Over at Commercial Space Gateway, Richard Mains looks at the ways that the federal government can help the emerging commercial space sector:
Only the government can work to ensure that the bureaucratic barriers to space access for U.S. entrepreneurs are low, but also ensure there are reasonable safety guidelines in place. Government must also be a reliable customer for companies who are able to provide good value, but make it known that it expects to eventually be the first of several customers, as space commerce grows. Government needs multiple commercial providers and doesn’t want to be any industry’s only customer. That’s too risky for all as has been learned many times over in the aerospace contracting industry.
Looking just at NASA, it has a congressional legislative mandate, and the President’s and NASA Administrator’s strong support for helping to increase the private sector’s ability to provide lower-cost infrastructure services for more frequent access to space. There is understandable resistance to this by members of Congress whose regional and state funding might be negatively impacted by the increasing use of emerging commercial space companies. However, the U.S. can no longer afford the higher costs of solely accessing space via government-developed, and contractor-operated and maintained transportation systems. We must utilize and adapt to the new emerging low-cost and effective options, or lose our ability to compete in the increasingly global space marketplace. There is increasing evidence that traditional aerospace entities intend to be involved in providing new commercial space services too, which would bring more healthy competition (and some buyouts?).
Read the full essay.
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