A vision in flight "We need the atmosphere of 1909, when hundreds of people figured that if a couple of bicycle shop guys from Ohio could do it, they could do it too." - Alan Bock, April 21, 2005 [The Orange County Register]
Profit, Loss, and Pluto The success of SpaceShipOne illustrates these facts. Now that the public has seen the potential of private spaceflight, perhaps it will become politically possible to axe NASA and return its budget to the private sector. - Robert P. Murphy, October 14, 2004 [Mises]
Into Space! Privately The only sensible way to conquer space is to populate the planets with men and women who are planning to stay there, and engage in profitable economic activity when they do. - Doug Casey, February 24, 2004 [LewRockwell.com]
A Radical Solution to America's Moribund Space Program Rather than lavishing money on new missions of dubious value, President Bush should consider a truly radical solution for America's moribund space program: privatize it. - Robert Garmong, January 22, 2004 [Capitalism Magazine]
Privatize the Space Program We must make a fundamental choice: will America continue to hold its best engineering minds captive to politics, or will we set them free? - Robert Garmong, March 15, 2003 [Capitalism Magazine]
In Defense of Pilfering While the government can retrieve shuttle remains on public lands in any way it sees fit, it cannot violate the rights of property owners simply because they were unfortunate enough to wake up one morning and find government property on their land. - Christopher Westley, February 26, 2003 [Mises]
Shed No Tears For Columbia Or The Military After all, news of government failure is hardly grounds for amazement. NASA has been one of the more bloated, inefficient and useless agencies of a bloated, inefficient and useless State. - Roger Young, February 10, 2003 [Strike-the-root]
Did PC Science Cause Shuttle Disaster? NASA is reconsidering whether tank foam debris caused the Columbia disaster. That’s quite a shift from days earlier when the foam was the "leading candidate" -- an explanation that quickly became embarrassing. - Steven Milloy, February 7, 2003 [Fox News]
Natural Born Collectors Even NASA's own can't resist the urge. - Sara Rimensnyder, February 7, 2003 [REASON]
Right Stuff, Wrong Mission If NASA uses the tragedy as an opportunity to increase funding for shuttle safety, despite the fact that the shuttle program serves no military purpose and precious little scientific purpose, then we will know, once again, that the iron law of bureaucratic survival is unbreakable. In short, nothing succeeds like failure. - Gary North, February 6, 2003 [LewRockwell.com]
This Bus Goes Nowhere Government didn’t develop the airplane, or the locomotive, or the steamship. Why should it have a monopoly on space? If the answer is that "government is now bigger than any private corporation," isn’t that just another way of stating the same problem? - Vin Suprynowicz, February 5, 2003 [LewRockwell.com]
Back To Space In addition to the obvious benefits of competition and decentralized invention, there is a subtle emotional advantage to a non-governmental space program. - Tim Cavanaugh, February 3, 2003 [REASON]
NASA Defrauded Dozens of Times From faulty parts for the International Space Station to the theft of moon rocks, the nation's cash-thin space agency was defrauded dozens of times over the last year by contractors and sometimes by its own employees, investigative reports show. - Larry Margasak, October 30, 2002 [Space.com]
Where Do You Think You’re Going, Bud? In something straight out of the most dystopian science fiction novel, the Washington Times carries the tale that the pointy-heads at NASA are planning to scan the thoughts of airline passengers while they are waiting in line to have their physical privacy invaded by uniformed jobsworths and socially-retarded Guardsmen at the nation’s airports, all, of course, in the name of the War on Terra (sorry, ‘Terror’!) - Sean Corrigan, August 22, 2002 [LewRockwell.com]
Whither the Final Frontier? While the private sector has yet to seize upon the opportunities of space travel, this can hardly be construed as a failure on the part of capitalism. - John Newman, June 18, 2002 [anti-state.com]
Space Pork Faced with a coming budget crunch, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is toying with a controversial solution: Sell off the space shuttles. - Jeremy Lott, February 2002 [REASON]
Fly Me to the Moon Private financiers battle government bureaucrats over the best way to explore the Great Beyond. - Sam MacDonald, June 28, 2001 [REASON]
Dennis Tito: Space Hero He’s lowering the marginal costs of space travel without making the taxpayers foot the bill. NASA should be working right now to secure an eccentric millionaire for every space flight they plan. Eccentric millionaires should be like oxygen tanks: don’t leave earth without them. How am I hurt in any way if Bill Gates decides to take his family on a space trip? In fact, if he’s shelling out the cash to cover the full costs of the venture, I actually benefit. - Ryan McMaken, May 7, 2001 [LewRockwell.com]
They Call Him the "Space Tourist" NASA’s reaction to Mr. Tito’s enterprise has been predictably negative. In fact, they have done everything in their power to prevent Tito from making the flight, including barring him from joining his two Russian crewmates during their space station training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston last month. - Jef Allen, May 3, 2001 [LewRockwell.com]
Space Tourism - Ken Sturzenacker, May 2001 [The Future of Freedom Foundation]
Letter to Congressman Tim Roemer The 300,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU) supports your amendment to the FY 2001 VA/HUD Appropriations Bill that would terminate funding for the International Space Station (ISS). - Peter J. Sepp, June 14, 2000 [National Taxpayers Union]
Free Market for Space Exploration If society has a need, it will be addressed by investors and consumers in the marketplace. Silicon Valley is proof positive of that. - Andy Falkof, January 2000 [The Future of Freedom Foundation]
Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way: The Case for Privatizing NASA Thirty years ago Americans believed that at the end of the 20th century, people would be living like the Jetsons-- dressing in futuristic metallic jumpsuits and planning weekend getaways to the moon. Unfortunately, Americans are no closer to realizing that dream today than they were thirty years ago. The reason is because NASA, the agency entrusted with the space program, is stagnating. - Jennifer DeButts, September 29, 1999 [National Taxpayers Union]
'Privatize NASA Now' NASA may be a government agency, but it wants private industry to take over activities in the Earth's orbit, such as the International Space Station, so NASA can get back to deep space exploration. - Andy Patrizio, September 25, 1999 [Wired]
Martian Chronicle Mars may well be the next great frontier. But what kind of world should we make there? - John Tierney, February 1999 [REASON]
Time to Privatize NASA As long as NASA dominates civilian space efforts, little progress will be made toward inexpensive manned space travel. - Edward Hudgins, February 26, 1998 [CATO]
Should NASA be privatized? What would happen to scientific missions such as Mars Pathfinder if NASA were privatized? - Mary J. Ruwart, 1998 [Ask Dr. Ruwart]
Don’t Lavish Funds on NASA The end of federal funding would not mean the end of space exploration. As detailed in Terence Kealey’s book, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research (St. Martin’s Press, 1996), the private sector constantly demands new knowledge and puts up the money to obtain it. For instance, the four largest optical telescopes in the country were built largely with private funds. - Michael Gough, July 16, 1997 [CATO]
A New Space Policy: Free Enterprise The costs of doing business in space are high, but so are the potential rewards. - J. Brian Phillips, October 1987 [FEE]
Space ‘Triumphs’ But, yes, some of these projects are wonderful. They are only made not so by the fact that their creation violated the most elementary principle of civilized human association, freedom of choice. - Tibor R. Machan, January 16, 2004 [LewRockwell.com]
Mars Looks Like Nevada I don't believe in public subsidies for artists, and I don't believe in public subsidies for interplanetary geology or spaceflight as a hobby. - Charley Reese, January 15, 2004 [LewRockwell.com]
Death by Environmentalism Environmentalism not only killed 14 U.S. astronauts, but it killed them in a most horrible and public way. - William L. Anderson, July 17, 2003 [Mises]
The Trouble With NASA The real lesson of the Columbia disaster is that government enterprises are failures, and in the case of the space program, dangerous failures. - William L. Anderson, April 2003 [Mises]
Trouble in Deep Space However their genuine interest in science and space exploration is wasted in a bureaucratic culture that produces the antithesis to valuable science and true exploration. - Greg Davis, February 13, 2003 [LewRockwell.com]
Space Shuttles, Trains, and Postal Delivery Isn’t the response of President Bush and other Washington officials to the NASA tragedy so very typical? Amidst charges that NASA officials have knowingly and intentionally ignored safety warnings for years, the knee-jerk response of Washington’s big spenders is: Increase the NASA budget immediately! - Jacob G. Hornberger, February 7, 2003 [The Future of Freedom Foundation]
Why No Ocean Program? Though the politicians rush to reward NASA with hundreds of millions of dollars for its Columbia shuttle disaster, average citizens are right to give some critical thought to the space program. - Tibor R. Machan, February 7, 2003 [Mises]
NASA Kills 'Wounded' Launch System Upgrade at KSC NASA killed the Checkout Launch and Control System project Tuesday, citing missed deadlines and bloated spending. Despite all of the extra time and money, an independent review by NASA headquarters found the project would fall far short of its promised cost savings. - John Kelly, September 18, 2002 [Florida Today]
Images May Show NASA's Missing Spacecraft Broken in Two Pieces Images captured by an Arizona telescope may show NASA's missing $159 million Contour spacecraft broken in two pieces as it hurtles away from Earth, the mission director said Friday. - August 16, 2002 [FoxNews.com]
Floating Debris The International Space Station Alpha was never going to be cheap, but mismanagement at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has assured that it might never be useful either. - Rhys Southan, November 2001 [REASON]
State Science, State Truth When NASA's Polar Lander--scheduled to arrive on Mars on December 3rd--disappeared, there was reason for hope. Perhaps the incompetence of state-funded science would finally become obvious. - Wendy McElroy, January 6, 2000 [Mises]
Is NASA The Greatest Obstacle To Space Enterprise? Those who believe that mankind has a future in space should think seriously about how to ease the government out of civilian space activities and how to shut down NASA. - Edward L. Hudgins, March 11, 1997 [CATO]
Little Green Men The excuses given for big government take many forms. But NASA has surely come up with something unique in world history. - Justin Raimondo, December 1996 [Mises]
The Space Program: No Prize We have all seen the failures of a command economy in the rest of the world; why is it so difficult to recognize those failures when they occur within our own borders? - Frederick Giarrusso and Gary C. Hudson, January 1994 [FEE]
