Which governmental activities might be required really?

rpspeck gave a hint in a post in the General Micro Space Forum that NASA all ways has some expendable rockets and that by what rocket a payload is launched depends on which rockets they actually have available.

rpspeck explictly puts in question if this is reasonable and I suppose that he thinks that it is NOT.

I agree absolutely.

So which governmental activities might be really needed? Why not passing the selection of a rocket to the owners of the payloads and letting Lockheed Martin, Boeing etc. store the rockets at their own risk? Might free NASA of a burden or more. They then could concentrate on their spaceports.

But why letting spaceports govermental? They also could be private an NASA could supervise safety, security, liability..

What do you think?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)