January 01, 2018
From 'flags and footprints' to having a routine presence in space
President Trump’s signing of Space Policy Directive 1 once again gives NASA a mission adjustment and beneficial goals. The directive recommits NASA to:
“Lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities.”
With the recent successes by the commercial sector, the space domain is no longer for governments by governments: NASA and the U.S. government require a fundamental change in tactics. While activities in space will always remain linked to Earth, shifting their “center” and expanding infrastructure from the surface of the Earth into Earth’s orbits and beyond by efficiently leveraging commercial capabilities is key to beginning the transition from “flags and footprints” to routine activities and presence in space.
“One mission, one destination” is the typical strategic mindset common to NASA’s science and human exploration missions, which results in developing required capabilities from scratch (e.g. SkyCrane) or looking at reusing existing technologies for other mission uses with minimal design change (heritage technology is preferred assuming that it drives down mission costs, a fact not always true, especially if such capabilities do not exist anymore — e.g. Orion TPS).
Read the full commentary in The Hill.
More from CNAS
-
Defense / Technology & National Security
Which Technology Offers the Best Defense Against Drones? Lasers or Mobile Gun Trucks?Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Romania and Norway are some of the European countries that have reported -- just this month alone -- drone incursions into their airspace. So far, the...
By Stacie Pettyjohn
-
Defense / Transatlantic Security
NATO’s Counter-Drone ConundrumOver the last two weeks, Russia has repeatedly violated NATO airspace. Seventeen Russian military drones entered Polish airspace on September 10th, followed by another drone i...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Jim Townsend & Stacie Pettyjohn
-
Countering the Swarm: America’s Drone Deterrence Strategy
Host Jim Cardoso is joined by Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn, senior fellow and program director at the Center for a New American Security, and Molly Campbell, research assistant at the...
By Stacie Pettyjohn & Molly Campbell
-
Sharper: Defending Against Drones
After three decades of air dominance, the United States faces a more hostile world brought about by the proliferation of inexpensive military and commercial drones. In any fut...
By Molly Campbell & Charles Horn