Due to BBS problems, I'll try posting this as a reply now...

Much to the disappointment of smaller entrepreneurial space firms like those of Burt Rutan, Elon Musk, John Carmack & Jeff Bezos, the traditional space media is completely ignoring this story:

-------

U.S. Congress recently graded with a "D-" NASA's small business outsourcing programs...

As the Congressional Small Business Committees can confirm, the U.S. Congress requires federal agencies to spend 23% of their prime contracting dollars on SMALL businesses. Within the aerospace sector, the Small Business Administration says that companies can employ "up to 1,000 [one thousand] people" and still remain classified as small businesses, as the following SBA u.r.l. can confirm [see "Subsector 541" of:

http://www.sba.gov/size/Table-of-Small-Business-Size-Standards-from-final-rule.html

Nevertheless, in both FY1999 and FY2000, NASA's prime contracting to "small" businesses was only at around 13.5%. By the end of 2002, that had only improved to 14.69%. All of this puts NASA well behind many federal agencies, as well as the 23% statutory goal. Indeed, the Democratic staff of the House Small Business Committee (in an endeavor led by Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez) gave NASA a "D-" in its 2003 "Score Card" for such federal agency small business outsourcing programs:

http://www.house.gov/smbiz/democrats/Reports/scorecardIV.pdf

(Scorecard IV: NASA receives a D- from Congress for its small business outsourcing practices (analyzed on page 47)

More specifically, in 1999 NASA's total agency prime contracting awards were $9,836 million, and yet its prime contracting awards to small businesses were merely $1,306 million (that’s 13.27%). During FY2000, NASA’s total was $1,485 million and that was only at about 13.54% of its prime contract dollar awards. During 2001, NASA's procurement budget in the form of prime contracts was $11.2 billion and 14.52% went to small businesses. And in 2002, NASA spent merely 14.69% of its $11.63 billion dollar prime contracting procurement budget on small businesses. Pages 176 & 177 of

http://fpds.gsa.gov/Fpds/FPR2000c.pdf

give a little more data, but the folks at

http://www.sba.gov or the House Small Business Committee, minority side are the most helpful sources for confirming all of this.

----------------------------------------------------------------

"The people have the government that they deserve..."

-Ben Franklin

What's stopping NASA from doing as DARPA does by simply offering [or
funding] competitive prizes?

http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes
-----------------------------------------------------------------