The Plan dominated the water cooler discussions at work today, and one of the aspects which came up was the possibility for private, commercial involvement. Would handing NASA this big new goal (or set of goals) mean the freezing out of startups, as Rand Simberg has suggested? Or could it actually be a boon to private industry?

Obviously, if missions to the Moon and later Mars are eventually carried out, quasi-private companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Orbital Sciences, et al, would be the biggest initial beneficiaries. The major space/defense companies are repositories of the space technology and program management skills NASA is accustomed to working with -- if the new plan is carried out in usual NASA fashion, these companies will end up as the prime contractors. Before the first chips are cut, they will also play a role in shaping the missions themselves, through the program definition and proposal phases...for which work they will be paid tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, even if nothing more than viewgraphs result from it.

These corporations will not be the only beneficiaries of a traditionally-run program, of course. The major space/defense contractors are increasingly outsourcing the fabrication of components and subassemblies, redefining themselves as "system integrators" responsible for program management and the final integration of vendor elements into the end product. This means that numerous smaller supplier firms, even down to the level of mom-and-pop shops, will receive contracts associated with the new effort. It may even bring some new companies into being, to provide capabilities or exploit new technologies not available from existing vendors.

If the Moon-Mars effort is not run in the usual NASA way, the big space/defense companies will still be the biggest initial beneficiaries. However, depending on how a different way of running such a program would actually differ, it might allow independent companies to benefit more than the usual approach. Take as an example a requirement to purchase services available on the market instead of replicating such services internally. Sometime this year (?), TransOrbital will send a privately-funded high-resolution imaging probe into lunar orbit. Rather than sending its own precursor probes to scout out possible landing sites, more or less as was done for Apollo, NASA might instead purchase imagery from TransOrbital, enhancing the company's finances while significantly lowering the cost to the taxpayer of obtaining the needed data. Or for another example, NASA may decide to forego building a Saturn-class heavy lifter, and instead captialize on its experience with on-orbit construction gained on the ISS program by assembling spacecraft on-orbit from smaller elements lofted on smaller vehicles. The political choice would be the EELVs (because it would enable Lockheed Martin and Boeing to increase the flight rate, and thereby decrease per-launch costs to other customers...namely, USAF), but with the right structuring of the project, launch startups like SpaceX could also get in on the action. This purchase of launch services would be similar to the Air Mail contracts of the early days of aviation, one of the historical examples many space advocates cite as a template for jumpstarting commercialization.

Although it's a "big government program", and most of us would rather avoid such things, all is not lost for private companies if (a big if) this plan does eventually reach implementation. Assuming that it does go to completion, private companies stand to benefit even if NASA runs it in the traditional big-contractor-focused manner. If properly structured, however, the program can be used to encourage the creation and expansion of private, commercial space activities.

Advocates of space commercialization may not like the idea of a big government program, but if it is to happen, we should do whatever we can to make the most of it. To simply wash our hands of it would be to throw away a tremendous opportunity, the likes of which may not come around again.