In 2014, the FAA published its first set of Recommended Practices for commercial crew spaceflight safety. These guidelines purvey several fundamental, systemic errors. The five major findings that expose these flaws include:·Failure to address whether "one size fits all" for the diverse proposed commercial crew spacecraft,·Avoidance of existing human spaceflight design and operating standards,·Profound problems with the clarity of the language, particularly the subjunctive tense in which all the recommendations are written,·Conflating the requirements for the flight crew and the passengers, and·The omission of risk management and reliability strategies. The central cause of these pervasive flaws would appear to derive from the FAA's ambivalence toward regulating commercial spaceflight as opposed to promoting it. The FAA wants to frame the regulatory regime with good intentions without dictating to the commercial companies how to conduct their business of flying people in space for profit. This approach creates situations in which the recommended practice is not appropriate for the problem it seeks to solve. This review covers the major findings that came out of the section-by-section gap analysis.
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