Why NASA Needs to Change for America to Have a Chance in Space

Photo: Falcon 9

It costs NASA $65 million per astronaut to launch them into space but a private company can do the same job for $20 million (and still make money.) That would benefit America’s private entrepreneurs, the taxpayer benefits and so does our economy. It would also produce more flying opportunities for astronauts then the present course.

It would take NASA nearly another decade to build the Constellation on the course started under the Bush administration, which allowed a 5-year gap from Shuttle retirement to its replacement vehicle (which it failed to fully fund.) Ten years is way too late for America to truly compete in the present world of space-faring nations. Europe, India, China, Japan, Russia – all are racing past today’s NASA which does business at a snail’s pace.

The reality is that our only hope to maintain a lead is for private companies to become major space players. We have to change our approach to space – from government led to privately led.

Time is not our friend and we have to make up for lost time. Only the private sector can do it faster-better-cheaper than a lumbering government or Fortune 500 bureaucracy that needs reorganizing to compete. Instead of picking a simple design to replace the Shuttle, NASA chose a slow, complex design that was so thin that it vibrated dangerously on its first test, requiring more years of redesign, tests, meetings, etc.

NASA could have chosen a simpler, quicker design to replace the Shuttle - using the existing shuttle tank and solid-rocket boosters – with a crew compartment on top – but rejected it. It chose the pondering, slow approach.

In the meantime, private entrepreneurs managed to put SpaceShipOne on the edge of space for a mere $10 million! At $20 million, the Falcon 9 will cost 1/3 of a NASA launch. Each Shuttle launch cost $500 million! All this proves that entrepreneurs can make safe vehicles that get the job done for less.

Do you think NASA, or even Boeing, could have built SpaceShipOne for only $10 million?

I grew up as the space age began and I will always be a NASA supporter – I live only five minutes from the Houston JSC. But as someone who has worked with technology issues worldwide from the 1970’s I believe that NASA needs to restructure just like many American Fortune 500 companies have done for America to have a chance at competing with a world of space-faring nations.

I believe that more astronauts will get a chance to fly if we use private launch vehicles than would have a chance at NASA. Right now, none of them will get to fly for ten years – and then only a tiny handful. I’d like to see us get from today’s Falcon 9 to tomorrow’s “Millennium Falcon” of Star Wars fame.

People are focusing on building one particular vehicle, the Constellation, instead of finding the cheapest, fastest technology to accomplish a mission to go to Mars involving our best private minds and money.

Our space program should not to just build a Constellation rocket in Florida. It will take American entrepreneurship in space to make up for lost time. It begins with transport but the next phase will be space manufacturing and even tourism. We need it to keep out technical edge.

The President is right on this one – private companies are needed to transport America into 21st Century lead in space. Space is the ultimate high ground. It costs too much and takes too long to get there with the present NASA.

We aren’t going to lead the space race without the American entrepreneurs making it a faster, cheaper, profitable -- and accessible to the many instead of the few.