Privatize Shuttle, NASA Chief Says

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  For those who think of space travel as a U.S. government venture--or adventure--the suggestion might sound odd.

But NASA chief Daniel Goldin said Saturday he wants to “hand over the keys to the Space Shuttle” to a private company.

Many tasks the space agency now performs--such as hauling communication satellites into Earth’s orbit--will be done more efficiently and cheaply by companies driven by profit motive, he said.

That would free NASA to focus on exploration and experimentation--the endeavors it needs to be on the leading edge of space travel, Goldin said at a speech in Huntington Beach.

So what does Goldin envision?

Cheaper and better replacements for the Hubble space telescope, which will be used to reveal cloud formations on planets in other solar systems; models that accurately forecast the weather 10 years into the future; and supersonic transports that can ferry business travelers across the Pacific--all stemming from the technology advances NASA hopes to achieve in the coming decades.

Goldin appeared at a town hall hosted by U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. The pair spoke to an enthusiastic overflow crowd of about 200 in the Huntington Beach City Council chambers.

A large portion of the audience included aerospace workers from Boeing in Seal Beach and McDonnell-Douglas in Huntington Beach, as well as teachers and former Apollo and Gemini astronaut Pete Conrad, chairman of the Newport Beach-based Universal Space Lines, a private satellite-tracking and rocket-launching venture.

Conrad said Goldin needs to do more to educate the public about the benefits of turning NASA’s operational duties over to private aerospace companies--like his.

“I think he has to get that message out,” Conrad said. Members of the public “think of NASA as Apollo and the shuttle, and they don’t realize it’s so terribly expensive to fly in space.”

Goldin said a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed-Martin has already supervised the last five shuttle launches. And he said he hopes to eventually have 80% of launches be private ventures, and only 20% carry government payloads--the reverse of the current ratio.

“Dan Goldin is leading a revolution at NASA,” Rohrabacher said. “Quite frankly, they were caught in a quagmire of nostalgia for quite some time,” reveling in past glories instead of planning new ones, he said.

But Goldin intrigued the crowd with his vision of things to come--if the new, streamlined NASA performs as he thinks it can. A probe is scheduled to land on Mars on July 4, which Goldin said will transmit pictures in real time to the Internet, “so every child in America can see what’s going on”--a revelation that drew “ooohs” from the crowd.

“We intend to save billions of dollars, which we plan to reinvest,” Goldin said, in projects such as sending astronauts to Mars.

That mention drew an appreciative “Yes!” from a couple of crowd members.

“Think about it--a white space suit, an American flag on the shoulder, and someone says, ‘I’m here. I took the first step on Mars,’ ” Goldin said. “I want to have it happen on my watch.”