From Space.com comes news that NASA has launched a private space taxi certification program. The pro

Is NASA Positioning Itself to Become a Regulatory Agency? the constellation celebrity cruise ship — The Libertarian Standard Home About TLS Amazon the constellation celebrity cruise ship Store Community Forums Articles Popular Blog Archives Tag Cloud Contact Links RSS
It sure seems like that s what NASA is doing. NASA has to do something in order to maintain its relevance as the space age dawns in the era of commercial space flight. NASA is still running scientific-exploratory missions to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system, but even this role will be soon be overtaken by private enterprises like Planetary Resources .
From Space.com comes news that NASA has launched a private space taxi certification program. The program will consist of a two-stage process aimed at ensuring commercial passenger spaceships currently under development will meet the agency's safety standards, schedule and mission requirements. Yay, NASA s record of safety, timeliness, and priorities with minimal the constellation celebrity cruise ship bureaucratic waste leaves me reassured.
Budget cuts no doubt have something to do with the certification program as well. NASA expects to award multiple firms a  Certification Products Contract the constellation celebrity cruise ship  (CPC), each of which will run for 15 months and be worth up to $10 million. Restrict competition, the constellation celebrity cruise ship rake in the dough, ensure the continuation of your own jobs, and retain control the constellation celebrity cruise ship of the space industry — all in the name of safety, science, human progress, and protecting taxpayer investments.
The certification program appears to apply only to firms wanting to be hired by NASA — for now. Firms that want to ferry NASA crew to the behind-schedule and over-budget boondoggle that is the International Space Station (ISS) will have to get certified. But how long until NASA attempts to expand its regulatory reach beyond its own contractors?
NASA admitted in 2011 that it is not fundamentally a public regulatory agency. But that can change. We can be sure that the United States federal government will attempt the constellation celebrity cruise ship to regulate space travel and commercial activity just as it regulates travel and business on Earth. The only question is, Which agency will be assigned to do the regulating? the constellation celebrity cruise ship Will it be NASA, or some other new or existing agency? Surely the top bureaucrats at NASA would rather it be them.
Geoffrey is an Aristotelian-Liberal political philosopher, an adjunct instructor for Buena Vista University , the founder and executive editor of Prometheus Unbound: A Libertarian Review of Fiction the constellation celebrity cruise ship and Literature , and the webmaster of The Libertarian Standard . His work has appeared in Libertarian Papers , the Journal of Libertarian Studies , the Journal of Value Inquiry , and Transformers and Philosophy . He lives in Edgewood, KY with his wife and two children. Tweet
Tagged as: boondoggles , bureaucratic waste , commercial space flight , International Space Station , NASA , news , Planetary Resources , regulations , regulatory agencies , space age , space taxis , space travel , Space.com , Statism
Talk about hubris! Now a single U.S.-based agency is contemplating regulating travel to space? In fairness, the U.S. government already pretty much regulates Earth, so the Final Frontier can only be next.
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