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  • Helping New Space Industry Lift Off

    09/27/2004 12:04:40 AM PDT · by Cincinatus' Wife · 2 replies · 238+ views
    Washington Post ^ | September 27, 2004 | Mark Stencel
    Flying the first commercial test pilot into space three months ago was more than a feat of entrepreneurial engineering. SpaceShipOne's maiden flight just beyond the edge of the atmosphere also required a little bureaucratic ingenuity from Patricia Grace Smith and her staff at the Federal Aviation Administration. The privately financed rocket plane, which makes its second scheduled test flight to space Wednesday, flies under the regulatory wing of Smith's Office of Commercial Space Transportation. Since 1984, the office has been in charge of licensing dozens of U.S. commercial space launches. Until recently, all those launches involved the kind of expendable,...