Today’s selection of space policy/politics related links:

• The Final Frontier’s Financial Limits – NYTimes.com
• It’s Time We Commit to Send Humans to Mars  –  Chris Carberry/Huffington Post
• ESA chief says Orion service module will be ready in 2017 – Spaceflight Now
• Space policy offers ‘unique’ chance to tackle global challenges – Vittorio Prodi/TheParliament.com
• Darpa Takes Aim At Slow Pace, High Cost Of U.S. Milspace – Aviation Week
• International Space Station: Good for another 10 years and great for Las Cruces – Pat Hynes
• Ex-NASA Officials Endorse ISS Extension – SpaceNews.com
• ASAP warns on commercial crew funding (again), gets philosophical about risk – Space Politics
• Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel 2013 Annual Report – Space Safety Magazine
• Spaceflight Liability Changes Advance in California Legislature – Parabolic Arc
• Virgin Galactic space tourists could be grounded by FAA – CBC News
  • Regulation of commercial spaceflight – NewSpace Watch – My views on the CBC News article
  • Another law, another squelched dream – Bob Zimmerman/Behind The Black – A response to the CBC article.
    • As I’ve argued with Bob several times about the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 (CSLAA, pdf) , the choice was not between regulating commercial human spaceflight and not regulating it. The choice was between a regulatory regime designed with industry input versus the big mess of a regulatory regime that would emerge from the battle among the FAA’s commercial space transportation office, the much bigger and more powerful aviation wing of the FAA, state regulators, and trial lawyers.  The FAA aviation wing, for example, was intent on imposing aircraft certification on suborbital reusable rocket vehicles, which would have been extremely expensive; disastrously so  for small start-up companies.

      The only substantial flaw in the CSLAA was in setting the 8 year delay of the expansion of rules regarding space flight participants to start from the time of passage of the bill rather than from the time of the first licensed flight. Such a flight is taking far longer to happen than expected in 2004, so there has been an effort to alter this part of the legislation. The delay has been extended once to 2015. Though there will be an effort to extend it again, the FAA has been gathering input from industry and the public on rules that it will implement if the delay expires in 2015.

Update:

• NASA Forgets Key Lesson from Columbia Accident – SpaceNews.com
  • No, Vance Brand – Transterrestrial Musings
• A New Conversation — A Shared Voice – Rick Tumlinson/SpaceNews.com
• Editorial | Making Their Mark in Space – SpaceNews.com

 Update 2:

• Howard Bloom, Monday, 1-20-14 – Thespaceshow’s Blog – A discussion of “Space policy, leadership, private space, SLS, SSP, Space Development Steering Committee & more”.
• Commercial space industry celebrates launch indemnification extension in omnibus spending bill – Space Politics
• Nobel Committee unlikely to back idea to nominate ISS for Nobel Peace Prize – opinion/ITAR-TASS