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NASA to Go Commercial?
jeffy124 writes: "CNN has an article about NASA possibly selling space. The idea comes from Russia, where they have have sent into space Pizza Hut pizza, talking picture frames, and magazines. The proposal includes ties with the entertainment industry, tourism, NASA merchandise, and hiring a nongovernment organization to manage the US areas of the International Space Station." If anyone has a link to this NASA draft document the article talks about, please post it below.
I don't really understand how much this could help NASA. Ask the average Joe-on-the-street when the next Shuttle launch is and I doubt he could answer you. Shit, I can't answer you.
NASA started losing its appeal to the everyman around the late 80's, following the Challenger explosion. Everyone knows Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, but I doubt the average Joe could tell you the name of any of the people crewing the shuttle right now. I know I can't without a little Google searching.
So really, how effective a marketing scheme will this be? Who's turning on the television to see the ads plastered on the side of the Shuttle prior to launch? What Newspaper prints a front page story about the shuttle launch? What kind of exposure would a Playstation 2 ad get on the Shuttle versus the kind of exposure it would get during the Superbowl, or the World Series, or a "Very Special Episode of 'Felicity'"?
I think it's wonderful that NASA is seeking out private funding, since the powers that be are no longer interested in the space program. I just have to wonder what kind of revenue a space shuttle advertisement would bring, and if that revenue would be any more than a drop in the bucket compared to the total cost of operating the shuttle.
As a big supporter of private access to space, this does not seem like such a good thing for the american public. NASA started off as a wonderful, if costly, employment plan that showed the Russians we had ICBMs, but is now charged with maintaining their own finances. That's all well and good, but NASA still has government beaurocracy and inertia holding it back. Small private companies, attempting to develop reusable access vehicles, are more likely to be efficient and innovative in their approaches than the dinosaur that is most of NASA (admittedly, some of the departments are quite good, like the recent jury rig to survey a comet.) In order to get funding, those companies were going to need investment from large companies, which would go into developing their businesses. I fear that NASA has beaten them to the punch, and the investment dollars will be thrown at the beaurocracy to dissapear.
P.S. Before anybody whines, advertising is a form of investment like any other. You give somebody money, and hope you get more back while they use it.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
Courtney Stadd took over the Office of Commercial Space at the Department of Commerce shortly after Malcolm Baldridge, then Secretary of Commerce, died after a fall from a horse. Stadd had previously been working at NASA.
Baldridge had established the Office of Commercial Space in response to difficulties he had with NASA accepting private overtures at a Commercially Developed Space Facility (CDSF) aka the Industrial Space Facility (ISF) -- a man-tended orbital laboratory, entirely financed by private capital -- which would have been in orbit in the late 1980s if NASA had merely signed on as an "anchor tenant" -- procuring space on the laboratory as a customer -- as would have been allowed by Reagan policy and later law.
If you notice at this link another individual with close association to Stadd is Scott Pace. Scott Pace has involvement in this story of the Baldridge-era Office of Space Commerce as well.
The CDSF era was a time of misguided political activism on my part (I now know direct technology development to be far more revolutionary and threatening to the would-be "powers that be"), and I had sent a letter to the National Space Society's "Space World" editor. The letter concerned the appropriate division between private sector and public sector responsiblities. I made reference to patent law's distinction between technology (patentable) and science (unpatentable) as a guideline. Courtney Stadd had recently hired Scott Pace to work under him at the Office of Commercial Space. As someone who watched the tragic demise of the CDSF at the hands of NASA interests in teh wake of Baldridge's death, and who had actively supported the ISF, I complained to the Secretary of Commerce that I Pace should not be retained due to the potential conflict of interest represented by his participation with the various organizations surrounding the National Space Society. According to verbal reports to me, the letter of mine on patent-law-guided space commerce policy was being submitted for final publication when Pace appeared in the offices of the NSS where the editors of the NSS's "Space World" were making their deliberations. Pace rather boldly asserted that they shoudl not publish my letter and spoke of the fact that I was trying to get him fired in the same context -- as though that were somehow justification.
In this light, it is interesting that Courtney Stadd is now in line to become Goldin's successor:
Intrigue Swirls Around NASA Chief Goldin, Possible Successor
By Steven Siceloff, FLORIDA TODAY posted: 11:10 am ET, 04 October 2001
NASA Chief Rallies Troops After Terrorist Attacks
NASA Spells Out its Space Commerce Agenda
CAPE CANAVERAL - Two NASA memos issued last week look for the most part like any of the dozens that have flowed from the agency. But NASA Chief of Staff Courtney Stadd signed them instead of Administrator Dan Goldin.
It is unusual for sweeping directives such as the travel restrictions released last week to carry anyone's name other than the administrator's. The incidental change offers a glimpse into the intrigue that has swirled around Goldin since last November's election.
Agency observers and White House officials have long seen Stadd as an administrator candidate.
Those views gained intensity in late August and September. Then the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 pushed the government into a war footing. NASA issues plunged to the depths of the White House's to-do list.
Stadd holds considerable sway over NASA since he was appointed by the Bush administration, said Federation of American Scientists analyst Charles Vick.
"I think a lot of responsibility is falling on his shoulders," Vick said. "This administration doesn't give a blast about NASA now, and didn't before the events of Sept. 11."
Howard McCurdy, a space policy professor at American University in Washington, D.C., said Goldin faces an unusual situation: plural leadership of a federal agency.
Instead of a single man at the helm, the White House has Goldin and Stadd to run NASA together. "This is a 70-year-old technique in Washington," McCurdy said.
Vice President Al Gore was sufficiently interested in space during the previous presidency that a deputy NASA administrator was not necessary, McCurdy suggested.
While not dismissing McCurdy's suggestion, Goldin press secretary Glenn Mahone said that Stadd's Chief of Staff position is next in line after the vacant Deputy Administrator slot.
The new initiatives are not a sign of a power shift at NASA, but rather a sign that Stadd is comfortable with the agency and the role he has held in it since January, Mahone said.
"It isn't any signal," Mahone said. "Courtney now has his footing in the agency. It's a growing process."
But other NASA watchers said leadership at NASA has been diluted for lack of interest.
"There is a growing perception that Dan is going to be an administrator for life," said John Pike, director of the Alexandria, Va.-based thinktank Globalsecurity.org. "This should have been taken care of in the spring. It's indicative of the unusually low priority that NASA has been accorded. Now it is even further from the front of the stove."
The White House plucked Stadd from his commercial space business as a liaison between Clinton Administration holdover Goldin and Bush's staff. "There's certainly been a view that Courtney was providing the adult supervision during the transition to a new administrator," Pike said.
Uncertainty is something agency employees have had to deal with for months. It faces a $4.8 billion cost overrun in the International Space Station program and shortfalls in the space shuttle program. The agency also must find a new director at Johnson Space Center in Houston and a new administrator.
Seastead this.
I forget which book it was, and I'm sure someone will be happy to chip in and correct me on the exact quote, too...
"The 'C's and 'L's came out great. The 'O's and 'A's had a few problems."
This was a line from the story which described a science package that shot sodium dust out of a small can off the surface of the moon. It was supposed to rise off of the nighttime surface facing the earth, into the sunlight. Someone had inserted a mask into the can, so when the sodium dust hit the sun, it was a logo rather than simply a circle.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.