Today the Washington Post endorsed the idea of democratizing spaceflight aka space commercialization. This is the smart direction that we need to go - the Review of Human Space Flight Plans Committee looks to be endorsing it, there are positive signs coming out of NASA and the Obama administration. Its great to be adding more people to the cause.
First, before I begin, I have not forgotten the promise I made last week, about doing a mini-series. I will finish it this week. Moving on
For those of you who don't understand the concept, the idea of space democratization is to provide a mechanism to allow all members of society access to space, its resources, its utilities, and all that it can offer our society to the average person.
The quickest way to do this is to align both public resources, and private resources, to develop the technology, the infrastructure, the financial tools, the regulatory structures, so that this can happen. One of the big things is to try and merge some of the potential commercial markets with NASA's markets, which is the idea behind things like COTS, and its follow-ons CRS and Commercial Crew Development.
Today, the Washington Post came out in favor of this, for NASA
Now that the station is nearly complete, this might be an optimal time to open space to entrepreneurs. Many companies claim they possess the capacity to transport humans and payloads into space; the review committee found their reports convincing enough to suggest that these space entrepreneurs could take over the transport of astronauts and supplies to the space station after the shuttle program ends.
There are those who are concerned about whether NewSpace can deliver, but this ignores a few major points
- It will not be contracts only available to NewSpace companies - this is about aligning potential commercial markets with NASA markets. This means requiring a more service oriented contract structure, and one that always requires a working deliverable, rather than traditional cost-plus contracting. Boeing already does this in the commercial aviation industry - there is no reason it, or Lockheed Martin can't do business in this fashion - indeed, there is already evidence that they are willing to do so, since Boeing was a Prime Contractor candidate for COTS 1.5. Personally, I hope to see a Boeing or LM or ULA as one of the winning contracts.
- The other issue is that Orion wouldn't be available until after the station is de-orbited. This means its not Orion vs Commercial crew, but its American Commercial Crew vs Russian Commercial Crew. No disrespect to the Russians, or their Soyuz craft, but I would much prefer we have this industrial capability within the US.
The WaPo may have gotten one thing wrong - they didn't quite seem to be able to come up with a measurable, granular reason, for human spaceflight, other than "being part of the American Creed", but thats a battle for another day.
Washington Post, welcome to the party.