The President’s Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy forwarded its report “A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover” to the President on June 4, 2004. In that report, the Commission made a number of recommendations concerning the future missions and structure of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The report can be viewed electronically at http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/60736main_M2M_report_small_pdf .
The Commission stated directly that for the nation’s space exploration journey to succeed, it must be (1) sustainable over several decades; (2) affordable with available resources; and (3) credible in the stewardship of taxpayer dollars. The Commission recommended:
“. . . NASA recognize and implement a far larger presence of private industry in space operations with the specific goal of allowing private industry to assume the primary role of providing services to NASA, and most immediately in accessing low-Earth orbit. In NASA decisions, the preferred choice for operational activities must be competitively awarded contracts with private and non-profit organizations and NASA’s role must be limited to only those areas where there is irrefutable demonstration that only government can perform the proposed activity.”
One step to foster these goals would be to have operational activities done to the greatest extent possible by the private sector. This will allow the private sector to bring its expertise to bear on those matters while NASA focuses on cutting edge research, development and exploration.
For this Request for Information (RFI), NASA is interested in receiving comments and ideas from all sources regarding possible ways of implementing the Commission’s recommendation except for the area of commercial transportation services, which is being addressed under a separate RFI.
Questions concerning this RFI may be submitted via email no later than August 27, 2004, 5:00 PM EDT to Rodney Liesveld at rodney.liesveld@nasa.gov.
Responses to this RFI and call for comments and ideas may lead to a decision to compete study contracts or other follow-on work to implement this recommendation.
Responses to this RFI should be sent to the address shown below. Responses are due September 13, 2004. Respondents shall provide an electronic submission to the email address given above in addition to the hard copy submission. Responses are limited to 20 pages. An executive summary shall be included as part of your 20-page response.
Mr. William F. Readdy
Associate Administrator
Office of Space Operations
NASA Headquarters
300 E Street SW
Washington, D.C. 20546
This document is for information and planning purposes. This document is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government, nor will the Government pay for the information submitted in response. Respondents will not be notified of the results.
