[____] The private sector looks to the government for direction. Alone, it will not innovate. David M. Livingston, business consultant, financial advisor, and strategic planner, 8/10/2000, “From Earth to Mars: A Cooperative Plan,” http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/from_earth_to_mars_a_cooperative_plan.shtml Regarding the private sector, some of the same components are missing, such as leadership, education, commitment, and acceptance. Unfortunately, the private sector has been conditioned to believe that our space program is the proper function of government. This is to be expected since the commercial space industry of today, while highly profitable and successful, was initiated by government policy and acts of Congress. In addition, space commercialization developed on a dual track with the military's usage of space and communication satellites, even to the extent of using military rockets for all commercial satellite launches. The private sector simply is not prepared to lead the way with something as unique, costly, risky, and new as putting humans on Mars. It still looks to the public sector for leadership, support, and encouragement. Thus, there is no private-sector leadership that can do what public sector leadership has the opportunity to do. While the opportunity does exist for developing private-sector leadership in this field, it is not within the culture of the private sector at this time to do so. This fact needs to change before the private sector can help lead the way to putting people on Mars.
[____] [____] Private companies will only look to make money, they will not create useful technologies. Lane Wallace, author who has written several books for NASA, 7/8/2011 “As the Shuttle Mission Ends, Analyzing the Cost of Exploration”, The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/as-the-shuttle-mission-ends-analyzing-the-cost-of-exploration/241586/, But exploration of the cosmos -- even through robotic eyes -- still takes an enormous amount of commitment and investment. Which is to say ... money. Federal, government money. Why government money? For the very same reason national laboratories, NASA, and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, were formed in the first place. Private industry has no incentive to invest in endeavors where either: a) the result is greater scientific knowledge or understanding, but nothing that has any hope of a fiscal return on investment, or b) cutting-edge technology whose development is so nascent that its incorporation into commercial products is simply too risky to attempt.
No Impact – Privatization Won’t Work
[____] [____] The private sector will be unable to comply with NASA safety standards and not develop. Alan Boyle, Science editor for MSNBC, 1/28/2011, “New spaceships should be safer than the space shuttle”, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41279893/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/new-spaceships-should-be-safer-space-shuttle/ NASA eventually hopes to use commercial craft to ferry astronauts back and forth to the space station as well. But the job won't be easy. In a set of draft requirements issued last month, NASA said it expected commercial companies to measure up to the same risk standards the space agency expected for itself: a 1-in-1,000 chance that the crew would be lost during a journey to and from the space station. "These are quite demanding and rigorous standards," Logsdon said. Some space veterans think the commercial companies can't do it. Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan — who was the last man to walk on the moon back in 1972 — complained to Congress last year that the new players in spaceflight "do not yet know what they don't know, and that can lead to dangerous and costly consequences." In addition to the dollars-and-cents issue, the commercial companies are wary of being too hamstrung by hundreds of pages of written requirements. Former space shuttle program director Wayne Hale, who retired from NASA last year, warned that excessive red tape could lead to a "train wreck" for the space agency's commercialization effort. [____]
[____] Space research is too expensive to be successful and will not attract business. John McGowan, contractor at NASA Ames Research Center, 6/8/2009
Space Review, “Can the private sector make a breakthrough in space access?”, 6/8/09, http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1388/1 Modern “professional” research has not overcome the need for large amounts of trial and error to achieve major breakthroughs or significant inventions and discoveries. Indeed, the number of actual breakthroughs may have declined with increased funding and professionalization, at least in part because the per-trial cost has risen relative to funding. (See “Cheap access to space: lessons from past breakthroughs”, The Space Review, May 11, 2009) In space, a full launch attempt costs on the order of $50–100 million, depending on the vehicle, meaning that $1 billion can fund only 10–20 trials, a small number relative to the hundreds or thousands usually involved in a major breakthrough. There has been minimal progress in power and propulsion in aviation and rocketry since about 1970. Even five years is an extremely long time by the standards of modern business, especially the high technology companies often looked to as examples of how to achieve cheap access to space. Venture capitalists, for example, typically invest in projects with an expected return (an initial public offering, merger, or other so-called “exit strategy”) within three to five years. During the Internet bubble, some venture capitalists appeared to have invested in a large number of dot-coms with very short turnarounds, little more than put up a web site and go public in a few months or years.