Name change reflects expanded focus for Commercial Space Federation

WASHINGTON — An industry group is changing its name, ever so slightly, to more accurately reflect its work across the broader commercial space industry.

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation announced Dec. 3 that it was changing its name to the Commercial Space Federation, effective immediately, as part of other changes in the trade group to promote the industry.

Dave Cavossa, who became president of CSF in June, said in an interview that the name change came after he did a “listening tour” of CSF members as well as other stakeholders. Most CSF members are not involved in launch but instead in other aspects of space, from remote sensing and space situational awareness to research and exploration.

“When I was walking around town asking about CSF, the reaction I got was, ‘Aren’t you the launch trade association?’” he said. “We’re really quite a bit more than that.”

He said CSF members agreed “it’s time to mature one step further and make this about the whole commercial space industry.” The name change is intended to reflect that while preserving the CSF acronym, which he said had strong recognition within the industry and elsewhere.

The revised name is not the only change for the organization. CSF announced the creation of six “industry councils” in launch and reentry, commercial low Earth orbit development, space exploration, spaceports and infrastructure, remote sensing and analytics, and satellite and space situational awareness.

Cavossa said the industry councils will allow CSF members to focus on specific priorities within their areas. CSF previously had working groups on legislation and regulation that attempted to cover all those sectors. “So that meant that when you’re sitting on a call talking about a particular piece of launch legislation and there’d be 60 companies on board where 50 of them don’t care about that issue,” he said.

Those councils will be guided by three broad principles. One, called Integrate, calls on the U.S. government to “rely to the maximum practicable extent” on the commercial space industry versus building their own systems. The second, Compete, seeks for the government to be a “smart buyer” of those commercial capabilities, including the use of fixed-price contracts. The third, Unleash, advocates for regulatory reform.

“There’s just way too much regulation and duplication of regulation when it comes to commercial space, and that is creating a drag on the commercial space industry,” Cavossa said. “We want to see that addressed in this new and incoming administration.”

An immediate priority for CSF, he said, is to obtain another extension of the so-called “learning period” that restricts the ability of the Federal Aviation Administration to regulate commercial human spaceflight occupant safety. The learning period has been extended several times and is currently set to expire at the end of the calendar year. That extension could be included as a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act.

Another priority is to reform the FAA’s Part 450 launch and reentry regulations. The FAA announced last month the creation of an aerospace rulemaking committee, or SpARC, that will examine ways to improve the regulations, which many in industry have argued are difficult to comply with.

“That’s a great step in the right direction. The SpARCs are great for long-term fixes,” he said. “But there’s stuff that the FAA can do right now within its own power, and I think with some guidance from Congress and the new administration, there’s a lot of things the FAA can do themselves in the next 120 days to make launch licensing flow more smoothly.”

CSF is also creating a political action committee, the Commercial Space Political Action Committee, to support members of Congress advocating for the industry.

“Space is one of the few remaining bipartisan issues out there where you can get very strong support from Democrats and Republicans,” Cavossa said. “For a member of Congress that’s already introduced legislation, has space in their district and cares very much about the commercial space industry, we want to be there to support them and make sure they get reelected.”

The name change is not the first for the CSF. The organization was founded in 2006 as the Personal Spaceflight Federation, with a focus on the emerging space tourism industry. It changed its name to the Commercial Spaceflight Federation in 2009 to expand its focus beyond private human spaceflight.

“I feel like the organization has matured with the industry over the last 20 years,” Cavossa said. “I think it probably makes sense to make this more about the commercial space industry broadly than just space flight.”