Provocateurs Praise Pathfinding Parabolic Procurement

Space Frontier Foundation Co-founders James Muncy and Bob Werb have praised a recent NASA-Zero Gravity Corp. deal as “a true hallelujah moment for the NewSpace industry” in a Space News op-ed piece.

NASA recently agreed to buy up to $25.4 million in commercial parabolic flight services from the private company. The space agency usually flies its own parabolic flights, which are used to train astronauts in a micro-gravity environment.

“This announcement is a strong positive signal to the NewSpace companies trying to develop Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) systems and other capabilities that NASA needs. Up until now, many of us could – and regularly did – say to NASA: ‘How can you expect industry to raise tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a service on the promise that NASA will buy, when it won’t even buy an existing commercial parabolic flight service from Zero Gravity Corp.?'” they wrote.