Up, up, and away? Space is the place.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Citings - Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004

FORTY YEARS AFTER the Wright brothers' first flight, more than 1 million people had flown in airplanes. More than 40 years after Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth, barely 500 individuals have flown in space.

It turns out that federal regulations are stronger than gravity in holding back the commercial development of space launches. In the 1970s, for example, the Carter administration banned federal agencies from using private providers to place cargoes in space. In March, in an effort to reduce the regulatory barriers to private spaceflight, the House of Representatives passed the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, aimed at streamlining the process for entrepreneurs to get permission to launch travelers into space.

Something similar has been tried before. Congress passed the Commercial Space Act of 1998 in the hope of jump-starting commercial development by requiring the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to buy "space-based and airborne Earth remote sensing data, services, distribution, and applications from a commercial provider." The 1998 act also removed the ban on private carriers' bringing back payloads and vehicles from space. But in 2001 the Cato Institute's Ed Hudgins testified before Congress that even after the passage of the 1998 law, "Securing permission to launch still involves safety requirements, reentry licensing, financial...