Robert Bigelow is a Las Vegas hotel billionaire who owns Bigelow Aerospace and wants to put a Budget Suites of America motel somewhere in space near you. Such facilities are apparently called privately-owned orbital facilities or POOFs. Seriously.

Of course, the folks at Bigelow think that their dreams of space tourism may be negatively impacted by the anti-POOF forces over at the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (“DDTC”). Those grinches take the view that most space-qualified stuff is on the USML and needs an export license, which, of course, is a major annoyance for someone who wants to build hotels (and other commercial facilities) in the sky.¹ So, according to an editorial by Bigelow’s general counsel in the print edition of Space News, Bigelow is going to file a commodity jurisdiction (“CJ”) request to transfer the company’s “space habitat” (or POOF) technology from the United States Munitions List to the Commerce Control List (“CCL”).

Anyone who has filed a CJ request is probably giggling more over the idea that Bigelow’s CJ request will be addressed by DDTC anytime soon than they are over the acronym POOF. Similarly, the idea that DDTC will move space technology, even for space hotels, over to the CCL will provoke similar snorts. And, of course, once DDTC says no to Bigelow’s request, that will be the end of the story since such decisions are shielded from judicial review under section 2778(h) of the Arms Export Control Act.

But you can’t blame Bigelow for dreaming, can you?

[Thanks to Res Communis and Hobbyspace for info on the Space News editorial]

¹Under section 120.17(a)(6) a space launch of a payload is not itself an export of the payload. However, Bigelow appears to be hoping to launch its components from outside the United States, and thus would be required to export them prior to launch.

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