Future US Space Travel Dependent On Public-Private Partnerships Say Experts

Cooperation between public and private enterprises is essential for the progression of the US space travel industry, said a panel of experts at Brookings Institute event yesterday. The spaceflight experts all agreed that embracing a collaborative approach between private and public enterprises is not just essential for the progression of the spaceflight industry, but it's also essential to keep up with the growing demand for space-bound missions.

The Panel was hosted by Darrell West, The Brookings Institute's VP of Governance Studies. West opened proceedings with the catchy phrase "This is no longer your Grandfather's space program," but it was the insight from some of the space industry's top dogs that helped demonstrate the necessity of public-private space travel partnerships and the changing landscape of the space industry.

"We are at an incredibly exciting point in the shift of the economics of space," said Sierra Nevada's John Roth. "..we're going from a space economy that was really all government-funded for 60 or more years, both military side and the NASA side, and we're in the midst of a shift to a commercial space economy and that's huge shift. It's a shift in thinking about how we do space, it's a huge difference in the targets go after in space, because obviously private companies have a much different view of what you need to get out of space than the science community does, or the defense department does. You're seeing a proliferation of companies now, doing things that NASA and the DOD were never interested in doing, or at least never put anything against. From mining asteroids to taking tourists up to hotels in space, and then there are a number of different revenue-generating activities from pharmaceutical companies wanting to develop new drugs in micro-gravity..."

However, arguably most telling of this shifting landscape was the array of experts assembled on yesterday's panel. SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and Sierra Nevada represented the burgeoning private space-tech industry, while NASA's Michael Meyer and the Northern Arizona University's Professor Nadine Barlow were also on hand to comment.

Already private space enterprises have been working on publicly funded missions. Orbital Sciences and SpaceX have both used their robotic spacecraft on resupply missions to the International Space Station, while in a few years time, NASA hopes to use privately-funded spacecraft for manned orbital missions. But one of the most attractive prospects of increased private activity in the space travel sector is the potential for drastic cost-cutting. SpaceX are already working hard to create the first reusable rocket system and if they succeed, it could see the costs of space-bound missions drop massively.

Of course, when you assemble executives operating in the same field, there is always going to be a touch of posturing. That posturing came in the form of comments made by Orbital Science's VP and Chief Technical Officer, Antonio Elias.

"If the absolute elasticity of demand for launch and price is sufficiently high and SpaceX is able to go to 50 or 60 flights a year, their efforts in reusability will pay off handsomely," said Elias. But if it falls short of 50 to 60 a year, it's going to be wasted money." Shots fired?

While the ultimate goal of commercial operators may be for missions that could lead to direct revenue generation, such as the mining for materials on asteroids, Michael Meyer believes that Mars should remain NASA's key exploration goal.

"One of the things that we'll look at in the future is not only deciding whether or not life ever got started there, but in all honesty, I think it's the only place in our solar system that has any real possibility of colonization," said Meyer. So in the long term, I think going to Mars will be a theme whether or not we're doing it robotically or whether or not we're doing it with humans."

But NASA is also looking to open up an exploration frontier on Jupiter's icy moon, Europa and with research increasingly pointing towards Saturn's moon Enceladus possessing liquid water as well, the next couple of decades are going to increase exponentially. How big of a part private enterprises will play in this, remains to be seen.

You can watch the full panel featuring remarks from all of the guest speakers up top, or for a series of bite-sized videos from each guest, visit The Brookings Institute.