Kevin Kiley: “Today, I am announcing new legislation that is of great importance to the future of space exploration. My bill will…”

“Today, I am announcing new legislation that is of great importance to the future of space exploration. My bill will elevate the Office of Commercial Space Transportation as an independent entity within the Department of Transportation. It will remove it from the jurisdiction and the auspices of the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration. This is actually the way the office was originally set up when it was created in 1984, but in the mid-nineties, it was folded into the FAA. That was never a good fit. It was never really what the FAA was designed to do, and the commercial space industry is a dramatically different enterprise today than it was in the mid-nineties, than it even was just a few years ago. This is a commonsense reform that, in fact, has been endorsed by the FAA's own Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, which unanimously recommended removing the Office of Commercial Space Transportation from the FAA and making it its own independent entity that reports directly to the Secretary of the Department of Transportation. This will remove a layer of bureaucracy that has proven to be very problematic when it comes to innovation in space.…”