Slashdot Mirror
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.
What possible benefit can we, the public whose tax dollars support NASA, see from space exploration? Obviously, someone has decided that the money would be better spent elsewhere, and the only people I see complaining are the occasional Slashdot user.
Obviously, if we all wanted it, we'd be pissing away billions of dollars on space exploration, which so far has netted us a handful of rocks, Tang, and Astronaut Ice Cream.
Sad? Hardly. Unless you can't live without Tang.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
hmm, If we keep taking ideas from russia soon we ill be able to buy a shuttle on ebay or for a bit less a trip into space, with training. Good old Russia.
(Score:0, Interesting)
That's the most brilliant idea that I've read in weeks... sending the entertainment people in orbit!
:)
Send the people behind RIAA and MPAA into space, you'll get out full undivided support!
Oh and don't send too much oxygen... you know, it costs 1000$/KG so, you can try to save on that issue... especially if you are commercial, you must turn into profits... just a suggestion
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
But if we're going to take a cue from history, let's point NASA toward the real profit from technology lies: Porn.
No, really, think about it. Early photographs? Porn. Videos? Porn. DVDs? Why, Porn again! And don't even get me started on where all the "innovations" in Internet commerce and advertising have come from -- we may all hate the X10 ads, but they're using both innovation AND implied voyeurism to make a profit.
Now, just imagine what NASA could do by selling Space Porn. I'm sure that millions of guys across America would be "curious" enough to pay a few bucks to see sex in space. And any modeling company would love it -- no mode need for Wonderbras for lift, since there's no gravity to make them fall. And they'd bring about a whole new wave of public interest in space travel and technology (surely this would be more effective in creating public interest than the proposed return-to-the-moon plans)!
Let's face it -- a little Porn goes a long way toward the technological advancement of the human race. Abandon your silly preconceived morals and let the avarice take control.
(Moderators: With any luck, this will be funny. But it might be a troll. I'm honestly not sure =)
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Of course, most people would be against this, but Nike could find a way to label those people as communistic or something.
Keeping
As per your request, here's the report.
Old news, was released Sep 24, here's Space.com's report from the following day.
Oh, and this would've been posted earlie, but I couldn't log in, what's up with that?
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
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.
...that I would happen to be surfing the humor sites today and find this picture of a space shuttle!