Randall Clague wrote: > If you were a senior law enforcement > officer, used to dealing with traditional law enforcement issues, and > you got a call from some Federal agency telling you to go enforce a > launch injunction against a rocket company, wouldn't you find that > kind of unusual? Sure you would. So would you send Deppity Dawg and > his cousin Cooter out to the flight line to stop the launch? Of > course not. You'd probably go yourself. Whoever you sent, he'd know > he was in a weird situation, so he'd be real careful. > > Anyone who was competent to actually do something with your equipment, > and had the authority to do it,
That is where the confusion arises. I'm invoking the historical examples of police who were most decidedly *not* competent to handle the equipment in question, and had "authority" handed to them by federal agencies scared of what they did not quite understand. (Sometimes, said agencies were acting on fabrications fed to them by large companies who also didn't quite understand what was going on, but knew their business was somehow threatened.) In every such case I'm aware of, the police involved eventually had their rears handed to them by the courts, but months or years later, doing damage to the raided parties in the mean time. (As you put it, they did send Dawg and Cooter out. Cooler, more senior heads were usually bypassed and kept from knowing about the situation until it was too late.) I've suffered through one of these myself; fortunately, the damage was light and their true target was just someone who used to live at my address. It's the only time in my life anyone has pulled a gun on me (that I know of), and I wasn't armed or in any way acting hostile. There are several solutions. Probably one of the most effective is to make sure that local law enforcement knows who you are and what you're doing so that, if the order comes down, they know what to do. Which is what we're doing already (at least through the fire marshal, but that's probably good enough for now). > The actual likely worst case, if NASA or some other 9 million pound > gorilla decides to shut us down, is a phone call from our AST contact > during license application processing. "Hey, remember last week, we > talked about your frammistat encoder, and I thought NASA wouldn't like > it because it doesn't meet 1127-1? Well, they just came back with a > negative recommendation. They actually put it in writing. They > really don't like you guys. Anyway, I've got a meeting with the boss > and the lawyers tomorrow morning, and I'll see what I can do. I think > you've made case for your frammistat encoder being exempt, and your > procedures cover your lack of test data for it, but the NASA guys are > sure it'll fail. We'll see what the boss thinks, and I'll give you a > call tomorrow and let you know how it went. Either way, we should > have an answer for you in the next couple of months." If we make sure we're not totally unknown (once we get that far - and at our current pace, this criteria will be met), then yes, that's probably the worst we'll actually ever see. >>Okay, then, deliver to somewhere over 200 km behind the ISS in its >>orbit, far enough away to avoid this. Getting from there to the ISS >>wouldn't be hard in theory, and those who matter would likely understand >>that permission was the only thing preventing it from being tested in >>practice. > > I'm less sure about that... Well, okay, how about: "much easier relative to getting it into orbit in the first place"? >>The important thing is to demonstrate on-orbit delivery with >>a given reference point. Maybe even have a mock, unmanned, ISS effigy >>delivered to said coordinates, then rendevous with that. (ISS effigy >>just for the visual impact.) > > ...but this is an absolute truth. We, and anyone else who wants to > rendezvous with ISS, will be required to prove by actual demonstration > that we can make a rendezvous and safe docking with a station without > spraying their pretty little space station with evil toxic exhaust > gasses, before they'll let us play in their yard. Fair enough. The point is that we can do a very close approximation without NASA's permission, close enough that subsequent objections to the rest will likely draw inquiries from Congress. _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
