Fatal Crash Tests Hands-Off Policy of Regulating Space Tourism
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The assumption space tourists would know the personal risks, similar to mountain climbers, led to a hands-off approach to U.S. regulation that is now being tested following last week’s fatal Virgin Galactic Ltd. crash.
Congress has prohibited the U.S. government from imposing safety regulations over most aspects of commercial space exploration, even barring protections for passengers on the kind of for-pay flights that billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic envisions. All that changed when the company’s SpaceShipTwo broke into pieces on an Oct. 31 test flight.