Years ago when I was working on the Percheron project, the subject of regulation came up. There was one school of thought that said that since no existing regulatory agency actually directly applied to a private rocket launch, with the exception of a few amateur rocket regulations, that we should just go right ahead after informing the proper authorities (NORAD for one!) and launch using reasonable and standard launch vehicle precautions and existing FAA rules. Then after the precedent was set, maybe additional regulation would be minimal.

Unfortunately, other companies decided that the way to go was to go with hat in hand to Washington and say "Please, sir, would you like to regulate this?" This was like waving steak in front of a hungry Rottweiler, and the rest is history.

The primary non-technical problem we had at Rotary Rocket was trying to keep regulatory agencies from making our job impossible.