NASA to Go Commercial?

jeffy124 writes: "CNN has an article about NASA possibly selling space. The idea comes from Russia, where they have have sent into space Pizza Hut pizza, talking picture frames, and magazines. The proposal includes ties with the entertainment industry, tourism, NASA merchandise, and hiring a nongovernment organization to manage the US areas of the International Space Station." If anyone has a link to this NASA draft document the article talks about, please post it below.

NASA: No Assets so Sell Access

[dafoomie]

This could be good as long as it doesn't jeopardize what NASA is trying to do. Though, just that NASA HAS to do this for funding is scary, NASA should be fully funded... People don't realize the good that comes out of space exploration/research.

space... a resting place for bin laden

[cup0spam]

After we are finished leveling afghanistan we should think about having NASA shoot bin laden into the sun with the rest of his american hating followers.

Re:Is this worth it?

[or_smth]

I'd really have to disagree with this, I think the reason that the public doesn't know anything about the space missions now is because it isn't thrown in there face at all. Nobody advertises anything with space, unless its as some stupid joke. Getting a little publicity during the superbowl could really make people go "wow, I forgot about that".

Re:Why's it sad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's right! Who needs knowledge if it doesn't get you something? I'm sure nobody really cares about what else there is in the universe, or where we came from in the first place.

We explore space to gain knowledge. Not all of that knowledge is of immediate or obvious use.

Re:NASA: No Assets so Sell Access

[hendridm]

I don't think it's a matter of people not realizing its potential as much as politicans not agreeing what "full funding" means. Where do we draw the line between necessity and waste? Apparently, NASA wants to expand on what is necessary and continue to explore what is possible. I like space experimentation, so all the power to them...

Space: Tons o' benefit

[Toodles]

I highly recommend a book called "The High Road" by Ben Bova. Unlike most of Bova's work, this isn't fiction, but more of an essay regarding the need for increased investment and work towards space travel. No pictures available, the book is out of print, so an amazon.com link is kinda pointless.

Even when the book was printed (1981), drastic cuts in space funding were evident. Remember this is BEFORE the Challenger incident! Many different sources are cited in this book to back up his facts, but I will still try to not stray from the obvious.

1. Satellites. Sat phones, many nodes of the Internet, GPS systems, XM radio, spy satellites, anti-spy satellites, the Star Wars program (Think Reagan, not Jar Jar) all owe their existence to satellites. You can complain about those all you want, some are pointless, but all have been put with the idealistic thought of making life better in general. Some fail, and some are to make money, but I am glad all of them are there.

2. Secondary technical innovations. Velcro, Most plastics, and tertiary technical advancements for such things as bone marrow transplants (Remember the old commercial with Jesse Jackson, specifically to rally support for the space program, citing bone marrow transplants as one of the effects of earlier space exploration?)

3. Energy. This is the one that bites my tail most that SHOULD have been done in the 70's, and still should be done. A Solar Power Station. The idea is a large satellite, positioned so that it is never blocked from the sun, could gather and redirect the energy to a large array of solar power cells (we're talking a few dozen square miles worth, but well worth it). Environmental impact would be nill, and the land could still be used for grazing by livestock. Just plop the array of cells into some flat section of New Mexico or Montana, and be done with it. The power that could be produced by such a station could easily be twice that of the energy produced by imported and domestic oil gathered at the same rate. While I would recommend reading this book for the full explanation, this link [ucsb.edu] will take you to a PDF with an excellent overview if you cant find the book. Imagine, free, practically limitless energy available. The electricity could be used to separate water into hydrogen and water, so even transportation would benefit.

4. Economy. Every dollar spent into the space program would change hands an avarage of 8 times before 'settling'. This is a matter of spending money to make money. It creates jobs, technology, and even patriotism.

5. Survival of the Human Race. As unlikely as it may seem, the Earth is our biggest Single Point of Failure. If anything happens to the Earth in a manner that makes it inhospitable to human life, the race will end. We must, for the survival of the species eliminate that single point of failure. Asteroids, nasty bacteria(e.g. Ebola), greenhouse effect, are all problems whose affect on the race could be limited if we got rid of the single point of failure. However improbable, they are still possible, and the human race must overcome.

6. Moon exploration. Boy, I'd love to get my hands on a killogram of diterium(Hydrogen ion +3?). There's only a few metric ton naturally occuring on the planet, almost all in the oceans. But, its on the surface of the moon, and the lack of atmosphere makes extracting it from the dust (notice I didn't say 'soil'. Just the dust, no more than 2" deep, would yeild enough diterim to satisfy a huge energy consumption for an enourmous amount of time.

There are more, but I grow tired of typing. Space exploration is not for short sighted people. It has produced amazing results for the entire human race, and as pessimistic as it may sound, failing to properly support it by the Americans is both bad for the U.S. as a whole, and failure by the world to investigate further is accepting the eventual end of the human race.

Toodles

Corrporate interests and scientific goals

[gimmie_prozac]

One potential problem with corporate involvement with scientific ventures is that the rational interests of the corporate sponsors (profit maximization) can potentially conflict with the goals of the scientific community (in its purest form, the pursuit of knowlege for its own sake). While slapping Nike logos onto shuttles and delivering Pizzas shouldn't pose any problems, a future corporate sponsor of, say a Mars mission may be tempted to fudge reports of the riskiness of said mission in hopes of gaining, say, first grabs on mineral rights. This paper [aaup.org] by the American Association of University Professors gives an overview of the problems involved in corporate research and proposes some solutions (be warned, it's kind of a dry read).

Just a thought, and yes, I am aware that NASA as it presently exists is hardly a perfect example of an organization selflessly pursuing knowledge for its own sake.

Re:Is this worth it?

[mercy]

NASA started losing its appeal to the everyman around the late 80's, following the Challenger explosion.

Actually, I don't think that's a causal relationship. From what I've observed, it's the _lack_ of recent explosions that's created the atmosphere of the ordinary. When you can pull off ten straight launches that look like duplicates of each other, there's nothing to catch the public's interest. (See the recent state of air travel for another example of the unusal creating interest...)

I can only hope (since I'm a cynic enough to believe that advertising will reach everywhere, eventually.) that the ad execs will push the space program further than they've managed to go with congress weighing them down. (Putting a logo on the moon has been a dream of businessmen since Tharg started his first Sharp Stick Emporium many years ago.)