Yes, but at this point in the airline industry, everyone gets on a plane
with the expectation that they will get off safely at their destination,
and the FAA's role is to make sure that happens. That is not currently
the case with spaceflight, and won't be for some time.
Safety is the one thing that airlines aren't allowed to compete on,
whereas initially, spacelines will have a range of prices and safety
levels, and caveat emptor (which is as it should be at this state of the
industry, which is probably equivalent to aviation a hundred years ago).
On 2020-01-02 11:32, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Thu, 2 Jan 2020, Uwe Klein wrote:
The nonsensical notion that "the first time a space tourist dies, it
will kill the industry" is a perennial one that won't go away.
The masses will smirk and the early customers are definitely aware of the risk. ( .. and will have signed some statement to that effect. )
The main risk is not that the customers will all vanish, but that
legislators and/or regulators will overreact. Kill the industry, no,
probably not, but even a well-intentioned attempt to crank up the
regulatory oversight could gravely handicap it, perhaps to the point
of making profitability difficult.
It will definitely be better if the first fatal accident in revenue
service is the result of some technical subtlety, rather than blatant
negligence or corner-cutting.
Note, by the way, that if you read the AW&ST piece carefully, you'll
see that the headline writer goofed -- it's mostly talking about the
risk that a fatal accident could shut down the *company* in question,
not the whole industry. *That* is a real possibility, especially for
a struggling startup. Note, for example, that a single
major-headlines crash with distinct indications of negligence hurt
ValuJet Airlines badly enough that it acquired another small airline
mostly (it would appear) as a plausible excuse for a complete change
of name. (For that matter, look at what a mess Boeing -- a
many-billion-dollars behemoth -- is in after two fatal crashes due to
corner-cutting...)
Henry
