U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act Incorporation

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Parts 401, 413, 415, 431, 435, 437, 440, 450, and 460</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FAA-2023-1656; Amdt. Nos. 401-10, 413-13, 415-8, 431-8, 435-6, 437-4, 440-7, 450-3, 460-4]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AL19</RIN> <SUBJECT>U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act Incorporation</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This final rule incorporates various changes required by the United States Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015. This final rule provides regulatory clarity to applicants seeking licenses for space flight operations involving government astronauts by adding two new subparts to the human space flight regulations containing requirements for operators with government astronauts with and without safety-critical roles on board vehicles. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective November 18, 2024. The compliance date for this final rule is November 18, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> For information on where to obtain copies of rulemaking documents and other information related to this final rule, see “How to Obtain Additional Information” in the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Charles Huet, Space Policy Division, Space Regulations and Standards Branch, ASZ-210, Federal Aviation Administration, 800 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20591; telephone (202) 306-9069; email <E T="03">charles.huet@faa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">List of Abbreviations and Acronyms Frequently Used in This Document</HD> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">Maximum Probable Loss (MPL)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">United States Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">United States Government (USG)</FP> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Authority for This Rulemaking</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Purpose of the Regulatory Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Changes From the Proposed Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Summary of the Costs and Benefits</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Summary of the NPRM</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. General Overview of Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Differences Between the NPRM and the Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Discussion of Comments and the Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Regulatory Notices and Analyses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Regulatory Impact Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Regulatory Flexibility Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. International Trade Impact Assessment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Unfunded Mandates Assessment</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Environmental Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Executive Order Determinations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Executive Order 13132, Federalism</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Executive Order 13175, Consultation and Coordination With Indian Tribal Governments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Executive Order 13211, Regulations That Significantly Affect Energy Supply, Distribution, or Use</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Executive Order 13609, Promoting International Regulatory Cooperation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Additional Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Electronic Access and Filing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">List of Subjects</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Authority for This Rulemaking</HD> The Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, as amended and codified at 51 U.S.C. 50901-50923 (the Act), authorizes the Secretary of Transportation to oversee, license, and regulate commercial launch and reentry activities, and the operation of launch and reentry sites within the United States (U.S.) or as carried out by U.S. citizens. Section 50905 directs the Secretary to exercise this responsibility consistent with public health and safety, safety of property, and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States. In addition, section 50903 requires the Secretary to encourage, facilitate, and promote commercial space launches and reentries by the private sector. As codified in 49 CFR 1.83(b), the Secretary has delegated authority to the FAA Administrator to carry out these functions. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose of the Regulatory Action</HD> This rule makes several changes to incorporate government astronauts in the regulations, in accordance with the United States Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> It amends title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR) parts 401, 413, 415, 431, 435, 437, 440, 450, and 460 by incorporating statutory changes resulting from the CSLCA. Specifically, it adds definitions for “Government astronaut,” “International partner astronaut,” and “International Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement,” and revises definitions of “Human space flight incident,” “Launch,” “Launch accident,” “Reenter; reentry” “Reentry accident,” and “Space flight participant,” to incorporate changes required by adding the definition of “Government astronaut.” The rule also creates two new subparts in 14 CFR part 460 that include requirements for operators and applicants whose licensed or permitted operations involve government astronauts with and without safety-critical roles on board a vehicle. The rule revises the human space flight sections of parts 415, 431, 435, 437, and 450 to add government astronauts to the list of people who can be on board a launch or reentry vehicle, and adds certain additional provisions in part 460 to the list of provisions with which an operator must comply. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The CSLCA adds government astronauts as a third category of people on board launch or reentry vehicles, excludes government astronauts from the definition of third party, adds space flight participants to the waiver of claims with operators, and expands the applicability of permits to more types of vehicles and operations. </FTNT> Additionally, this rule expands the applicability of part 437 to include launching or reentering certain reusable suborbital vehicles. The rule also revises parts 401, 413, 415, 431, 435, 437, 440, 450, and 460 to make conforming amendments to expand the eligibility for an experimental permit from reusable suborbital rockets to reusable suborbital vehicles. The rule revises part 440 in accordance with the statute and makes conforming amendments. Specifically, it updates the financial responsibility requirements in part 440 to exclude government astronauts from the definitions of “Third party” and “Maximum probable loss (MPL)”. It also adds space flight participants to the insurance requirements in § 440.9 and the reciprocal waiver of claims requirements in § 440.17. Finally, this rule removes the templates for waiver of claims and assumption of responsibilities in appendices B through E of part 440 from the regulations and places them in a separate advisory circular (AC). <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Changes From the Proposed Rule</HD> The final rule makes several changes from the proposed rule. It replaces the proposed term “human being,” proposed in the notice, with “crew, space flight participant, or government astronaut” in the human space flight requirements of 14 CFR 415.8, 431.8, 435.8, and 437.21(b)(3). In 14 CFR 440.3, the final rule does not adopt the proposed change to government personnel; and excludes government astronaut from the definitions of MPL and third party. The final rule amends the proposed language regarding the reciprocal waiver of claims templates to specify that the templates contained in advisory circular AC 440.17-1 satisfy the reciprocal waiver of claims requirements in 14 CFR 440.17. The final rule replaces the proposed requirement in 14 CFR 460.59(d)(1) to track and update government astronaut training in writing with the requirement to provide traceability to revisions or changes to government astronaut training. Finally, the final rule changes the proposed requirement for operators to train government astronauts in 14 CFR 460.59 and 460.67 to a requirement that operators ensure government astronauts are trained. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Summary of the Costs and Benefits</HD> These changes have a minimal impact on licensed commercial space activity with government astronauts because the changes align regulations with the current statutory requirements and practices for crew, space flight participants, and government astronauts. The FAA has been applying the statutory changes since they went into effect in 2015. Since this rule codifies these current practices, there is effectively no change from the baseline practice without the rule, and therefore no measurable resulting benefits or costs. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Summary of the NPRM</HD> On August 18, 2023, the FAA published the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) titled “U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act Incorporation” (88 FR 56546). The FAA also posted draft guidance material for the proposal in the form of a draft “AC 440.17-1 Reciprocal Waiver of Claims Requirements” for comment in the NPRM docket. Th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 120k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━