Entrepreneurial Muscle Ready For Flexing
FYI,
"Entrepreneurial Muscle Ready For Flexing"
Space.com
http://space.com/news/050407_nss_entrepreneur.html
: Entrepreneurs offer great promise in transforming the business of
: space, be it for spurring innovative space applications to hauling
: the public into space.
: That was the consensus from the panelists on "The Entrepreneurial
: Spirit" session held Wednesday here at the 21st National Space
: Symposium.
: Panel moderator, Courtney Stadd, President of Capitol Solutions,
: noted that Mike Griffin, newly nominated to take the helm of NASA,
: brings to the space agency "entrepreneurial sensibilities"
: – something unique in its history.
: Yet James Benson, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of
: SpaceDev, cautioned that the growing entrepreneurial space sector
: -- of which SpaceDev is among their number -- should be dealt with
: pragmatically. Those contracting such firms should "reward success
: and punish failure," he said.
: "Check their track record before you give them money," Benson
: advised, and before funding such space entrepreneurial companies,
: any contractor should carry out due diligence before getting
: involved.
: "Keep it simple and successful" is the philosophy to embrace,
: Benson said, in moving forward on building and emplacing new space
: infrastructure. Moreover, there is the need for the smaller
: commercial companies to provide product via fixed price contracts,
: he said, with fixed price rewards for hitting milestones of
: progress.
: "Everything is different now," advised David Gump, President of
: Transformational Space Corporation LLC. NASA appears to have
: undergone a "Vulcan mind meld" with space entrepreneurs, in terms
: of listening to and funding start-up space firms, he said.
: Gump reported that his newly created company – currently focused on
: NASA’s space exploration initiative -- mixes "outside innovators
: with inside experts."
: "We have been trapped in the space field by relying on heritage
: hardware and software;" Gump explained. There are new tools and
: technology to achieve highly reliable space hardware and to build
: up critical infrastructure, he said.
: Gump’s guidance for NASA is for it to aim for a true lunar frontier,
: meaning that government should lead rather than own. The proper
: role of government, he added, is to rent and lease infrastructure
: from private operators.
: As cislunar space is transformed into a place of commerce, space
: flight can be made to be far more affordable than in the past, Gump
: said.
: Shashi Raval, Chief Executive Officer of Novariant, Inc., portrayed
: entrepreneurs as passionate individuals with a desire to change the
: world. They "connect dots from many different fields," he said.
: It is also important for entrepreneurs to realize that failure is a
: learning process from which progress can occur, Raval explained.
: Briefly reviewing the Internet and the proliferating information
: technologies sector, Raval said, many innovations are missed by
: gurus of industry.
: A key question, Raval asked, is whether a "Google-type" company
: will emerge from the space industry.
: Raval suggested that miniaturization of space hardware may enable
: thousands of new enterprises. Entrepreneurs will invent applications
: and enable markets that big players don’t see, he said.
: Commercial human spaceflight was addressed by George Nield, Deputy
: Associate Administrator, Commercial Transportation, at the Federal
: Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Office of Commercial Space
: Transportation.
: Nield outlined the work of entrepreneurs that are moving into and
: shaping the suborbital passenger travel market. It appears that
: breakthrough technologies are not needed, he said, for this first
: wave of passenger paying space travel.
: As for the space tourism, Nield said that dollar and people
: projections are encouraging, not only for a blossoming suborbital
: market, but also passenger flight into orbit. He said large
: investments by wealthy individuals show that "they are putting
: money where their mouth is" in making public space travel a reality.
: Nield delineated the keys to public flight into space: A supportive
: national policy; realistic objectives; non-federal funding; and a
: clearly demarked and solid regulatory framework.
: New space policy direction from the White House is supportive of
: commercial human space flight, the FAA official said. "We’re
: committed to do our part to support this exciting industry."
--
Mark Reiff <markreiff@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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