I have been listening to this pessimism for years. The problem was, and is, that many people have hung all their space hopes on NASA. Now there are admittedly some bright points in the NASA picture...

- Putting people into space is almost routine. Maybe a lot of the romance is lost, but that's true of any method of transportation. Railroads and airplanes used to be romantic a long time ago too.

- Robot space probes, science satellites, and other such things are going out a lot more often and doing a lot more things than they used to. It isn't the colonization of space a lot of us hope for, but it sure ain't chopped liver either.

* * *

Space does not have to be as expensive and difficult as NASA has made it. I've been in the business for decades, and I know something about this. So do a lot of other people in the private space industry.

Look at some quotes from the article:

Roy Bridges, director of the Kennedy Space Center, says the space station is a complicated piece of hardware built by several different nations. Some components are never put together until they get into orbit. Just about everything is custom-made -- there's hardly a screw or bolt anywhere on the station that's off-the-shelf. [boldface mine]

"Nobody's ever built a space station before -- there's really not a lot of cost models out there," Bridges said.



...In one cavernous building at the cape, a piece of the space station was getting the fine-tooth-comb treatment last week. It will soon form a stretch of the station's backbone. Dozens of yellow and red flags alerted technicians to parts that have been fixed or still needed repair. One red card said, "Withhold. Ding on Reinforcing Web. 11:00 Position."

There's the NASA standard: No dings allowed.



No dings allowed. Maybe the problem is a design where a ding makes a difference. Anybody ever seen a B-52 up close and personal? Yikes. Most of them look their age. But they work, don't they?

Maybe NASA needs a beancounter for a while.

Way back when there was still an L-5 Society, I stood up at a meeting where the leadership was extolling members to "write their congressmen" for more NASA funding of some favorite project or other. "This isn't the way to go," I told them. "There are private space efforts out there right now, and if you put half the effort into trying to find investors for them as you do trying to find tax money for NASA, they might succeed."

I was, of course, ignored.

L-5 Society, National Space Society, Planetary Society, etc. etc. Most of these same people are still telling us to write our congressmen.

What I think is going to happen is that sooner or later a private space company is going to hit the jackpot, using methods and technologies that NASA isn't interested in. If I might refer you again to the little list I posted a while back.

Then it's going to be like the Post Office and Federal Express, and the winners will be the people trying to get stuff--and themselves--into space.

Buck up...NASA isn't the only game in town.