Reported Obama Plan Would Privatize Manned Launches

couchslug writes with this excerpt from the not-yet-paywalled New York Times: "President Obama will end NASA's return mission to the moon and turn to private companies to launch astronauts into space when he unveils his budget request to Congress next week, an administration official said Thursday. The shift would 'put NASA on a more sustainable and ambitious path to the future' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But the changes have angered some members of Congress, particularly from Texas, the location of the Johnson Space Center, and Florida, the location of the Kennedy Space Center. 'My biggest fear is that this amounts to a slow death of our nation's human space flight program,' Representative Bill Posey, Republican of Florida, said in a statement." If true, this won't please the federal panel that recommended against just such privatization.

Comments

Privatisation

[bencoder]

Privatisation isn't privatisation when your primary customers and sources of funding come from the government. There is in fact no difference, just an illusion of competition. What is needed is for them to remove the regulations that exist against private space travel. Remove the monopolistic government funded NASA entirely, leaving the playing field completely open for private firms to build a true spot in the marketplace. That is the only way space exploration, tourism and travel will be able to survive.