAA oversight
• Types of requirements
• Terms and definitions
• Aborts and abort systems
• Fault tolerance, margin and reliability
• Medical best practices for crew and space flight participants
• Communications and commanding.

AST posted the meeting minutes on its website and provided a method for industry officials to provide further comments. It plans to solicit inputs from industry and the public after the draft guidelines are published later this year.

As for the level of oversight, “aircraft-like certification is not feasible at this time, due to current technology and the FAA’s statutory mandate to only pursue minimal regulations that take into consideration the evolving standards of safety in the commercial space flight industry,” according to the presentation.

The final guidelines will reflect a “consensus view of important safety measures to take in conducting human spaceflight,” Repcheck said in his presentation.