Friday,
September 3, 2004
Mr. Thomas
Luedtke
Director of Procurement
Procurement Directorate
NASA Headquarters
300 E Street SW
Washington, D.C.
20546
cc: L. W.
Bailets, Procurement Analyst at lbailets@nasa.gov
Re: RFI
--Expanded Use of NASA Contractual Authority to Obtain Ideas, Technologies, and
Management Tools for Accomplishing Space Exploration
Goals
Solicitation Number: NASA-SNOTE-040813-002
EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
The most important
recommendation of the President's Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space
Exploration Policy was Recommendation 5-2.
"Recommendation 5-2. The Commission recommends that Congress
increase the potential for commercial opportunities related to the national
space exploration vision by:
§
Providing incentives for
entrepreneurial investment in space.
§
Creating significant
monetary prizes for the accomplishment of space missions and/or technology
developments.
§
Assuring appropriate
property rights for those who seek to develop space resources and
infrastructure."
The Aldridge commission's
report outlines one of the possible ways the U.S. could establish a commercial
incentive as recommended:
"... the Commission suggests
that … as an example of a particularly challenging prize concept, $100 million
to $1 billion could be offered to the first organization to place humans on the
Moon and sustain them for a fixed period before they return to
Earth."
The other way the
U.S. could provide such an incentive is through establishing a system of
recognized property rights in space, such as that proposed by the “Space
Settlement Initiative” (available at http://SpaceSettlement.Org/ ). That way
would be less conventional but would have the advantage of not requiring any
appropriation of government money.
Is there any way NASA could
contribute to the creation of a prize for privately funded space settlement,
– perhaps to be called “The
NASA Prize” – offering either or
both of these possible incentives?
If the private sector could
be provided a powerful incentive to finance and build a regular space
transportation system and permanent Lunar base, concerns about a long-range
space program overly burdening the taxpayer would evaporate. Corporations like Boeing, Lockheed
Martin, and others already have the technical capability. All they’ve needed is
a sufficient profit motivation.
The “Space Settlement
Initiative” would instantly create a strong profit incentive for private
industry to underwrite the development of Lunar bases.
The Space Settlement
Initiative invokes a tried-and-true mechanism used successfully by governments
throughout history to encourage development of uninhabited regions – the
allocation to private entities of large tracts of land in exchange for building
settlements and facilities that meet government-defined standards and benefit
everyone.
While traditional land
grants similar to those used by the U.S. government to develop the old West are
not possible in space because national ownership of land is forbidden by the
1967 Outer Space Treaty, legislation could be enacted to achieve the same ends
using the related concept of "land claim recognition."
Under a land claim
recognition protocol, Congress could pass legislation providing that for any
private, non-government corporation or consortium that financed and built a
space transportation system and permanent Moon base, a limited (but still very
large) claim to Lunar land around the base would be legally "recognized" by the
U.S. government.
Recognition means the
government would acquiesce to, or decide not to contest, the claim – but not
assume any sovereignty over it.
Once the space transportation system and Lunar base were certified, the
private consortium would be free to immediately mortgage or sell, back here at
home, some of their Lunar land deeds to recoup their investment and make a
profit.
Would NASA consider
supporting an economic incentive bill in Congress as the Aldridge Commission
recommended – promising either a huge monetary prize or land claim
recognition, or both?
“The NASA Prize” would be a
farsighted effort to redefine U.S. space policy – while saving taxpayers
billions of dollars – by creating an entirely new class of incentive for private
industry
Sincerely,
Alan
Wasser
Chairman
The Space Settlement
Institute
Alan.Wasser@space-settlement-institute.org
www.space-settlement-institute.org