American space achievements: Lessons from the past year – Washington Examiner

[This article has been published in Restoring America to highlight the importance of continued U.S.-led exploration and innovation.]

History will likely record the past year as a turning point in space exploration. A few examples of recent achievements include:

There are a few takeaways from these developments. First, all these innovations are the result of two pipelines. One is the patient funding that supported research and development (R&D) over many years decades in most cases. The other is a talent pipeline that cultivated the human capital producing the ingenuity and entrepreneurship we are witnessing today.

Strengthening both of these pipelines today is crucial for the breakthrough innovations of tomorrow. There are some immediate opportunities as Congress begins deliberations on the Bipartisan Innovation Act, which will include important funding for R&D and other reforms that lay the groundwork for innovation in the future.

Second, many of these accomplishments owe themselves to NASA intentionally creating public-private partnerships to achieve national space ambitions. This produced a regulatory framework by which multiple new technologies and road maps can be piloted, tested, and eventually scaled. The benefit for NASA is the opportunity to save on costs while entrepreneurs compete among themselves with different approaches to win various contracts. It is the same principle and type of public-private partnership that helped produce the miracle of multiple COVID-19 vaccines.

Federal policymakers and regulators should double down on using public-private partnerships and creating more regulatory room to test and scale innovations. One important element of this work should involve reviewing existing regulatory processes that may need modernization. For example, the Federal Aviation Administrationdelayed for a fourth time its environmental review of SpaceXs Starship program in Texas, creating challenges not only for SpaceX but also for NASAs Project Artemis, which will rely on the same launch site. Unlocking future technologies may require updating these review processes to ensure they can match the speed of the innovation they are assessing.

The past year was filled with incredible technological breakthroughs and moments of inspiration. We should celebrate these achievements, but also use them as a call for continued action to strengthen the pipelines that enable innovation.

This article originally appeared in the AEIdeas blog and is reprinted with kind permission from the American Enterprise Institute.

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American space achievements: Lessons from the past year - Washington Examiner