FAA Aims To Make Tag-along Payloads Less of a Burden for Launchers

摘要

The Federal Aviation Administration office that licenses U.S. commercial space launches is set to eliminate a paperwork obstacle SpaceX had to negotiate in order to tote a couple of dozen tag-along student experiments on a 2012 cargo run to the International Space Station. Among the cargo to be loaded into SpaceX's Dragon capsule for that supply run were NanoRacks standardized pallets - essentially powered boxes that slot into empty racks on the station - hosting student-designed experiments NASA put on the flight as part of its Student Spaceflight Experiments Program. The experiments included spiders, infectious bacteria and mutated nematodes, but the nastiest thing bundled up with the NanoRacks hardware, for SpaceX, anyway, turned out to be a provision in U.S. launch liability law that required the company to collect signed liability cross-waivers from anybody who owned a payload on the flight. There were 23 student experiments on the flight, representing the efforts of more than 100 U.S. elementary, middle and high school students. That put SpaceX on the hook for at least one signed cross-waiver per experiment, and possibly more, depending on whether the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation chose to count each participating student as a payload owner, as the current law allows.