NASA JSC Advanced Planning Office Blog: Pass the Baton or Short Track Speed Skater Push, NASA Blogs

"Therefore for me it is not a question of how do we handoff the responsibility of access to Low Earth Orbit to commercial space but how do we ensure that the commercial space community reaches a speed close to what NASA has obtained over the past 50 years so that NASA can push them off to continue the race? How do we set up the transition so that in the event that commercial space should fall, NASA can tag the fallen and temporarily continue the race? Yes I know, with the completion of the Shuttle program the push off is more of a challenge yet not impossible."