NASA gung-ho about small business

Oliver St. John, USA TODAY | USATODAY

You don't have to be a giant like Lockheed Martin or Boeing anymore to make out-of-this-world stuff for space missions.

That's because small businesses are no longer being treated like so much space dust by the federal government. There's a new recognition that small businesses are innovation hubs and can turn around space jobs more quickly for less cash. Perhaps that's why NASA has surpassed its annual small-business contracting goal by over 28%, spending $2.6 billion on small-business contracts.

Honeybee Robotics, for example, is a small space technology company of about 40 employees based in Manhattan. On its résumé: a sample storage system that acts as a robotic lab assistant for the Mars Curiosity Rover, which landed in August, as well as a robotic dust-removal tool to brush off Martian rock samples.

"We have a very lightweight overhead system that allows us to be agile, flexible, and maneuver quickly to customer needs," says Honeybee President Kiel Davis. The "behemoths" that get the bulk of NASA contracts are "very expensive. They're slow, and there's a lot of bureaucracy," he says.

"Sources of Innovation"

Now more than ever, small businesses have a crack at working with NASA. Sept. 17, NASA raised the stakes on its Small Business Innovation Research program, or SBIR, adding higher rewards for small businesses developing concepts or prototypes in areas of space technology.

It's all part of NASA Administrator Charles Bolden's efforts to save money by getting more small businesses on board, says Rich Leshner, NASA's chief of SBIR.

"We know that small businesses are sources of innovation. We know they're sources of job growth. We know that's true, in part, because of the creativity they're allowed to have," says Leshner. "We know how that complements the great ideas and great minds we have at NASA."

NASA's exclusive community

NASA's SBIR program gives small businesses a crack at entering what many consider to be a very exclusive community of regular NASA contractors. Critics say it's not enough to change the status quo.

"Despite whatever efforts that the organization goes to, the entire game is stacked against small business," says Michael Ravine, projects manager of Malin Space Science Systems, a San Diego space camera maker with about 30 employees. Four of its cameras are currently on Mars. The photographer: the Curiosity Rover.

Ravine says the only reason small businesses produce better quality space technology is that they have to meet a higher standard than large businesses to score NASA contracts.

"I believe that we have lost proposals to bigger organizations, because they were big and we were small," says Ravine.

Winds are changing

In spite of naysayers, winds are changing at NASA, and they're filling small-business-size sails, says Associate Administrator of NASA's Office of Small Business, Glenn Delgado.

By contracting to small businesses, "We can get it a little bit cheaper, a little bit faster, and a little bit more creative," says Delgado.

Delgado acknowledges the high barrier to entry that small companies face in the space contracting business, but he believes it can be lowered by making an effort to build relationships with new space companies through programs such as SBIR.

"We're just trying to make sure they're exposed to our world, and our world is exposed to their world," says Delgado.

While NASA has surpassed its small-business contracting goal for two years in a row, the administration still lags in contracting goals for areas including women-owned businesses and service-disabled veteran-owned businesses. All eyes are on NASA to do better.

David Weaver, NASA spokesman, says the agency's new yen for small business isn't just good news for them. The money it saves, "we plow back into the ambitious programs that we're implementing."

That includes anything from more space station missions, he says, to sending a man to mars.