James Oberstar: “We all salute the innovation and the achievement that we have recently seen in the early days of private space flight…”

“We all salute the innovation and the achievement that we have recently seen in the early days of private space flight, and we certainly do want to encourage that. But we go a little bit too far in this legislation. I do not understand why the committee has inserted the references to paying passengers and that we would not regulate until after the serious injury or death of paying passengers. It took me a decade here in Congress to strip the FAA of its requirement to promote the industry. That was something adopted in the very early days. It seems to be similar to what is going on here, to say that in the early days the Civil Aeronautics Board would have a charge of promoting the industry and later regulation became more paramount. But up and to and through the 90s until a tragic accident with then Air Tran, the industry was both regulated and promoted by the same agency. I promoted it out for years as a conflict. And it was only after that incident that we finally changed the language and said, no, it would be paramount that they would regulate in the interest of public health and safety. But here we are again trying to codify the old so-called 'tombstone mentality' of the FAA by including paying passengers.”