WP: NASA Invests in Its Future With Venture Capital Firm

[DeepModem Mom]

NASA Invests in Its Future With Venture Capital Firm
'Red Planet' Nonprofit to Fund Aerospace Innovation
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; Page A19


Mars inspired the name of NASA's new nonprofit venture capital firm, created to finance emerging technology. (Nasa Via Associated Press)

Hoping to tap the innovation and daring of small aerospace and biomedical companies, NASA has created and funded a nonprofit venture capital firm that will invest government money in promising but underfinanced companies.

The fund, called Red Planet Capital, is the government's third experiment with venture capitalism, after similar efforts sponsored by the CIA and the Army.

Red Planet marks the first time that the federal government has started a venture capital fund for civilian purposes, but it is hardly a stretch. That is because a former president of the CIA-sponsored venture fund is Michael D. Griffin -- now the administrator of NASA....

Lisa L. Lockyer, NASA program manager for the project....said the fund will not only invest on its own in cutting-edge companies but will also join private venture capital firms to form investment syndicates. Together, she said, those partnerships will be able to invest far more money in selected companies than the government could.

The NASA fund, which will be managed by three venture fund veterans selected by the agency through a competitive process, will receive $75 million in taxpayer funds over five years. The money is to be invested only in emerging technologies that might someday be useful to NASA....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001069.html

[aquart]

1. They've privatized the CIA? The Army? And now NASA?

Ye gods.

[w4rma]

2. But the Republican leadership says that NASA is too broke to keep Hubble flying. (nt)