Privatize Space Exploration
By Robert Garmong (Washington Times, November 5, 2004)

Space exploration, as the grandest of man's technological advancements ("Bush's bold space policy," Editorial, Sunday), requires the kind of bold innovation possible only to minds left free to pursue the best of their thinking and judgment. Yet, by placing the space program under governmental funding, we necessarily place it at the mercy of governmental whim. The results are written all over the past 20 years of NASA's history: The space program is a political animal, marked by shifting, inconsistent and ill-defined goals.

We have made the first steps toward the stars. Before us are enormous technical difficulties, the solutions to which will require even more heroic determination than that which tamed the seas and the continents. To solve them, to transform space exploration from an expensive national bauble to a practical industry, America must unleash the creative force of rational minds, as only the free market can do.