Going commercial frees NASA for deeper space

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May 14, 2010|By S. Alan Stern | Guest columnist


Fortunately, the Obama administration has proposed a game-changing solution that uses private industry to more cost-effectively take on the more mundane aspects of human transportation to low-Earth orbit, freeing up needed funds to send astronauts to explore deep space.

The administration's wise commercialization approach echoes an immensely successful path taken by NASA in the past. Consider: At the dawn of the Space Age, all satellites were built and launched by governments. But early on, communications satellites were encouraged to go commercial. The result: a $100 billion-plus spinoff industry that employs thousands of workers to build the satellites, their ground stations, launchers and associated command and control infrastructure. It also launches more satellites annually than any other form of spaceflight. The money saved frees NASA to do other things with its resources.

But equally important, the commercialization of space communications has also generated tens of thousands of direct and indirect private-sector jobs, and a strong innovation cycle that has produced continuous improvement across the industry for more than four decades.

In contrast, nearly 50 years after the first human flights into orbit by Astronaut John Glenn and Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, no commercial human spaceflight yet exists. Few in our parents' generation would have believed this, for at the outset of the Space Age, the commercialization of human transport to low-Earth orbit was widely expected. Remember the Pan Am shuttle in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

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