Open Source Space Exploration

[radarredux]

Random thought... what if NASA pursued an "open source" model for space exploration?<br /><br />The goal is to accelerate the VSE by attracting a lot of private capital. In the computer world, the Linux kernel is free, but there is a huge amount of private investment that pours in around the Linux ecosystem. In the space model, the HLV would be the equivalent of the free Linux kernel, and the goal is to attact private capital to fill out the rest of the VSE ecosystem.<br /><br />The current thought goes like this:<br /><br /><b><font color="yellow">HLV Remains Government Supported</font>/b><br /><br />The HLV is the most capital intensive portions of the travel to the Moon, so for the near-term (next 10-15 years) NASA would provide this at a discount. For example, if a launch costs $500 million, then NASA would charge only $200 million. These subsidized launches are only for manned missions or missions supporting manned missions (e.g., to land a habitat) and the rest of the elements used in the mission must be majority owned by American companies (whatever that means).<br /><br /><b><font color="yellow">Open Source Requirements and Design</font>/b><br /><br />Almost every other portion of the VSE has been or is being pursued to some level by commercial vendors. For example, Bigelow is looking at habitats, t/Space is looking at capsules, Armadillo and TGV are looking at powered landings (e.g., like the LEM). The point isn't that you will buy your LEM from Armadillo, but that commercial companies can fund these activities themselves, they generally cannot fund an HLV on their own.<br /><br />To help this process, NASA would develop requirements (weight, power connectors, docking mechanisms, etc.) and then provide their own design for each element of a manned mission. From the Internet analogy, NASA would be the IETF developing the standard protocols and providing the designs for reference implementations. These detailed requirements and designs would</b></b>

 

[ehs40]

i think nasa should try to get more private funding its not a cheap bussiness they are in

 

[gofer]

I think it's an excellent approach. I would even put it more strongly (although many would disagree*) : the goal of the VSE *IS* the creation of a commercial (manned spaceflight) space economy (although the US tax dollars should go to the US based companies, of course). And short-term purely technical perfomance considerations (direct Moon/Mars, Zubrin, et al...) can take a hike.<br /><br />*many, it seems, interpret the VSE as simply "NASA going back to the moon ASAP, damn the torpedoes"<br />