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In reply to the discussion: William Shatner sets record in space with Blue Origin spaceflight [View all]BumRushDaShow
(128,732 posts)You do know that NASA has been working in partnership and contracting out TO private industry since their inception.
The difference between "now" and "the past", is that "in the past", the government contract stipulations were that NASA would stick their name on the vehicles and would have "ownership" of the end product. That is a standard stipulation for most government contracts with private industry - whether they were "building" a booster rocket or "Healthcare.gov". But if you think companies like "Grumman" (now "Northrop-Grumman" ) were merely "ghosts in the machine", then you are mistaken.
I will re-post what I posted at the last launch (SpaceX's "Inspiration4" ) - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=2802123
The main difference between "then" and "now" is that back then (before 2011), when NASA did their contracts and used "taxpayer dollars" to pay for it, the government "owned" the end product (the "tech" - hardware, software modules, etc) so that NASA could "slap its name on the side of the vehicle" per the contract stipulation. The actual "non-private industry government employees were essentially SMEs (subject matter experts), researchers, and techies, with many of them becoming Project Managers who helped to define the project goals, do some design, and be able to "define the work product" so that the actual work could be contracted to private entities to build and maintain.
Government employees worked alongside their contractors as part of teams to get the job done.
"Now", it's the same taxpayer dollars used for NASA contracts where the government "defines" the goals and helps with the design elements, but are allowing private industry to "own" their product (probably with some exceptions where the government defines which hardware/software modules are or should be "government-owned" systems), so a contractor (private entity) like SpaceX, can slap THEIR name on the side of the vehicle.
I hate to say but the difference is essentially a "cosmetic" change, outside of the fact that the federal government is not supposed to be a "for-profit" entity where private industry (at least in this field) generally is.
For example, some of the big contractors were -
BOEING - https://www.boeing.com/space/
GRUMMAN (now Northrop-Grumman) - https://www.northropgrumman.com/space/space-legacy/
MCDONNELL-DOUGLAS (eventually gobbled up by Boeing) - https://old.texasarchive.org/a_journey_to_the_moon/mcdonnell_douglas/
GENERAL ELECTRIC - https://www.ge.com/news/reports/the-right-stuff-ge-tech-has-been-at-the-launch
LOCKHEED MARTIN - https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/history/space-race.html
NORTH AMERICAN/ROCKWELL - https://old.texasarchive.org/a_journey_to_the_moon/north_american_rockwell/
ROCKETDYNE - https://www.rocket.com/who-we-are/history
See this too - https://history.nasa.gov/MHR-5/app_c.htm
For example, the contractors involved with the Saturn rockets (which are still used today) -
This may be instructive - https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4102/contents.htm
And note this from the above link -
The NASA Acquisition Process: Contracting for Research and Development
A SUMMARY OF NASA CONTRACTING PHILOSOPHY
[65] From its establishment to the present, NASA has contracted with the private sector for most of the products and services it uses.
https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4102/ch4.htm
There is this disingenuous fantasy going around that NASA was peopled with nothing but a bunch of GS-7 and GS-9 Civil Service "grunts" running around designing and constructing space craft and there was no "private industry" involved.
And I say this as a now-retired, 30+ year federal employee who worked with "contractors" at my own worksite, at various points throughout my federal career.
There is a lot of fantasy going around about NASA and the federal government in general - particularly when it comes to contractors. But it's easy to go around spouting the "millionaires and billionaires" refrain rather than actually doing some research on the entire U.S. space program and how it got to where it is today.