On July 8, as NASA’s Atlantis Space Shuttle waited to lift off for the last time, CNN interviewed former astronaut Leroy Chiao, veteran of the Columbia, Endeavor and Discovery shuttle missions and six and a half months on the International Space Station. The historic end of thirty years of American shuttle missions coincides with the beginning of commercial space exploration and even tourism, Chiao told Vanity Fair in a lively interview on June 30:
Two years ago, I was a member of a White House appointed committee called the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee. We were charged to examine the NASA space flight program and formulate several option paths for the new administration to use as a basis for a new space policy. One of our sub-options was stimulating commercial companies to take over the task of ferrying civilian astronauts to and from lower-Earth orbit. . . .
The thinking was, we’ve been sending astronauts to space for 50 years, so the technology is mature. The commercial companies deserve a chance to succeed. If they can pick it up and do it, then NASA can contract out their technology to those commercial providers and use our resources to push farther out, beyond lower-Earth orbit. NASA has been hosting a competition to pick companies deserving of grant money, and they’re starting the next round in September.
Upon retiring from NASA, Chiao became Executive Vice President of Excalibur Almaz, a private space exploration company that uses updated legacy Soviet-era space technology for space research, tourism, and science.
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