Welcome to the tech policy podcast. I'm Evan Swartstraver. On today's show, regulating space.

How does regulation work beyond the Earth's atmosphere? Who gets to regulate the universe?

Joining me to discuss this are Aaron Osterly, project, sorry, policy director at the Space Frontier Foundation, and Cody Nipfer, corporate secretary

at the Space Frontier Foundation. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me. Thank you for having us.

So let's go back to the beginning. How has commercial spaceflight been regulated over the years?

And just for listeners, we're talking about private sector space stuff. We're not talking about

NASA, which is its own can of worms. But how talking about private sector space stuff. We're not talking about NASA,

which is its own can of worms. But how has the private sector that deals in space,

companies like SpaceX, how have they been regulated since, you know, 1984? So actually,

it goes back a little bit before 1984. There was a group that was developing what was called

the Connastoga rocket,

and it was really kind of the first attempt at private space launch.

And at that time, nobody had, it was one of those things, it's brand new,

nobody quite knows how to manage these kind of things.

And for lack of a better phrase, long story short, they basically

figured out they needed 16 different agencies to provide effectively a stamp of approval

before they could launch. And they literally, this group literally went out and got 16

stamps of approval from all these agencies. And they did launch a few rockets.

They weren't successful, unfortunately.

But it was, I mean, they went through and did all the legwork,

and it was actually really impressive.

And unfortunately, I don't remember their name right now.

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