+6 monthsRegulationLead story
Federal permits at machine speed: software now reads the application first
Launch licenses and low-risk nuclear permits get an automated first review. Approvals that took months now take weeks. Critics ask what the software misses.
Starting today, applications for commercial space launch licenses and for low-risk nuclear materials permits get their first review from software. At the Federal Aviation Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an automated system checks each filing for completeness, compares it with past approvals and flags the sections that depart from precedent. Human reviewers then concentrate on what was flagged. Both agencies describe the change as a 12-month pilot.
The shift built on two moves that looked minor when they were announced last fall. The FAA began requiring launch and reentry license applications to be filed entirely in digital form, and the NRC proposed broader exemptions for products containing small amounts of nuclear material. Once applications arrived as structured data, and a growing share of cases no longer needed a full review, letting software sort them was the next step. A wave of new launch companies and backlogs at both agencies did the rest.
