A private route to Mars
WASHINGTON – A White House panel of space experts, wrestling with questions about how to pay for expeditions to the moon and Mars, wants NASA to give private companies a broader role and a greater share of the financial burden.
The presidential commission will recommend NASA’s role in missions be limited to “areas where there is irrefutable demonstration that only government can perform the proposed activity,” says a summary of its conclu-sions obtained by the Associated Press.
Responsibility for manned spaceflight would stay with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The commission’s final report is expected this week. President Bush has proposed establishing a lunar base within two decades and making a manned landing on Mars after 2030.
The president’s panel, led by former astronaut Edward C. “Pete” Aldridge, describes how to meet Bush’s exploration objectives “within reasonable schedules and affordable costs.” Its recommendations are aimed at least partly toward easing the burden for taxpayers by increasing commercialization of the nation’s space program.
The panel envisions rewarding companies that participate with “appropriate property rights” to technology they may develop, thus creating what the commission described as a space industry that will contribute to national economic growth and develop into a “national treasure.”
A broader role for private industry in America’s space program, however, could reignite a simmering debate over astronaut safety in an environment in which corporations are driven to reduce costs, generate shareholder profits and meet contractual promises.
The board that investigated the Columbia space shuttle’s breakup in 2003 criticized NASA’s “substantial transfers of safety responsibility from the government to the private sector” during its greater reliance on private contractors since the mid-1990s.
The White House commission said NASA should allow private companies “to assume the primary role of providing services to NASA and most immediately in accessing low-Earth orbit.” It said it anticipates “reasonable risk . . . along with some failures.”
Experts said that clearly signals an intention to hand over nearly all space launches except manned missions to private corporations.
“It carves out the launch of astronauts,” said George T. Whitesides, head of the National Space Society, a nonprofit group that advocates space exploration. “I’m sure there will be a lot of debate about that over the coming weeks.”
The chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., declined to comment until the report is announced on Wednesday.
The presidential panel will encourage NASA to “aggressively use its contractual authority” to foster new technology and ideas. It wants NASA to assess current launch technology, which would be handed over to the private sector.
It also will recommend that Congress offer prize money as incentives for scientists to accomplish space missions and develop helpful technology. Already, the X Prize Foundation is offering a $10 million prize for the first privately financed manned spaceflight.