Getting to space is about to be outsourced.

The Obama administration on Monday will propose in its new budget spending billions of dollars to encourage private companies to build, launch and operate spacecraft for Nasa and others. Uncle Sam would buy its astronauts a ride into space just like hopping in a taxi.

Obama’s budget also ends work on the shuttle follow-on vehicle, known as Orion, as well as a pair of rockets developed to fly astronauts to the space station, the moon and other destinations in the solar system. The president wants to end Nasa’s moon program, officials said on Monday.

The idea of outsourcing space travel is that getting astronauts into orbit is getting to be so old hat that someone other than the government can do it. It’s no longer really the Right Stuff. Going private would free the space agency to do other things, such as explore beyond Earth’s orbit, do more research and study the Earth with better satellites. And it would spur a new generation of private companies — even some with internet roots — to innovate.

But there’s some concern about that — from former Nasa officials worried about safety and from congressional leaders worried about lost jobs. Some believe space is still a tough, dangerous enterprise not to be left to private companies out for a buck.

Proponents of private space, an idea that has been kicking around for nearly 20 years, point to the airline industry in its infancy. Initially the US army flew most planes. But private companies eventually started building and operating aircraft, especially when they got a guaranteed customer in the US government to deliver air mail.

That’s what Nasa would be: a guaranteed customer to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station through 2020. It would be similar to the few years that Nasa paid Russia to fly astronauts on its Soyuz after the Columbia accident in 2003.

“With a $6 billion program you can have multiple winners. You’ll literally have your Blackberry, your iPhone and your Android phone all competing for customers in the marketplace”, said John Gedmark, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. The White House has said it will be adding $5.9 billion to the overall Nasa budget over five years; Gedmark believes most or all will go to commercial space.

Mike Gold, corporate counsel at Bigelow Aerospace, which is building the first commercial space station and is a potential spacecraft provider, believes the government should have privatized launchings decades ago. “It will force the aerospace world to become competitive again and restore us to our glory days”, he said.

Last year as part of the stimulus package, Nasa said it would give out $50 million in seed and planning money for the idea of a commercial spaceship. Several firms expressed interest and Nasa will soon pick a winner or winners.

But the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, created after Nasa’s first fatal accident, warned that the existing private rockets are not rated by the government as safe for people to fly on. That has to be addressed with testing before jumping into commercial space, the panel said.

Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Obama-effect-Nasa-to-outsource-space-journeys/articleshow/5525666.cms

A key federal aerospace panel warned that NASA could run into serious safety challenges if it relies on private companies to ferry astronauts into space in the near future.

The Obama administration has been devising a plan to outsource a chunk of its manned space program to private companies in order to speed up rocket development, save money and focus federal dollars on longer-term expeditions. But a report released last week by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, an outside safety watchdog for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, cautioned that the private space companies rely on “unsubstantiated claims” and need to overcome major technical hurdles before they can safely carry astronauts into orbit. It urged NASA to stick with its current government-run manned space ventures, and said that switching to private alternatives now would be “unwise and probably not cost-effective.”

The safety panel’s recommendation could force the Obama administration to rethink how far and how fast it wants to go in embracing commercial options. Earlier this year, a panel appointed by President Obama, and headed by former Lockheed Martin Corp. Chairman Norman Augustine, urged NASA to open up its manned space program to commercial- style arrangements with outside contractors. Under that plan, start-up companies such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., and established, mid-size contractors such as Orbital Sciences Corp., could compete against the largest aerospace suppliers for contracts to ferry astronauts to the international space station. The Augustine panel’s findings have been embraced by White House aides and others as reasons to support more commercially-run space exploration options. The Augustine panel, however, didn’t make detailed recommendations.

But the findings released last week are likely to provide a boost to NASA officials who support keeping nearly all manned space programs in house. In addition, NASA’s largest and longstanding contractors, such as Boeing Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp., are stepping up efforts to generate White House support against outsourcing more programs. As part of that campaign, they have challenged the safety of the start-up ventures, which are proposing to use rockets that haven’t been fully tested and in some cases, haven’t yet flown.

“It is the panel’s position.” according to the latest report, that none of the commercial ventures vying for NASA business are “currently qualified” to meet human safety standards, “despite some claims and beliefs to the contrary.”

The Obama administration’s upcoming budget proposals will reveal how much NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and senior White House officials were swayed by the safety advisory panel’s arguments. Additional funding to pursue some commercially-run manned space projects is considered highly likely, though the White House still faces tough decisions over how many dollars to allocate and whether to continue NASA’s current multi-billion dollar Ares I rocket program.

The Ares I and its anticipated follow-on rockets were designed years ago to transport astronauts into orbit, to the moon and eventually to other destinations in the solar system. Since then, funding shortfalls and development delays have combined to make Ares a prime target of NASA critics hoping to shift the agency toward more commercial-style ventures.

Mr. Bolden was an appointed member of the advisory group before taking over as head of the agency during the middle of last year. While he didn’t participate in the safety panel’s final deliberations or conclusions, he had expressed doubts about NASA’s overall safety culture

According to summaries of board deliberations included in the report, in February 2009, when Mr. Bolden was running his own consulting firm, he told other panel members that senior NASA managers weren’t taking enough responsibility to assess overall project safety risks or publicly explain “the significant risks associated with space exploration.”

The head of the advisory panel, retired Vice Admiral Joseph W. Dyer, and some of the other eight members are described in the meeting summaries as being concerned about what they called NASA’s “hands-off approach” in allowing development of private cargo spaceships. The admiral and others fear that NASA isn’t developing prompt, precise and unequivocal safety requirements to deal with the prospect that those same cargo vehicles are likely to become the core of proposed commercial space transportation systems for astronauts.

Source:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575012112718455380.html?mod=googlenews_wsj