On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 03:44 AM, Randall Clague wrote:
Someone asked Jay Garvin (AST-200, he who signs the launch license) about this last Friday at Space Frontier. His answer was more or less, "Yes, you can do that, though it's looked at rather closely, and you won't get away with an end run; it has to be genuine training. But with this hybrid vehicle interpretation, you don't need to resort to games like that. You want to fly passengers on your hybrid vehicle? You get a launch license. You'll already have lots of flight test data from flying under your experimental certificate." A hybrid vehicle, for anyone not up on the latest (see my post "AST/AVR turf war is over" on sci.space.policy, which I'm told was picked up by HobbySpace and TransTerrestrial Musings), is a vehicle that combines attributes of an airplane and a launch vehicle. Like, oh, say, Xerus. Or SpaceShipOne.
As I understand it the rule would require a launch license for envelope expansion testing of non-winged vehicles. IOW VTVL vehicles will require a launch license for each test. Presumably the paperwork burden isn't linear in number of tests, due to overlap. The terms of the AST/AVR compromise are excellent, but it would be nice to have an additional rule that allows for launch licensing of entire test series.
Another interesting point is that the notice in the Federal Register explicity disavows FAA regulation of hybrid suborbital RLVs using propulsion that meets the requirements for amateur rocketry. IOW amateur RATO seems to be OK with FAA, and presumably if anyone was to build a rocket propelled glider they'd only have to deal with AVR, not AST. Opens up some intriguing possibilities - 200,000 lbf-sec is a fair amount of thrust over 15 seconds. It'd be a scary ride, though.
......Andrew
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