A Look Inside The FAA Office That Regulates Commercial Manned Spaceflight

Since 1984, Patricia Grace Smith's office at the FAA has been licensing commercial rocket launches. The payloads have always been satellites or research equipment -- until Burt Rutan and Paul Allen changed things with the flight of SpaceShipOne back in June. It was Smith's office that gave Scaled Composites and pilot Mike Melvill the final regulatory go-ahead for that record flight and it was Smith who pinned the first ever commercial astronaut wings on Melvill's chest when he returned. Somewhere in that entire process, someone had to do a lot of paperwork.

"It takes a great deal of work," Nicholas A. Sabatini, associate administrator for regulation and certification, told the Washington Post. His duties include oversight on experimental aircraft (you might remember him from the FAA forum at Oshkosh earlier this year). "You have cultures within the organization, so you have to think outside the box."

That sort of thinking -- especially in a bureaucracy -- is revolutionary. While a lot of companies trying to get into space have groused about a process that moves at the speed of sludge, many have gone out of their way to praise Smith for her sensitivity and can-do attitude.

"If this industry is over-regulated, it could be killed in its infancy, and Patti is well aware of that.... Don't regulate a moped the way you regulate a Mack truck," said X-Prize founder and president, Peter Diamandis, in an interview with the Post. He pointed out that the designs offered by X-Prize competitors are far less powerful than space vehicles carrying commercial payloads for paying customers.

What does Smith herself say about all this? "I truly, truly see space as transportation... not unlike aviation, not unlike rail, not unlike transit -- an intermodal, interconnected system that creates benefits for the nation," she told the Post.

Are we really sure she works for the government?

FMI: http://ast.faa.gov