The privatization of the settlement on the moon

If man lands on the moon it will be through private industry, although governments will continue to dominate space research, says NASA boss

"If man lands on the moon it will be through private industries, although governments will continue to control space research." This is what NASA director Charles Bolden says, who believes that in the future no nation will alone initiate space travel without coordination with other nations and through private industries.

Bolden said these things to students in Australia, where he was visiting.
Major-General Bolden, who himself flew 4 times in the shuttle program that ended last year, says that governments will indeed continue to lead the way in space research, but not in reaching space. "We have conducted experiments, we have flown for 50 years, we know, basically, how to get humans off the Earth and into low-space-orbit. Our partners in private industry have built basically everything we've ever flown. NASA has never built a single spacecraft."

Bolden says private industry will build, own and operate spacecraft from now on, and NASA will buy its services. "I pick up the phone and say I have a team of three who want to get to the International Space Station this August, and they will say: Cargo or crew? And I will say team, and this is how it will work in the future."

The difficulty for NASA is, of course, whether to use the ceremonial-model or the rental-car model. Is it just to collect astronauts and bring them to their destination, or to actually launch and send them and return them to the Earth and leave the "noise and ringing and all that" to the private industry.

At some point, private entrepreneurs like Boeing, for example, may decide to establish a colony on the moon. "NASA has no forecast to establish a colony on the moon," he said, "but there are countless private entrepreneurs who are indeed interested." He described the US-Soviet partnership on the issue of the International Space Station even before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as a model for cooperation between former enemies who clashed and was like a step between them and the destruction of the country. "Only governments can control space research," he said, "because only governments were willing to take the risks."

"We are going to lose people" he warned "you have to take that into account. Governments can handle the matter more easily than private industry. The USA is still the outstanding leader in space research, despite the end of the era of the shuttle program" added Bolden. He praised Australia as an incredible partner through their space tracking stations, saying "you've been with us from the early days and you'll be with us for the foreseeable future."

About Charles Bolden's visit to Australia on the NASA website[

A link to one of the hundreds of reports on the subject in the Australian media