Immunity for Space Travel Bill on Governor's Desk

I understand our profession as attorneys and as tort lawyers but one can not be pro-commercial spaceflight development and anti this new law at this particular stage. The two positions just do not 'jive.'

Once the commercial spaceflight industry develops standards over he next few years, it may well be treated as the airline industry but let's NOT kill it before it is born please. That is not equity. We can agree, just a matter of moving from nascent to maturity.

The current Virginia law left the spaceport at a distinct competitive disadvantage. The new law will give it a chance to be comeptitive with California, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas where other similar commercial spaceports have developed.

Thank goodness the VTLA had the wisdom (sanity) and vision to agree to the sunset provision in the measure and thereby enable the state the chance to more fully develop the Virginia spaceport. It was the right position. I urge just to think it through.

The spin-off technologies and investment from commercial space launch providers could be quite beneficial to the state's economy and higher education. Let me suggest a larger view in the short-term. Our views will meet as the commercial space launch barnstorming days end in a few years.

I do enjoy reading your views. I share the aspiration and hope to see the viable commercial space launch industry achieve maturity and both launch capability and capacity from Virginia in the decade ahead. But it must be enabled through the adopted framework in the short-term with all due sane respect.

There will still be an eminence liability for each commercial space launch despite the niche passenger waiver regime requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars of Maximum Probable Loss (MPL) insurance.

Virginia's commercial spaceport has an outside chance of being the commercial resupply for the International Space Station where the first commercial astronuats will take supplies to orbit as well as perhaps the first Wallops to Paris hypersonic transport flights in 45-minutes in the next decade. Let's give it a chance, please.