Trump Space Policy Options Emphasize Role of Private Enterprise, Wall Street Journal

"Growing tension between the two approaches is highlighted by a Jan. 23 email from Charles Miller, a member of NASA's original transition team, to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a confidant of Mr. Trump who also served on a higher-level transition team. In the memo, Mr. Miller advocates that NASA "hold an internal competition between Old Space and New Space" to determine the best and least expensive way to return to the Moon. "If this initiative can be approved quickly by the White House, and appropriately funded," he emphasized, there could be "private American astronauts, on private space ships, circling the Moon by 2020." According to the email, Mr. Miller, a former NASA official, says he "rewrote the 80+ page" original transition report to emphasize commercial space partnerships with the agreement of White House aide Erik Noble. ... In an interview, Mr. Miller said his proposals, which he believes were forwarded to other White House aides, didn't target, seek to downgrade or negatively affect SLS. The recommendations about the program were "very neutral," he added, and didn't affect it "one way or the other." Mr. Miller said he was asked by Mr. Noble "to help with fixing a draft document," and "I didn't consider it out of bounds."

Keith's note: NASA paid Miller to do a study on this topic in 2015. As for this whole "Old Space/New Space" thing. I can't wait to see how Miller et al define these two terms. Despite frequent use of these terms amongst space advocates no one has come up with a consistent/coherent definition. As such I am trying to imagine how you can have these two imaginary camps compete with one another. How does one certify that they are New Space or Old Space?

- Summary of Results of a NASA-funded Study on: An Evolvable Lunar Architecture Leveraging Commercial Partnerships, Charles Miller President, NexGen Space LLC

- Affording a Return to the Moon by Leveraging Commercial Partnerships, NASA KSC (NASA server may have security issues)

- Economic Assessment and Systems Analysis of an Evolvable Lunar Architecture that Leverages Commercial Space Capabilities and Public-Private-Partnerships, Charles Miller et al, Research Gate

"This study's primary purpose was to assess the feasibility of new approaches for achieving our national goals in space. NexGen assembled a team of former NASA executives and engineers who assessed the economic and technical viability of an "Evolvable Lunar Architecture" (ELA) that leverages commercial capabilities and services that are existing or likely to emerge in the near-term. We evaluated an ELA concept that was designed as an incremental, low-cost and low-risk method for returning humans to the Moon in a manner that directly supports NASA's long-term plan to send humans to Mars."