Griffin on commercialization

05/04/05 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

Jeff Foust was at the Women in Aerospace breakfast with Mike Griffin where Mike apparently reiterated his view that he can't put commercial providers in his critical path but he can do things that leave an intact marketplace behind. Jeff also got the exact wording of Mike's email to Rick Tumlinson: bq. Public money can be used to support more than one objective. In fact, I view my challenge with respect to commercial providers as being succinctly thus: How can I use public money to make a space market available to purely commercial enterprises – pay for performance, period – without having a government program that sits on the sidelines waiting for private industry to deliver? This latter alternative would constitute malfeasance for a public official. I have to execute a government program with public money that does NOT depend for its success on whether industry can do what they promise, or not. Yet, one of the “grades on my report card”, when I am done, should be, “What kind of commercial space industry have you left behind you?” The idea is not to pick winners, but to craft a program which rewards them, while not wasting public money. I have some ideas. Stay tuned.

The thing that really concerns me is not Mike, its the bureaucracy below him. This quote “if a commercial provider shows up, government will stand down” sounds nice but the issue is often before the commercial provider shows up NASA stands up even higher and overshadows that provider. What criteria will Griffin use to determine when a provider “shows up”? How does he ensure that before that point his government program won't be squelching the ability of that company to get started?

Sure, I'll stay tuned. But I'm going to remain skeptical….