NASA hopes that using stimulus funds to create new commercial joint ventures will boost its flagging ability to continue exploring the final frontier. Despite its perennial budget reductions, things may be looking up for space travel as NASA offers grant money to several private industry firms with stars in their eyes.

The space agency's fiscal restraints have made it nearly impossible for NASA to unilaterally undertake all of the programs it sees as necessary to promote the advantageous exploration of space. But now, according to many insiders, NASA administrators actively support these new partnerships and see such cooperation as an opportunity to grow both sides, privately owned and government owned, and use this unique marriage to produce healthy offspring.

During her recent confirmation hearings in the Senate, recently appointed NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver commented on the alliance of the commercial sector of the aerospace industry with the government agency: “[my experience] taught me that the incredible talent and dedication of the work force not only resides as NASA, but also in private industry.”

There are many in government who hope NASA’s official embrace of civilian efforts in the development of space technology and travel will bring great rewards and promising developments to the overall sector. White House science adviser John Holden cited the pairing of public and private talent and technology as one of the primary goals of the Obama administration.

In furtherance of those goals, NASA recently set aside $2.5 billion over the next five years to fund efforts by commercial firms to research and develop new space taxis to shuttle crews to and from the International Space Station. This program is known as Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) and will award $50 million in stimulus funds this year to bolster private sector work in this field. According to the director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, John Gedmark, “This new program ... epresents a new milestone in the development of an orbital commercial human spaceflight sector. By maturing the design and development of commercial crew spaceflight concepts and associated enabling technologies and capabilities, the program will allow several companies to move a few steps forward towards the ultimate goal of full demonstration of commercial human spaceflight to orbit.”

CCDev is the latest tactical move in the overall public/private cooperation strategy that includes the Commercial Orbital Transportation System program (COTS) which was initiated to support the building of cargo-carrying spacecraft by commercial firms. Two firms, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation, have already received over $3.5 billion in contracts from this program and are currently involved in designing and manufacturing vehicles capable of achieving NASA’s goals.

This form of domestic outsourcing from publicly funded (read: federal government) institutions to privately funded interests will ultimately save taxpayers around $50 billion over the next several years as contracts that were to be funded from federal coffers will now be paid for by grant money already allocated to NASA. Furthermore, the money spent will promote growth in private industry which, according to the theory, will eventually find its way back into the overall economy, thus causing a rising tide that will lift all ships (space ships, in this case).

This appears, to some degree, to be a step in the right direction. Rather than develop technology purely under government auspices, with accompanying cost overruns and bureaucratic entanglements, private sector procurement makes more sense. Ultimately, however, manned space flight will be more likely to succeed if space is commercialized and spaceflight is privatized. A comparison with the development of air transport may be instructive. From the Wright brothers on through the 1930's, the development of aircraft technology was led by the private sector, and in many cases by individual pilots who developed and tested technology and techniques on their own. While the average person is not going to design and build a launch vehicle in their garage these days, still, it is the private sector that, in space as in other sectors of the economy, can do the job with the greatest degree of efficiency and success.

It is time for the age of government dominated space flight to be replaced with age of commercial space transport.

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Bob Donohoo said:

It's all about government control... It seems to me that the purpose of the space program from the very beginning was to give government more control and perceived influence over our lives. It did a good job of convincing my neighbors and friends that there are just some things best left to the government to do. Now that the glamour has all but worn off the space sector it can be turned over to the private sector where it always belonged. Some people would argue that the space program gave us such things as Teflon and computer chips. I would argue that the space program paved the way for public acceptance of Johnson's great society programs. It's time to give all of it back to the private sector; space and benevolence. Too bad all the socialists it created can’t be so easily handed back to the private sector. That clean up we will have to do ourselves…

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August 26, 2009
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