MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA -- NASA could soon start turning a profit on its shuttle flights thanks to White House approval to amend current legislation.
Dan Tam, assistant to the administrator for commercialization at NASA, announced Thursday at the Space Shuttle Development Conference that a plan would be submitted to Congress to give NASA authority to commercialize some services on the space shuttle, and keep the money it earned.
"The way the law is written now, we can't use the Space Shuttle to fly a commercial payload unless it's a secondary payload. They don't want us to compete with commercial providers," Tam said.
The legislation would be an amendment to the Commercial Space Act of 1998, which states that if NASA has a moneymaking venture, the money doesn't come back to the agency. Instead, it's passed on to the federal government.
NASA's appeal to the White House for permission to pursue commercial ventures comes on the heels of the passage of a bill by the House Appropriations subcommittee that would slash NASA's 2000 budget by 11 percent.
If the new bill is passed, Tam said he hopes NASA will be able to enter into a variety of commercial ventures with private industry and reap the rewards.
"We needed some legislative changes to give us the flexibility to really do commercialization."
Tam compared the situation to a similar agreement involving the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA), which is part of the Department of Defense. ARPA developed an aperture radar device to fly over and map areas.
When ARPA ran out of money, it made a deal with a private company which agreed to operate and maintain the equipment. In return, they can purchase any product the project produces at a reduced price, plus it gets a percentage of the company's profits.
Tam said he hopes NASA can develop similar relationships with private companies.
The International Space Station, now being built by NASA and other international space agencies, could be used for drug development and experiments with advanced telecommunications, Tam said.
"Companies can come and try products and technologies on the space station. They can use it as a pathfinder to do debugging and trial and error," Tam said. He hopes the bill will also be a green light for commercial space travel.
NASA is searching for a congressional sponsor to introduce the bill during the next legislative session.
