What is it about?

Since the FAA is currently prohibited from regulating passenger safety on suborbital vehicles, all passengers must sign a letter of informed consent. NASA has a responsibility to understand the passenger risks for civil servant employees who fly on commercially available suborbital vehicles. The NASA Suborbital Crew Office is completing a safety case assessment to accomplish this task.

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Why is it important?

Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic have operational systems that were not built under the auspices of a NASA contract. This is the first time that U.S. commercial companies have built vehicles designed to carry humans to space independent of a NASA contract. NASA must determine a process to understand the risk of vehicles built independently so that the federal government can utilize the capabilities offered.

Perspectives

While today there are only suborbital opportunities created independently of NASA, in the future companies could independently develop orbital capabilities that would be of benefit to the agency. The test case with suborbital flights will teach NASA how to asses the risk of future orbital capabilities built by private industry.

Elizabeth Blome
NASA

This collaborative research by the NASA Suborbital Crew (SubC) Office, the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation, and The Aerospace Corporation has made strides toward assuring the safety of government-sponsored spaceflight participants on board commercial suborbital spaceflight vehicles.

Robert Seibold

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Ensuring Safety of Government Personnel During Suborbital Spaceflight, January 2024, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
DOI: 10.2514/6.2024-1815.
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