Now is the time for NASA to blast into a new future — after slowing to a crawl

To ensure the future of spaceflight, NASA must stop building rockets. That counterintuitive notion is borne out by the agency’s sad post-Apollo history.

For the past 50 years, America’s dreams of space exploration have been stymied by NASA’s failure to build an affordable, reliable launch system.

Today, the private sector builds rockets faster, cheaper, and better.

Ending the agency’s sclerotic rocket-building program will be the first of many challenges facing Jared Isaacman, President Trump’s nominee to be NASA administrator, who is expected to be confirmed.

America’s space program has slowed to a crawl in recent decades, hobbled by cost overruns and lax management. 

This is a bad time for US space policy to stumble. China is launching missions at a record pace and vows to put its taikonauts on the moon by 2030. If China beats the US back to the moon, “they are going to write the rules of the road up there,” warned Texas Congressman Brian Babin in January.

NASA’s biggest obstacle to progress is its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and conjoined Orion capsule. This huge, Apollo-style program was intended to carry US astronauts back to the moon. Unfortunately, the SLS rocket is years behind schedule and billions over budget. 

Unlike the reusable rockets being pioneered by SpaceX and other private-sector companies, the SLS is entirely expendable, meaning all the rocket’s components must be discarded during each flight, at enormous expense. NASA’s inspector general estimates each SLS/Orion mission will cost over $4 billion.

No wonder space analysts call the program “a national disgrace.”

There’s got to be a better way to get US astronauts to the moon and beyond. And there is. Two decades ago, innovative NASA leaders quietly launched a program that pays private space companies, principally SpaceX, so far, to ferry US astronauts and cargo into orbit using their own space vehicles. In essence, NASA’s commercial program allows the agency to hire space vehicles much the way a sports team might charter a bus. 

Congress went along with the commercial plan only grudgingly. The House and Senate insisted that NASA invest much more in the SLS/Orion project, whose enormous workforces just happen to be located in powerful lawmakers’ home states. 

NASA’s commercial experiment, meanwhile, has largely been a success; SpaceX rockets carry astronauts to the International Space Station like clockwork, saving US taxpayers billions. And by giving private launch companies an initial market, NASA’s commercial space program helped spawn a promising private spaceflight industry. Congress should stop fighting over SLS pork and let NASA embrace the capabilities these revolutionary vendors offer.

In his Senate confirmation hearing, Isaacman said he wouldn’t shut down the SLS program overnight, but warned that the overpriced rocket is not the best “long-term way to get to and from the moon and Mars.” 

He said the SLS should be allowed to fly its next two planned missions, including a moon landing. That’s the right call. It is unlikely NASA and its private partners could cobble together an alternative lunar plan in the short term. 

But once US boots touch lunar soil again, the agency should get out of the rocket-building business for good. SpaceX and other vendors will be able to send crews and supplies to the moon — and eventually to Mars — for a fraction of what NASA would spend using its own equipment. 

Freed from the need to build expensive space vehicles, the agency will have more resources to devote to genuine exploration and technological research. Then, NASA should be restructured to focus on what it does best: basic R&D, mission planning, and space science. 

To achieve all this, the new administrator will have to win over skittish NASA staffers, convince Congress to stop micromanaging NASA programs, and cope with curveballs from the White House. Apparently, without consulting their nominee, the Trump administration recently proposed 50% cuts in NASA’s robotic science missions.

Those programs need more budget discipline, but not a meat-axe. Isaacman told the Senate that such indiscriminate cuts would not be “an optimal outcome.” 

It won’t be easy, but Isaacman has the right skill set to turn this legendary agency around. No other country can match what the US will accomplish in space if it combines the best of what NASA can offer with the genius of private enterprise.

The new administration has a golden opportunity to make that uniquely American formula work.     

James B. Meigs is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the former editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics. This article is based on his Manhattan Institute report, “U.S. Space Policy: The Next Frontier.”