How would Texas regulate aviation and aerospace?

With its own civil-aviation authority, operating inside the global aviation system that already lets planes fly safely between every country on Earth. Air traffic control, safety standards, and cross-border flights are governed by an international framework Texas would join. This is settled, everyday infrastructure, and the book lists air traffic control among the issues "common to all independent nations" that are "handled in virtually the same way."

International aviation already runs on a treaty, not on a single government

Every flight that crosses a border does so under one global framework. The Convention on International Civil Aviation, signed in Chicago in 1944, created the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency now numbering 193 member states with more than twelve thousand shared standards. That convention affirms that every nation has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory, and that every member runs air-navigation services over its own territory. Planes already fly seamlessly from country to country because of this system, not in spite of borders. An independent Texas would join ICAO and slot directly into the framework that makes global aviation work.

Texas would run its own civil-aviation authority and its own airspace

Inside the ICAO framework, each country operates its own civil-aviation authority and controls its own airspace. An independent Texas would establish a Texas authority to certify aircraft and operators, oversee safety, and manage Texas airspace and air traffic control, exactly as every nation does. The controllers, the airport personnel, the inspectors, and the engineers who keep Texas aviation running are already here. Cross-border flights would continue under air-service agreements, the standard bilateral and open-skies arrangements that already govern how airlines fly between nations. Your flight to another country is a treaty matter, and treaties are exactly what a sovereign Texas would sign.

Texas is already an aerospace heavyweight

This is not a state hoping to be let into the aerospace world. It is already one of its capitals. Texas hosts NASA's Johnson Space Center, SpaceX's Starbase on the Gulf Coast, and Blue Origin's West Texas operations. The Dallas-Fort Worth region alone is home to roughly 675 aerospace companies and about 95,000 aerospace jobs, the largest such concentration in the state. Texas designs, builds, and flies aircraft and spacecraft at the highest level. Regulating that industry is not a capability Texas would have to import. It is an industry Texas already leads.

A regulator built for the Texas industry

There is an advantage to running your own. A Texas civil-aviation and space authority could write rules built for the Texas aerospace economy, set its own pace on certifying new aircraft and launch operations, and answer to the Texas industry rather than to a federal agency balancing the whole country. The state already moved to lead in space by creating the Texas Space Commission and funding new research facilities. The exact design of a Texas aviation authority is for the future Texas government to set. The framework it would join, and the industry it would serve, are already in place.

The bottom line

Texas would regulate aviation through its own civil-aviation authority inside the ICAO framework that already governs global flight, control its own airspace, and keep cross-border flights running under standard air-service agreements. With Johnson Space Center, Starbase, and one of the world's largest aerospace clusters, Texas regulates an industry it already leads.