Comment Naive opinion (Score 1) 365
This is just my naive opinion as a biologist rather than say, an aeronautical engineer, but it would seem to me that the role of government is to sponsor and conduct high-risk, high-reward research that has little or no probability of foreseeable commercial payoff while the role of corporations is to sponsor and conduct research that has been sufficient well-established in such a way so as to commercialize it for the general public and to reduce its cost to a minimum? (And yes, I consider space exploration to be a form of research.) We've been doing loops around the Earth for about five decades now, so don't you think that low Earth orbit is sufficiently well understood for it to be outsourced to the private sector, while NASA focuses on loftier goals?
I realize I may be drastically oversimplifying the issue, but it seems to me that NASA is on the right track. Wouldn't American space exploration stagnate if we continue to fixate on the space shuttle (whose success has not been entirely unequivocal, imho)? Just my two cents.