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H.R. 2262: SPACE Act of 2015

May 21, 2015 at 12:43 p.m. ET. On Passage of the Bill in the House.

This was a vote to pass H.R. 2262 (114th) in the House.

The United States Government updated US commercial space legislation in 2015 with the passage of the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, sometimes referred to at the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship (SPACE) Act of 2015.

The update to US law explicitly allows US citizens to "engage in the commercial exploration and exploitation of 'space resources' [including ... water and minerals]." The right does not extend to biological life, so anything that is alive may not be exploited commercially. The Act further asserts that "the United States does not [(by this Act)] assert sovereignty, or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body." Some scholars argue that the United States recognizing ownership of space resources is an act of sovereignty, and that the act violates the Outer Space Treaty.

The SPACE Act includes the extension of indemnification of US launch providers for extraordinary catastrophic third-party losses of a failed launch through 2025, while the previous indemnification law was scheduled to expire in 2016. The Act also extends, through 2025, the "learning period" restrictions which limit the ability of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to enact regulations regarding the safety of spaceflight participants. Indemnification for extraordinary third-party losses has, as of 2015, been a component of US space law for over 25 years, and during this time, "has never been invoked in any commercial launch mishap."

Businessweek has summarized one effect of the legislation as "American citizens could keep anything they brought back from space.".

This summary is from Wikipedia.

Source: Wikipedia

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Totals

All Votes R D
Yea 68%
 
 
284
236
 
48
 
Nay 32%
 
 
133
3
 
130
 
Not Voting
 
 
15
5
 
10
 

Passed. Simple Majority Required. Source: house.gov.

Ideology Vote Chart

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Republican - Yea Democrat - Yea Republican - Nay Democrat - Nay
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Cartogram Map

Each hexagon represents one congressional district. Dark shaded hexes are Yea votes.

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Vote Details

Notes: The Speaker’s Vote?
The Speaker of the House is not required to vote in “ordinary legislative proceedings, except when such vote would be decisive.” In practice, this means the Speaker of the House rarely votes and only does so when it is politically useful. When the Speaker declines to vote, he or she is simply omitted from the roll call by the House Clerk. (See House Rules, Rule I(7).)
“Aye” or “Yea”?

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The U.S. Constitution says that bills should be decided on by the “yeas and nays” (Article I, Section 7). Congress takes this literally and uses “yea” and “nay” when voting on the final passage of bills.

All Senate votes use these words. But the House of Representatives uses “Aye” and “No” in other sorts of votes.

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Study Guide

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You can find answers to most of the questions below here on the vote page. For a guide to understanding the bill this vote was about, see here.

What was the procedure for this vote?

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    One tool that will be helpful in answering this question is the cartogram at the top of the page. A cartogram is a stylized map of the United States that shows each district as an identical hexagon. This view allows you to see the how the representatives from each district voted arranged by their geography and colored by their political party. What trends can you see in the cartogram for this vote?

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