guarding their turf

guarding their turf

Jeff Foust reports that the fight is on to stop (perceived) center closings at various NASA field centers.

Well, NASA's official position is that there will be no center closings, only that specific facilities will be closed at a number of field centers.

My question is, why keep any of the centers at all? The don't need to be closed; they could instead be privatized. If some field center has any economic merit (ie it produces things that consumers actually want), it will remain open. The free market will see to that. If a center has no merit, then it will perish just like any other obsolete business.

These field centers are supposedly staffed by the brightest minds in the aerospace industry. They have (one assumes) state-of-the-art facilities. There is no reason why these bright lights cannot make a go of it as regular corporations. If they cannot, well, then they just aren't very bright - in which case, they have no business being in the industry in the first place.

It wasn't that long ago that the Bell telephone monopoly was broken up. Today, more people are employed in the telephone service and manufacturing industry than ever before, innovations occur on a regular basis, and service is less expensive than ever. The same thing can happen with the space industry if the NASA field centers are forced to compete on the free market rather than being part of a government-run monopoly.