FAA now requires reentry vehicles to get licensed before launch

The US Federal Aviation Administration is updating its launch license requirements: if you're launching something designed for reentry, you'll need a license for that, too. Before you launch. It appears to be a response to last year's situation, where Varda Space Industries launched its W-1 mission without a license to bring …

[tyrfing]

Nah, this is vs. SpaceX.

[NoneSuch]

Ukrainians are getting around the FAA regulations by making sure anything they launch lands in Russia; which is well outside of FAA jurisdiction.

[Snowy]

Puzzled

That this was not always the case, also if it was not going to come down then there should be a plan to park it safely too.

[John Robson]

Re: Puzzled

To be fair most things don't need parking safely, they can come down and not hit anything by virtue of disintegrating in the upper atmosphere.

Things that are designed to withstand reentry need more care, because when they come down they are likely to make it all the way to the ground.

[WonkoTheSane]

Re: Puzzled

Which is why everything that could survive re-entry but isn't designed to land is targeted at a specific "middle of nowhere" part of the Pacific Ocean called "Point Nemo", which is roughly 1600 miles from the nearest land mass.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: Puzzled

Which is why everything that could survive re-entry but isn't designed to land is targeted at a specific "middle of nowhere" part of the Pacific Ocean called "Point Nemo", which is roughly 1600 miles from the nearest land mass.

And they still occasionally manage to miss that Point Nemo by more than 1600 miles, hitting land.

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: Puzzled

I was going to offer the "what goes up, must come down" argument, but you make a good point that even without escaping gravity, some stuff sent to space is ultimately never seen again.

[Anonymous Cowpilot]

Re: Puzzled

It has always been required that you need a re-entry license for re-entry, but as mentioned in the article, you did not have to have that license at the point of launch. This left the situation where you could legally launch an object that is due to come back to earth without yet having the license to bring it back. In the Varda case they just left the re-entry vehicle in orbit until they had the necessary license and then brought it down. Quite what would happen if you were denied the re-entry license is not clear, as eventually the orbit would decay and the re-entry vehicle would come down no matter what the FAA says.

What the FAA has doen is close the loophole so that you can't launch now and then hope to get your re-entry license before you run out of fuel. You now need the re-entry license before launch.

[Scene it all]

Are they going to go after NASA for dumping stuff from the ISS that, rather than burning up, made it to the ground and punched a hole in somebody's house? (Luckily missing the people inside)