President Trump isn’t exactly opening a new frontier, but he is expanding one. And while most of the attention focused on the new U.S. Space Force this week, the big legacy defense contractors definitely took notice at Trump’s embrace of space entrepreneurship.
Speaking at the National Space Council, Trump signed Space Policy Directive 3 to create a brand new space traffic management policy.
At first glance, that might sound boring and stuffy like Trump is just creating some sort of intergalactic FAA or commissioning new cosmic traffic cops. Instead, the president is clearing the intergalactic playing field by making it much easier for entrepreneurs to access “space safety data and services.” The directive orders the Defense Department to hand over those obligations to the Commerce Department.
Theoretically, that means “a more user-friendly approach” for private industry trying to access government space data and hopefully it means more rockets in space.
“We will be setting aggressive timelines, challenging old ways of doing business, and we will be expecting real results,” Trump told a room of scientists, generals, and industry leaders Monday. “And we are making our incredible facilities available to these people that have been doing so incredibly by themselves on rocketry. So, you’re invited. The rent won’t be high.”
That’s good news for the likes of Elon Musk and his SpaceX. Already comfortable with the good old boys who make up the military industrial complex, the federal government normally overlooks them in favor of big companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing Defense.
For instance, in 2014, the Air Force awarded a sole-source contract to launch military satellites to the United Launch Alliance — the joint Lockheed-Boeing conglomerate. SpaceX complained that using ULA rockets would cost a staggering $460 million per launch. According to Musk, he could put the same hardware into space on his rockets for about $90 million.
From his comments, it seems Trump considers the ULA the equivalent of an intergalactic racket. “I don’t like when Boeing and Lockheed get together because the pricing only goes up,” he said to Vice President Pence. “We’re going to have to talk about that, your joining those two companies. I don’t like that stuff.”
And who can blame him for wanting to shake up space?
Because of budget cuts, the last administration cut the space shuttle program after decades of over budget and perpetually-behind-schedule contractors. Thanks in large part to their largess, American astronauts have to catch a ride on Russian rockets to slip those surly bonds of this earth. It’s a disgrace for the nation first to the moon.
“But all of that is changing,” Trump promised. “We know that. My administration is reclaiming America’s heritage as the world’s greatest space-faring nation. The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons and to tame new frontiers.”
Toward that cosmic end, Trump is trying to supercharge the frontier spirit with more competition. He all but recruited “an American rich person” to become the next captain of private space industry. Hopefully, the new space directive helps explode legacy defense contractors and their space cronyism. Hopefully, it makes it easier for entrepreneurs to launch.
