Feb 11 1988
From The Space Library
The White House officially unveiled a comprehensive "Space Policy and Commercial Space Initiative to Begin the Next Century," intended to assure U.S. space leadership into the 21st century. The release of the space policy had been delayed for several days because of a dispute among NASA, the President's Economic Policy Council, and Congress over aspects of the commercial space initiative. The most controversial component of the initiative was the proposed Industrial Space Facility (ISF), an orbiting, Shuttle-tended materials processing laboratory that would be jointly used by NASA and by private companies. The ISF was being promoted by some members of Congress and the Economic Policy Council as an interim step toward the permanently crew-tended Space Station. NASA Administrator Dr. James C. Fletcher submitted a "minority report" to the president opposing the policy Council's recommendation that NASA immediately commit to leasing the ISF from Space Industries, Inc., a commercial space venture. In response to the Administrator's concerns, the commercial space policy statement recommended competitive bidding to build the ISF and a reconfiguration of the facility as a crew-tended laboratory.
A draft of the 39-page commercial space initiative included a report by the National Security Council on national security implications of commercializing space, and legislative and administrative proposals by President Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Council on how to promote commercialization of space. Among other key proposals were the promotion of a private launch vehicle industry and the establishment of limits on the amount of third-party liability insurance coverage commercial space projects would have to carry.
President Reagan also announced a program to develop the technologies needed to conduct human-assisted exploration of the solar system, including a mission to Mars. The program, labeled Project Pathfinder, would allot NASA $100 million in fiscal year 1989 to begin developing technologies for tended missions to the Moon and Mars. (Presidential Directive on National Space Policy: Fact Sheet, Feb 11/88; WH Release, Feb 11/88; NY Times, Jan 24/88; W Times, Jan 27/88; Av Wk, Feb 1/88)
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