Photo: SpaceX Falcon 9Entrepreneurs in Space? Taking Over our Space Transport From NASA? Now that is a GREAT IDEA!
The strange part is that the GOP is horrified by the thought of entrepreneurs taking over. What's wrong with that?
It costs over $500 million for just one Shuttle launch, a machine originally designed with 1970's technology. Space Entreprenur Richard Branson and his team launched SpaceShipOne for under $25 million - peanuts. SpaceX is also a player. They were planning a private orbiting hotel. Obviously, you need a way to get to and from that hotel in a cost effective manner. I would bet on these guys and the others who will follow for our next phase: Space Business, led by private entreprenurs.
As India and China plan their own space launches to the Moon (with their own money and technology) NASA has been too slow to keep up in design. And it has been chronically underfunded. The Bush "Moon Plan" was not funded from the get-go, so it was never really going to achieve anything at a snails pace. Even NASA's head, Gen. Bolden, thinks it is a good idea.
Getting to space is not new technology. Getting to space economically will require entrepreneurs to keep us in the race with India and China. At the slow rate we are going the world will pass us by unless we do call in the American entrepreneurs.
The U.S. has too much financial debt to keep space transport an exclusively government enterprise. We don't need a government monopoly. That strategy has led us to having to ride on Russian rockets as the aging Shuttles are sent to museums and NASA struggles to build a replacement five years behind schedule.
Give the Obama administration credit for putting trust in America's entrepreneurs for the next frontier: Space. It isn't the final frontier, but it is mankind's next one.
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