Bloomberg by Alan Levin 8/13/2021
The billionaires who blasted into space in recent weeks did so with style. Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos sported a cowboy hat after landing and Richard Branson wore a blue Virgin Galactic jumpsuit he’d called “sexy.”
To some of the world’s leading experts in space-travel safety, something else stood out: Neither company equipped the passengers of their spacecraft with pressure suits to protect them from a rapid decompression outside Earth’s atmosphere.
Such suits are required by NASA and other nations as a result of hard-earned lessons from fatal accidents, but no such standards apply to the companies racing to commercialize space, including tourist flights. Congress has exempted such ventures in the U.S. from any federal safety oversight for crews.
More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/space-billionaires-stir-alarm-with-absence-of-safety-oversight/ar-AANgXh0
