Of all the criticisms of the US International Traffic of Arms Regulation (ITAR) there can be few more damning than it being a direct threat to human life, but that is what a US Congress-directed safety report has concluded.
It says the limited exchange of data that NASA's staff and contractors can engage in with the International Space Station's (ISS) Russian, Japanese and European counterparts under ITAR restrictions threatens the safety of operations.
What makes this bizarre is that the ISS technology is so old the US companies that developed it don't think ITAR should be applied. One Boeing manager said last year that ISS technology "is 20 years old - ITAR is irrelevant".
And NASA administrator Michael Griffin said last year that the legacy of the ISS would be the international co-operation it yielded and what that means for the strategy to return to the Moon. One wonders what the ISS partners think of such claims when they go through the demeaning ITAR dance.
The US Department of Defense's Defense Science Board has set up a taskforce to assess the impact of export control policy on industry. When government policy is degrading relationships with allies with whom you are fighting wars, and costing jobs in your own economy, that is bad enough, but when people's lives are at risk it is time for change. The DoD's report must demand radical reform to save lives.
Source: Flight International
