Garver: We’re Open to Commercial Options, International Cooperation

Garver: No Change for the Sake of Change
Space News

Garver cited international agreements Bolden signed mid-September that will ease future cooperation with Canada and Europe. She also touted the agency’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration program as a good model for doing business with private companies.

As NASA moves forward with commercial initiatives, Garver said the agency will apply lessons learned from some of the commercialization missteps it made in the 1990s.

“For NASA to have pushed some areas in commercialization where there was not yet the pull by an outside market is a lesson learned. I also feel that, unfortunately, we have been not lucky in our timing,” she said, citing VentureStar, Lockheed Martin’s failed effort to combine federal funding and private capital to bring a single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicle to market. “In my view, that’s no reason not to keep trying.”

Garver said NASA should outsource only those areas where industry is “actively wanting to take over” and willing to invest private money. “And then NASA has to be willing to somewhat step aside and not provide the direct oversight that we do when we’re a direct contractor,” she said.

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