Associate Administrator For Commercial Space Transportation Addresses Orlando Conference

In a speech to the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference held in Orlando, FL, this week, Dr. George C. Nield, the FAA Associate Administrator For Commercial Space Transportation, said there needs to be an honest assessment about the risk involved in commercial spaceflight. But he added that should not deter private companies from moving forward in their efforts.

"Spaceflight is inherently risky," Dr. Nield said. "We all know that. Even Congress has acknowledged as much in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. The environment is unforgiving. And most of the systems that have been built to travel to space are operating at the very limits of their capability.

"Now it’s true that NASA has many extremely smart, capable, and hard-working employees: managers, engineers, technicians and others. But two of NASA’s 132 Space Shuttle missions have ended in tragedy. That’s a fatal accident rate of 1 in 66 flights, which is pretty darn high. As a point of comparison, the fatal accident rate for commercial airliners is more than 10,000 times safer, on the order of one in every million flights."

Nield said that does not mean that NASA is operating a dangerous program, "(b)ut we do need to be cautious about enshrining our current way of doing business as the only acceptable approach. To imply that only NASA is capable of safely flying people to space, or that American industry isn’t capable of doing the job equally well, if not better, is not only unfair, it’s just flat-out wrong."

Nield said that he is excited about CCDev, which represents a public-private partnership between NASA and commercial space flight developers. " (I)f Congress provides sufficient funding, we may soon be able to reap the benefits of competition, with multiple companies using different boosters and a variety of spacecraft to demonstrate the capability to take our astronauts to orbit," he said. "It’s going to be fantastic. No more single-string access to space. And no more sitting on the ground for years after an accident."

And on the subject of accidents, he suggested that the NTSB should be the lead agency on their investigations. "With all due respect, the last thing we need after the next spaceflight accident, and trust me, there will be one, is a Presidential commission and more congressional hearings," Nield said. "Let’s get the NTSB in there to figure out what went wrong, fix it, and get back to flying. And if one launch system has a problem, let’s use another one, also made in America, while the necessary repairs or modifications are being implemented."

Dr. Nield said he is excited about the prospects for commercial space exploration. "It seems to me that the only way to eliminate all risk in human spaceflight is not to launch at all," he said. "I’ve heard people say that once the Shuttle is retired, we should not allow our astronauts to fly on any of the new rockets industry is developing until NASA is convinced that they are safe. If that’s the attitude we have, and if those are the words we are using to describe our goals to the public, the media, and the Congress, I think we are setting ourselves up for failure. There have only been a handful of different human spacecraft ever built. And only about 500 people have had the opportunity to experience spaceflight first-hand. After 50 years! That," Nield said, "is really sad!

FMI: www.faa.gov