A push for privatization is inspiring a battle between aerospace contractors and the new breed of tech entrepreneurs.The Trump administration is considering a bold and controversial vision for the U.S. space program that calls for a "rapid and affordable" return to the moon by 2020, the construction of privately operated space stations and the redirection of NASA's mission to "the large-scale economic development of space," according to internal documents obtained by POLITICO.
The proposed strategy, whose potential for igniting a new industry appeals to Trump’s business background and job-creation pledges, is influencing the White House’s search for leaders to run the space agency. And it is setting off a struggle for supremacy between traditional aerospace contractors and the tech billionaires who have put big money into private space ventures.
"It is a big fight," said former Republican Rep. Robert Walker of Pennsylvania, who drafted the Trump campaign's space policy and remains involved in the deliberations. "There are billions of dollars at stake. It has come to a head now when it has become clear to the space community that the real innovative work is being done outside of NASA."
The early indications are that private rocket firms like Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and their supporters have a clear upper hand in what Trump's transition advisers portrayed as a race between "Old Space" and "New Space," according to emails among key players inside the administration. Trump has met with Bezos and Musk, while tech investor Peter Thiel, a close confidant, has lobbied the president to look at using NASA to help grow the private space industry.
Charles Miller, a former NASA official who served on Trump's NASA transition team after running a commercial space cargo firm, is pushing for the White House to nominate a deputy administrator who foremost "shares the same goal/overall vision of transforming NASA by leveraging commercial space partnerships," according to a Jan. 23 communication. That deputy would run the space program’s day-to-day operations.
Trump has yet to name a NASA director, but the documents
confirm that Rep. Jim Bridenstine, a Republican from Oklahoma and former Navy pilot who ran the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, is a top contender.
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