I Called It!!

In reading over today’s news on CNN, I came across this story out of Houston, Texas, which discusses the efforts of a “private spaceport” to launch a rocket as part of an ambitious plan for commercial flights to possibly begin in 2010. This, along with the recent successes of “The Spaceship Company” and co-founder Richard Branson’s own “Virgin Galactic” project reminded me of a cool spring evening six years ago.

Attending the Stonecipher Symposium on March 27, 2000, I was able to hear a lecture on the future of spaceflight given by then Director of NASA, Daniel Goldin. Following that lecture, Goldin took questions from the audience and I was able to ask him this (transcript follows):


Me: As you mentioned about the private sector taking over more of the short term, low earth orbit spaceflights, do you foresee the creation of private space agencies?

Goldin (speaking to audience): He said, as the private sector takes over more and more low earth orbit, do I see the creation of private space agencies.

Goldin (speaking to me): God, I hope not. I hope we have private companies and private enterprise, without any help from the government, that will open up the space frontier. And the only role that I see for government is just like we have the FAA to certify airlines as safe to fly, the FAA now has a new role. They will be certifying private companies as safe to fly people and rockets. But I don’t, I would hope we don’t have more government involvement than that. The private sector is what made America great and we at NASA are prepared to step aside as the private sector takes over. But this is such an overwhelming problem, I think it’s going to take time. But we need to give room to the dreamers, and they’ll make it happen.


Now, it’s obvious that Goldin didn’t entirely understand my question. He seemed to have thought I was asking about government sponsored space agencies as opposed to those in the private sector, which he goes on to laud even as he gives some political double-talk to hedge his bets.

However, this was still long before SpaceShipOne and one year before private citizen, Dennis Tito made history as the first “space tourist”.

Watch the clip below. If you are having trouble viewing it here, you can also check it out on YouTube.