If the Obama’s new NASA plan survives the congressional wringer of hearings, markups, amendments and votes in anything like its present form, it will mark a radical transformation of the our space program from the emphasis on the development and operations of launch vehicles and spacecraft, focused on traveling to specific destinations to the development of capabilities and technologies needed for future exploration to a variety of destinations, while also supporting the development of a commercial infrastructure to handle more routine operations.
In short, the new Obama NASA strategy will do for space what the shift from a DARPA-funded government-centric computer industry of the 70s and early 80’s to an entrepreurial private sector strategy did for the computer industry, spawning the WWW, Apple, Intel, Google, and Microsoft. The shift from government-funded to private launched the US as the world’s innovation leader.
In supporting this radical shift, the Augustine committee pointed out that they would require at least $50 billion more over the next 10 years in order for NASA to get back to the moon. And then we would get there about a decade late, and all the money was going into one massive effort.
“Events such as the flight of "SpaceShipOne" and current work on commercial human suborbital/orbital flight systems herald a 'New Space' era,” said Dr Charles Lurio, publisher of “The Lurio Report” which covers the new private space sector. “Commercial activities could expand to produce economic benefits in rivalry to the IT/web revolution.
“The Cold War era 'moon race' linked space to a government framework and a public mindset that effectively prohibited developing practical spaceflight abilities for people and cargo. Only comsat - type space businesses could succeed, since radio signals provide their own transportation to and from orbit.”
This is exactly why the rise of the US private space sector is so vital and so timely. While critics and status-quo members of congress are lining up to attack the program, US entrepreneurs from Jeff Bezos to Tesla and Space X’s Elon Musk to Microsoft’s Paul Allen, are heading at full steam into our space future. With international partners in abundance including the space programs in Canada, Japan, Europe and India along with other countries, the US space program is preparing for an exciting dynamic future.
“The US space program is not atrophying, quite the opposite. The newly proposed NASA budget and program will create the opportunity for the private sector to do for space what it did for computers: massively reduce costs and similarly increase capabilities,” said Dr Charles Lurio, publisher of “The Lurio Report” which covers the new private space sector.
The money flows from the vast stimulus effort that the US government has activated over the past few months and is part of the US $6 billion, five-year effort to make sustained commercial spaceflight a reality.
“New and small companies will benefit enormously in the process, like Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corp, which alone was awarded $20 million to continue development of its “Dream Chaser” manned space capsule, and Washington State-based Blue Origin which was awarded almost $4 million for various projects, including research on the use of composite materials in space,” writes Peter J. Brown in Asia Times.” Another small company on the list is Arizona-based Paragon Space Development Corp, which is pursuing various space mission support systems and receiving $1.4 million to do so.
“Boeing, a veteran contractor for NASA, received $18 million to create a seven-person space capsule and a joint venture involving Boeing and Lockheed Martin known as the United Launch Alliance will use almost $7 million for systems in support of future Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rocket flights.
“It is important to note that two pioneering US private space sector companies, California-based Space Exploration Technologies and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp, are moving ahead rapidly thanks to the $3.5 billion that they have already been awarded for International Space Station support missions,” Brown added.
“Is the private sector likely to have failures? Yes. Will lives be lost? Most regrettably, that may happen at some time or other. But NASA has had tragic losses for decades, without substantially overcoming fundamental safety issues - just as they haven’t reduced cost,” wrote Lurio in his most recent report. “The private sector would pursue multiple paths to orbit in parallel, respond more quickly to fix system flaws, and must strive constantly towards making space flight ever-safer to enable and expand its own new, private markets.”
“The proposed R&D work has several sections which themselves appear geared to both benefit from and encourage ‘a thousand flowers blooming’ in the New Space industry,” wrote Lurio, who added, “The fight for changes at NASA has barely begun.”
Casey Kazan via Asia Times
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