WASHINGTON — An advisory committee for the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial space office has recommended that the office be moved out of the FAA.
At an April 23 meeting, the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) unanimously approved a recommendation that the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST, be moved out of the FAA and turned into a standalone organization directly under the Secretary of Transportation.
The proposal, COMSTAC members argued, would address the perception that AST currently does not receive the resources it needs to regulate a growing space launch industry in its current form within the FAA.
“I think it’s fair to say that, in the opinion of many people, the Office of Commercial Space Transportation has not always been receiving the time and attention from senior leadership, the resources it needs to carry out its mission, and advocacy and support in resolving key issues in a timely fashion,” said George Nield, a COMSTAC member and former FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, at the meeting.
In appropriations for fiscal year 2024, AST received $42 million, about 0.35% of the overall operating budget of the FAA. The AST workforce is a similar share of the overall agency as well. Because of that, he argued, space has a low priority within the FAA.
Placing space within an agency devoted to aviation also poses problems, he said, because growth in spaceflight is outpacing that in aviation. “Space has changed. The whole environment has changed, and we need to figure out how to deal with that more quickly. So that means we need to have somebody at the table, flagging important issues, asking for decisions, getting feedback and raising other concerns.”
Making the office independent of the FAA would give it more influence, Nield said, putting it at the same level as other modes of transportation. “You’d have access to the…
Read the full article here