Greater Private Role in Space Urged

A White House panel of space experts, wrestling with questions about how to pay for expeditions to the moon and Mars, wants NASA to give private companies a broader role and a greater share of the financial burden.

The presidential commission will recommend that NASA’s role in missions be limited to “areas where there is irrefutable demonstration that only government can perform the proposed activity,” according to a summary of its conclusions obtained by Associated Press.

Responsibility for manned spaceflight would stay with NASA.

The commission’s final report is expected to be released on Wednesday. President Bush has proposed establishing a lunar base within two decades and conducting a manned landing on Mars after 2030.

The president’s panel, led by former astronaut trainee Edward C. “Pete” Aldridge Jr., describes how to meet Bush’s exploration objectives “within reasonable schedules and affordable costs.” Its recommendations are aimed at least partly toward easing the burden for taxpayers by increasing commercialization of the nation’s space program.

The panel envisions rewarding companies that participate with “appropriate property rights” over technology they may develop, creating what the commission described as a space industry that will contribute to national economic growth and develop into a “national treasure.”

A broader role for private industry in America’s space program, however, could reignite a simmering debate over astronaut safety in an environment where corporations are driven to reduce costs, generate shareholder profits and meet contractual promises.

The board that investigated the Columbia breakup in 2003 criticized NASA’s “substantial transfers of safety responsibility from the government to the private sector” after it turned to greater reliance on private contractors since the mid-1990s.

The White House commission said NASA should allow private companies “to assume the primary role of providing services to NASA and most immediately in accessing low-Earth orbit.” It said it anticipated “reasonable risk ... along with some failures.”

Experts said that clearly signaled an intention to hand over nearly all space launches except manned missions to private corporations.

“It carves out the launch of astronauts,” said George T. Whitesides, head of the National Space Society, a nonprofit group that advocates space exploration. “I’m sure there will be a lot of debate about that over the coming weeks.”