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Commercialization

More About That Space Exploration Paradigm Shift

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 3, 2016
Filed under
More About That Space Exploration Paradigm Shift

Reaching for the Stars by Paying for Results, Huffington post
“With all discretionary spending under pressure, a new paradigm will be required to ensure NASA’s future is as bright as its heritage. Funding research at higher levels will call for development of a revenue base to augment the agency’s general fund allocations. A robust space economy where private firms support government infrastructure, services and research in space via user fees can make that a reality. A revenue positive future is something that Congress and any administration should embrace.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

9 responses to “More About That Space Exploration Paradigm Shift”

  1. Erik says:
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    Yes — that’s what we need. “User fees” for space…

  2. ThomasLMatula says:
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    So that is how the dinosaur plans to survive, charging the mammals because it is able to. I suggest another future for NASA. Closing it down because its mission of inspiring Americans to explore space has been completed. Folks like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Robert Bigelow will take it from here. Radical perhaps, but new paradigms means new players 🙂

    • Neville Chamberlain says:
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      But the fees might still be applicable to the huge base of knowledge that NASA has amassed.

      I don’t agree that the Mission of NASA has been accomplished in any respect. Without a clear goal for NASA (Moon or Mars), NASA has failed utterly to inspire Americans to explore space.

      Except for perhaps SpaceX, there are many organizations or individuals that have expressed a desire to launch payloads to the Moon or Mars but in each case, lack of funding is preventing such plans from moving forward. Now, Congress wants to add even more fees to those entities which will put such NGO missions out of reach entirely. This sounds like Congress trying to keep New Space throttled and hobbled such that exclusively NASA will have a clear path for any missions beyond LEO and can’t be embarrassed by NGO’s building hardware at a fraction of the cost and embarking on missions that NASA should have led decades ago or preempting NASA future plans by NGOs getting there first.

      In other words, Congress wants the SLS at any cost as a jobs program and if we don’t get to Mars until 2040 or later, it guarantees jobs in facilities that support SLS for at least another couple decades and beyond. The fact that NASA is constrained by Congress to go as slow as possible to extend jobs programs (SLS – Orion) is no longer good enough with the announcement by SpaceX of privately financed Red Dragon missions (there will be several) using Falcon Heavy which is the most powerful rocket behind SLS (If SLS ever gets built and launched) and SpaceX has developed and can fly the Falcon Heavy at a cost far less than a tenth of the cost of SLS. Congress does not like to be embarrassed. .

    • Brokinarrow says:
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      This is just a suggestion that is made at the end of the article, it’s not any actual plan that has been submitted by Congress nor the Whitehouse….

    • montagna_lunga says:
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      That is an inspired comment.

  3. Michael Spencer says:
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    This actually could make sense- assuming that NASA provides services comparable to those of the FAA and similar agencies. So far I don’t see it.

  4. Neville Chamberlain says:
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    This sounds like an attempt of Old Space to constrain New Space (SpaceX, Bezos and others). Old Space is not interested in innovation so they want to make it so expensive that New Space cannot afford to continue without a) paying a fee or b) doing the R&D (perhaps redundant to NASA research conducted in the past & present or research to be conducted in the future a second time).

    Knowing Congress, Congress will mandate that all fees collected be used to support “the rocket to nowhere” (SLS) rather than giving NASA a free hand to use the fees for further R&D efforts or to support missions that are not currently fully funded by Congress.

    If fees for services are comparable in scope and cost to those of the FAA then I wholeheartedly support a fee system.

  5. Daniel Woodard says:
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    I agree with the comment below. There isn’t anything in the article to suggest anyone is proposing that NASA be supported by user fees. Basically this was tried early in te Shuttle program when it was assumed the Shurttle would carry commercial payloads into orbit at a lower cost than ELVs. It was not paticularly sucessful; even though the costs were set much to low to actually recover the operating cost there were very few customers.

  6. hikingmike says:
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    I think the road maintenance one does happen 🙂