Why the United States no longer needs NASA

The age old mission of NASA since its inception has been raising the bar of human space exploration and achievement for the betterment of the United States of America. With the privatization of space looming around the corner, the mission in space has changed from “human achievement” to “how can we make a profit”. Everything from space tourism, to the mineral mining of the moon, to space based internet is being explored and developed. This being the case, Government agencies such as NASA take a “new seat” in the room of space players as the Government authorizes the new Spaceport America as well as new private companies like Virgin Galactic, and Space X to create their own versions of space ships.

• Virgin Galactic Is Getting Cleared For Takeoff From Spaceport America (Forbes)
• SpaceX – CRS-3 Mission Overview (SpaceX)

On April 18, 2014, Falcon 9 and Dragon began the CRS-3 resupply mission to the International Space Station. This mission marked Dragon’s fourth visit to the space station and third official cargo resupply mission for NASA.

• Scaled Composites (White Knight Space Ships)
• Bigelow Aerospace (Only company in the world authorized by the U.S. Government to take “Weapons” into space [no one knows why except for those that need to know])

• Is Mining Rare Minerals on the Moon Vital to National Security? (Space.com)
• Moon draws growing interest as a potential source of rare minerals (Washington Post)
• How the ‘Outernet’ Plans to Broadcast Free Internet from Space (VICE)
• Virgin Galactic Space Tourists Shed Pounds (and Fears) on Zero-G Flight (NBC News)
• Is Space Tourism Finally About To Take Off? – Sir Richard Branson (NPR)
• Outernet