GoKawiilMost elements of a major NASA event this week that laid out spaceflight plans for the coming decade were well received: a Moon base, a focus on less talk and more action, and working with industry to streamline regulations so increased innovation can propel the United States further into space.
However, one aspect of this event, named Ignition, has begun to run into serious turbulence. It involves NASA’s attempt to navigate a difficult issue with no clear solution: finding a commercial replacement for the aging International Space Station.
During the Ignition event on Tuesday, NASA leaders had blunt words for the future of commercial activity in low-Earth orbit. Essentially, they are not confident in the viability of a commercial marketplace for humans there, and the agency’s plan to work with private companies to develop independent space stations does not appear to be headed toward success. Plenty of people in the industry share these concerns, but NASA officials have not expressed them out loud before.
“We’re on a path that’s not leading us where we thought it would,” said Dana Weigel, manager of the International Space Station program for NASA.
NASA proposed a new solution that would bind the private companies more closely to NASA, requiring them not to build free-flying space stations but rather to work directly with the space agency on modules that would, at least initially, dock with the International Space Station. This change was not well-received.
By Wednesday morning, Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, whose organization represents several of the companies proposing to build commercial space stations, shot back during a previously scheduled hearing before Congress.
Of NASA’s new solution, he said, “It is sowing concern—and really sowing confusion—among the commercial space companies I represent.” Cavossa compared NASA’s action to the famous Peanuts gag in which Lucy repeatedly pulls the football away from Charlie Brown as he tries to kick it: “It reminds me of sort of Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football.”