Private cargo-carrying spacecraft? No problem, but put people on commercial flights and things get messy. Just as NASA set the date for SpaceX鈥檚 , the firm鈥檚 home state of California lightening company responsibility for the safety of future passengers.
No private space firm yet sends crewed flights to space, but that is the plan. The new law treats spaceflight rather like sky-diving, requiring future travellers to give 鈥渋nformed consent鈥�. They agree not to sue the company they fly with if they鈥檙e injured or killed in the process.
California is the last of the states hosting major contenders in the commercial space race to pass such a law, trailing Virginia, home to , New Mexico (), and Texas (), which have already done so.
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鈥淐alifornia鈥檚 the last of the really prominent, big ones that鈥檚 to come,鈥� says , a space law professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 鈥淎ll those other states as well as California already have the ground infrastructure in place. This is assisting in the legal infrastructure, to help incentivize private human spaceflight launching from that state.鈥�
Hardy tourists
The laws may make a state more attractive to space businesses, says Diane Howard, a doctoral fellow in the Institute of Air and Space Law at McGill University in Canada, but without statistics on the safety of commercial flights, travellers sign away their right to sue blindly, she says. 鈥淲hat exactly are you informing them of? You don鈥檛 know how dangerous it is.鈥�
Hardy space tourists may not care: Virgin Galactic, which plans to launch its first crewed flight in 2013, has a roster of passengers who have signed consent agreements.
Having these laws on the books in the industry鈥檚 infancy won鈥檛 keep private spaceflight from eventually becoming as routine as plane travel. If spaceflights really take off, the regulatory system will evolve with it, Shaefer says.
鈥淥nce we get to 1000 flights a day for point-to-point suborbital travel, New York to Tokyo in an hour and a half or whatever, then you may need a different regulatory structure,鈥� he says.
This article has been updated.
