A Mars Odyssey

In a statement today, NASA announced it would be giving guidance and airspace in low-Earth orbit (but no funding) to a final list of two commercial space organizations.  Under the non-reimbursable Space Act agreement signed into “law” by Director Griffin in November 2006, a set of guidelines for agency and civilian partnerships is outlined.

The amendments made to the 1958 Sapce Act, collectively known as NPD 1050.10H, provide many ways for NASA to become the shepherding agency of a wider and truly space faring society.  Under subsection 1.b, while there are no monies transferred between the agency and private or publicly held parties, a budget is drawn up that includes the fair use value of NASA resources and risks so all parties involved can be sure the agreement is fair overall.  This may be applied to US or foreign-owned companies.

This paves the way for NASA to begin handing off some of it’s duties with regard to the International Space Station (ISS) to public-sector spacing firms when the Space Shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.  Given the level of capability as demonstrated by the Ansari X-prize winning SpaceshipOne, while awe-inspiring and innovative, it demonstrates there’s some catching up that needs to be done until the private sector is able to take over the administration of the Earth’s near space.  That doesn’t mean industry can’t catch up quickly, especially with the help of the nearly half-century old agency that was initially dismissive of private spacecraft.

It seems they now have decided they need each other.  If that was the goal of the whole X-prize spectacle, then it worked.  Commercial spacecraft are now serious business.  In  fact, it would seem that with budgeting constraints tightening while more and more is expected of programs like Constellation, NASA will have to rely upon those with a profit motive to get the work done.  It would seem that this is the first step on the road to making space flight subject to the laws of supply and demand.

The amended Space Act also allows for funded ventures, such as the agreements with the University of Arizona that yielded the soon to be launched Phoenix probe.  The provisions of the current Space Act will expire in late 2011 and be reworked, if necessary, at that time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 9:48 am and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.