nasa taking vision to next step

NASA: Taking the Vision to the Next Step

From SpaceRef.com today:NASA: Taking the Vision to the Next Step

There are links to short PDF power point presentations given by the

various aerospace contractors. Of particular interest to me is the one

by t/Space. They want to develop the idea of building an

infrastructure in space by using a market-based approach of

encouraging competition among many small companies rather than the

traditional big contractor approach of NASA. Obviously, someone at

NASA is listening to them, or they wouldn't be included in the group.

This is very, very interesting to me. It's sort of like a libertarian

space program, Austrian economics and all. I have thought for a very

long time that we need to move away from the big bloated government

bureaucracy model that NASA has become. Yes, NASA got us to the Moon

in the 1960s, but those same guys built up the bureaucracy that has

done little since then to push the envelope of manned spaceflight.

In my estimation, NASA will opt for a plan where Boeing and Lockheed

Martin team with the smaller contractors to compete for the big chunks

of work involved in building up the various parts of the Moon and Mars

plans. Most likely, the two big companies will each get work.

(Personally, I hope they do)

But it would be cool if we could have a market driven competition for

this new space initiative. Burt Rutan has said that in ten years,

Boeing and Lockheed Martin will be building low cost spacecraft more