SpaceX not allowed to live stream from space (for now...)

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Sooner Boomer

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No, not a late April Fool's joke, just regular government fools...

I really don't understand the basis for the law. Why is this under NOAA's pervue? It's not the radio part of the transmission - that comes under the FCC. It's not about national security or ground assets - that would be DOD or some military agency. They *should* be exempt as the cameras are (or are the equivalent to) handheld devices. Some articles on the subject (but they don't shed any light on the matter...)

https://spacenews.com/noaa-explains-restriction-on-spacex-launch-webcast/

https://www.cnet.com/news/spacex-cant-broadcast-earth-images-because-of-a-murky-license/
 
Several people in this thread and the SpaceX missions thread asked why NOAA. The short, stupid answer is that Congress said it was going to be NOAA back in 2010. https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/CRSRA/licenseHome.html The 2010 law follows a similar 1992 law pretty closely, at least as far as commercial space imaging is concerned.

If you look at the text of the 1992 law (https://www.spacelaw.olemiss.edu/li.../102-555 - Land Remote Sensing Policy Act.pdf) the first part makes it really clear that congress was passing it because they were upset at how much it cost to get Landsat data from the contractor that was operating the system. It also passed emergency funding to keep Landsat alive because of a funding snafu (sound familiar?). NOAA had been placed in charge of Landsat, although operations were transferred to a private company sometime between 1979 and 1992.

It appears that a condition of the license to take imagery in space is that NOAA gets a copy of unenhanced data if they want it. NOAA probably doesn't really care about the part of the Earth you see in the background of SpaceX launch video (or Starman), but they need to be consistent in requiring people to get licenses so that companies who take images that NOAA does want can't say that NOAA shouldn't enforce rules on them since they didn't enforce the rules for SpaceX.

So who to blame? Congress, Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, Obama, NOAA, and probably a few more people. Looks like there's plenty to spread around. :) But please don't so the thread doesn't get locked.
 
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