'Publicly Funded Competition For NASA?' (Score 1)

I am constantly amazed by the great lengths that government bureaucrats will go to to avoid the hated specter of free enterprise capitalism in Space. It must be the terror that haunts their nightmares. Rich Robins proposal is just one more in a long series of ideas to "fix" NASA, none of which fix the basic problem of socialism in space. I will admit that I do support transferring all unmanned deep space science missions to the National Science Foundation, I also propose transferring Earth observation satellites to NOAA and USGS, but I do so as part of a much larger scheme to dismantle NASA, reducing it to the status of a manned space flight institute. Further, I propose that NASA or any other government agency not own or operate any space asset, but rely totally on a private commercial space industry. The Idea is to spread space knowledge and operational ability throughout industry and society. The original concept of "one NASA" was to concentrate all knowledge, expertise, and assets into one organization to beat the Soviets into Space, avoiding competition and duplication of effort. I think we won that race, the Russian space program is now almost totally dependent on NASA support. Having won the war however, we need to go back to our normal operational method of free enterprise capitalism, with government agencies restricted to non operational basic research, which is the right way to do things. NASA bureaucrats, take a deep breath, trust in the American Free Enterprise System, and take that bold step OUT of the space transportation business.