The Aldridge Commission is at least singing the right tune:

In many cases, the experts found the modern space agency too wedded to the agency founded at the height of the Cold War to overtake the former Soviet Union's technical prowess...

...The changes envisioned by the panel would transform NASA into an agency working alongside an industrial partner, academia and parts of other Cabinet-level agencies to expand the nation's economy into space as a means of creating new wealth and strengthening national security as well as advancing science.

"Creating new wealth." What a concept.

Let's hope that they can stay on key. I'll be looking forward to hearing their recommendations. I do wonder at the use of the singular, though. Why not "alongside industrial partners"? Here's hoping it's a misstatement--I hope they're not intending to set up a monopoly of some kind.

[Via Mark Whittington, from his home-town paper]

[Update at 9 AM PDT]

The administrator agrees.

"Business as usual, if we simply try to overlay this [vision] on top of an existing structure, isn't going to work," O'Keefe said. "There is no way that the present organizational structure, and how we do business today, will be the most appropriate way to go about doing this."

I don't agree with him on this, though.

O'Keefe also told commissioners that the space infrastructure required to push the new space effort forward is already in place, and stressed that international cooperation will play a vital role in missions to come. The cooperation needed for the International Space Station (ISS), for example, has led to the necessary political relationships, communication networks and engineering teams - among others - to take on such a project, he added.

As I wrote yesterday, international cooperation may be useful, but it shouldn't be a goal, and it's certainly not essential, except perhaps from a political standpoint. But more importantly, I disagree that the "space infrastructure required to push the new space effort forward is already in place."

It remains much too costly to get to orbit, on far too unreliable launchers. The tragedy is that the agency has given up on the goal of improving this situation (not that it was really capable of doing so--it wasted billions over the past couple decades proving that it wasn't). But the government should be doing more in terms of policy to achieve this goal, even if NASA can't.

I would say that the level of infrastructure is an issue. Our launchers themselves need to change to simply do the brute work to get to orbit and beyond, that's quite true. But other elements of the infrastructure exist, such as assembly and launch sites, computing and communication networks, and of course a workforce versed in and enthused by the work at hand.

The last part is questionable, I know, because there's plenty of graybacks around NASA that have enthusiasm for their retirement plan more than anything else.

One more thing: I completely agree about the dubious "neccessity" of international cooperation for NASA's missions. An operational frontier is hard to develop when you're chained to an opposing viewpoint all of the time.

In related news. . .

Did anyone else see that Bigelow (Budget Suites?) signed a deal with Space-X (Elon Musk) to buy a Falcon V shot? It appears Bigelow intends to use the launch as a precursor mission to investigate a TransHab based space hotel. 100% private, it appears.

Now we are talking the good stuff. All you alt-space enthusiasts need a place to go in LEO otherwise why bother?

Mr. White,

I know someone who's been working on that who must be be pretty happy with Bigelow's news. They've been working on it for some time, and it is immensely gratifying to see some more serious private investment in space.

IMHO, a privately funded space hotel (NO tax dollars) will do more for the causes that space advocates endorse that anything Sean O'Keefe can possibly accomplish.

By the way, is Budget Suites a nice place to stay?

"By the way, is Budget Suites a nice place to stay?"

Stayed in one in Vegas, it was okay. Definitely better than Motel 6!

"O'Keefe also told commissioners that the space infrastructure required to push the new space effort forward is already in place"

It's much easier for administrative types to redefine the meaning of words rather than make any structural changes. I suspect a bit of that may be going on.