Spring Break
Private industry will lead space exploration
Scott Conover
Issue date: 2/5/09 Section: Forum
Oftentimes when people think of space and space exploration in the modern world, NASA is considered for the role. As a large, multibillion dollar government entity, NASA has been involved in space observation, training and exploration for over five decades now. Yet it will not be NASA that will be on the forefront of exploration, the vanguard of settlement or the peak of human development in the cosmos. It will be private industry, seeking to soar far and wide, deep in the asteroids and high above the Earth, who will find profit in the void of space and fulfillment in the dark skies beyond our planet.
The problem with NASA is that it exists and functions in the public sector. Government organizations are wonderful for dangerous and unprofitable activities - cleaning radiation spills, sending people hurtling around the moon, funding shuttles with no profit potential, checking for environmental hazards, taking a census or any other number of relatively unprofitable yet useful activities. Thus, NASA was a great organization in the decades before the new millennium, reigning from the early 60s to the late 90s as a dedicated agency that sought to promote space and its treasures. However, NASA has largely become an inefficient and ineffective organization, paralyzed by political infighting and by a slow, long-term outlook on space exploration.
An example of this slug-like perspective on time can be seen in their viewpoints on space settlement. On Monday, December 4, 2006, at the Johnson Space Center, during a conference entitled Global Exploration Strategy And Lunar Architecture, NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale announced that NASA planned to be "… going to the Moon by 2020", which is referred to as having a moon-base.
This is a long ways off. From a managerial planning perspective, that would be alike Microsoft announcing that there will be a new version of Windows after they just released Vista. They will not know how it is going to work, or really how to do it, but that sometime between now and when the heat death occurs, there will be a new version of Windows. The NASA announcement is not any better. By 2020, we will have a moon-base. Yet this date is subject to change, planning errors, or even complete revision or withdrawal on the basis of a whim.
The problem with NASA is that it exists and functions in the public sector. Government organizations are wonderful for dangerous and unprofitable activities - cleaning radiation spills, sending people hurtling around the moon, funding shuttles with no profit potential, checking for environmental hazards, taking a census or any other number of relatively unprofitable yet useful activities. Thus, NASA was a great organization in the decades before the new millennium, reigning from the early 60s to the late 90s as a dedicated agency that sought to promote space and its treasures. However, NASA has largely become an inefficient and ineffective organization, paralyzed by political infighting and by a slow, long-term outlook on space exploration.
An example of this slug-like perspective on time can be seen in their viewpoints on space settlement. On Monday, December 4, 2006, at the Johnson Space Center, during a conference entitled Global Exploration Strategy And Lunar Architecture, NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale announced that NASA planned to be "… going to the Moon by 2020", which is referred to as having a moon-base.
This is a long ways off. From a managerial planning perspective, that would be alike Microsoft announcing that there will be a new version of Windows after they just released Vista. They will not know how it is going to work, or really how to do it, but that sometime between now and when the heat death occurs, there will be a new version of Windows. The NASA announcement is not any better. By 2020, we will have a moon-base. Yet this date is subject to change, planning errors, or even complete revision or withdrawal on the basis of a whim.
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