Posted by Ray Katz in current, private
Astronauts’ editorial reflects their commercial interests
The Journal: neglects to mention astronauts commercial ties
An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal promotes NASA ceding low earth orbit to commercial companies. This matches the recommendations of the Augustine Commission and, no doubt, the genuine opinions of the former astronauts who wrote the opinion piece.
In many cases, this position also matches the interests of the commercial aerospace companies that employ them.
Ken Bowersox is a Vice President at SpaceX. Rick Searfoss is scheduled to fly a commercial spaceplane for XCOR. Robert Gibson works for Benson Space Company, which is developing a commercial private spaceship to be launched using the Atlas V booster. The opinion piece specifically promoted the Atlas V booster (along with several other vehicles). Norm Thagard is an adviser to Space Adventures, a company that books commercial space flights. Jim Voss is an official with SpaceDev, a commercial space firm.
Although I respect the sincerity of the opinions by the former astronauts in the article, and in fact agree with them, I think it is shabby of the Wall Street Journal to publish it without revealing the relevant relationships between the authors and those commercial space companies.
