Bush's next space speech

Bush's next space speech

Back on January 14th of this year, my sister had her 33rd birthday (hi Wendy :) ) - oh yeah, and President Bush made some space speech. Jeff Foust muses that there may be another one upcoming soon.

A July speech would make sense, with the Aldridge Commission's final report out in early June, NASA reorganization begun, and the election kicking into gear.

The more I think about it, the more I think it is time to cut all the field centers loose from NASA and force them all into the private sector. This is not to say that they should all lose their jobs: each field center would become a separate business. Offer an intial public offering of each in the stock market, allow people to buy into NASA field centers as part of their retirement funds.

It breaks up the monopoly on space traffic. NASA becomes just the administration, not the entire industry. Move the FAA office of space transportation over to the new NASA administrative offices. Move the EPA offices relevant to the space industry over to the new NASA administration. Move all other government agencies associated with space over to NASA, and privatize anything that is not. In the end, NASA itself wouldn't launch anything nor build or design any space hardware. Instead, the former field centers would do those sorts of things in competition and cooperation with the free market, as independent businesses.

All NASA would do is be a one-stop link between the space industry and the US government. All regulatory issues currently handled by numerous other agencies and NASA itself could be streamlined into one simplified process. Any government space contracts would be handled through this one agency.

The field centers would already be competitive in any space industry, given the existing infrastructure and talent base. They would probably need to hire a few more salesmen though.

They would be in line for the government contracts for things like robotic mapping of the moon, CEV construction, mission launches, any of the myriad of things that they do now. Only with the reorganization of NASA they would be in competition for those contracts with the types of companies that are currently in the running for the Ansari X-Prize: small startup companies are producing surprising amounts of quality hardware given their budgets. Given the many niches that would open up in the marketplace with the reorganization of NASA, the vast majority of these companies would be highly competitive.

The cost of the Bush vision will not be sustainably indefinitely, not by the government alone. And if government is the only player allowed, then the marketplace will never get a toehold.

Therefore, the marketplace must be an integral part of the new direction of NASA. By reforming NASA, the market will be involved from the beginning, and may even take over, exceeding what one would expect from NASA operating the way it does today. After a four year transition period, America would be set on a course for space that would be unstoppable, bringing to bear the full power of free people working in the free market.