The Article review

Author tries to makes an effort to examine how public and private partnerships are enabling the development of commercial space industry, viewed through the lens of rethinking business institutional hybrid framework put for by University of Oxford professors. Author in the paper, “rethinking Public-private space travel”, emphasises mainly on public-private partnership, PPP, spaceX, space act agreements and space launch system. Further, author has divided the paper into three main chapters so that the concept is being clearly understood by the reader, which are:- 1) the NASA-spaceX partnership, 2) an overview of public-private partnerships and 3) the value in partnering.

Before moving to this three aspects discussed in the paper, author starts the paper with the scenario from which this concept emerge. The author states that, “on May 24, 2012 spacex’s Dragon capsule was launched and in doing so became the first commercial bid vehicle to berth with and carry cargo to the International space Station. It successfully completed its mission and written to Pacific Ocean on May 31, 2012. The docking of Dragon represented a historic moment when a commercial enterprise managed to achieve that which had previously only been accomplished by government. In the history of spaceflight-only for entities have launched a space capsule into orbit and successfully brought it back to Earth; the United States, Russia, China and spaceX. While this is monumental accomplishment for private industry, we cannot ignore the value of public-private partnerships and the role that government played in enabling this incredible achievement. And henceforth the author divides this paper into three aspects of that he can explain the role of government played in the public-private partnerships.

The first part of the paper deals with, “the NASA spaceX partnership”, in which the author tries to explain that the original idea behind spaceX came from NASA to start a greenhouse on Mars, however the NASA had no near-term plans to visit the red planet, the spaceX decided to go on it alone. But, in absence of adequate government resources, spaceX found its place. As a government managed Mars mission pushed back to 2033, the spaceX setup to develop its own technology and after failure of first three launches, the fourth launch was a success. Following the successful mission of the Dragon capsule, spaceX showed his appreciation for his new government partners. There was tremendous opportunity for private enterprise to meet the demand for cost effective travel to and from the ISS. At this with a commercial innovation started to begin and government and private enterprise look to expand their activities in space, both have the opportunity to generate greater total value of focusing on the respective core competitions.

The second part deals with, “an overview of public-private partnership”, the author explains what is called public-private partnership (PPP), according to him one doesn’t need to look very hard to find and evidence of research done on a historical bridges between government and the private sector. This was the time when privatization by contract is nothing new. The value of public-private partnerships have been demonstrated throughout history, dating back to ancient Greek when government contracted out almost everything is, in area of mutual value and economic development. Further, author refers to an economist named Greg Autry, which says that it was the government’s aggressive investment in infrastructure that laid the foundation for private companies to succeed. The primary goal of privatization is to decrease the total cost and increase the efficiency of a service or product regardless of payment method. For the author states that the new modes of partnerships have been adopted by example space act agreements are NASA’s primary vehicle for partnering with other organization, there are number of agreements under this heading. Basically these agreements with newer partners represent a sea change in the way the government worked with the private sector. The traditional model has been “cost plus” where companies are reimbursed the cost of a project plus a guaranteed profit. Further, the author tries to balance this concept with philosophical shift, by which the author tries to make understand the magnitude of this shift in approach to privatization, it helps to read a general definition which captures the broad essence of PPP; it is a philosophical position concerning the rules and the relationship of society’s private institution and government. Further author states that privatization is the act of reducing the role of government or increasing the role of private institution of society in satisfying peoples need; it means relying more on the private sector and less on government.

The third part of the paper deals with, “the value in partnering”, it discusses the impact of space act agreement on the development of the commercial special industry has been profound, enabling spaceX to do what no other private enterprise has done before. Further, it provides a commercial viable solution for reliable and routine transport to space. The author argues that with the role of private enterprise in space increasing, NASA is able to use its precious limited resource to play a more active role in activities that expand our knowledge of the industry but are not yet commercially viable, such as deep space science and exploration. Further the author discusses about the private sector impact in which the emphasise that the space act agreements have been a huge boon for the commercial space industry, this new approach to partnership has numerous benefits; it facilitates rapid development in terms of money and contracts; it allows commercial companies to tap into the vast technical wisdom of an institution that has 50 years of experience in space; it provides legitimacy of new commercial companies, which allows them to more effectively attract capital investment; and it helps commercial companies navigate the complex international regularly and government. With respect to this, author argues that the new partnership model is that by doing away with the traditional cost-plus approach to partnerships, NASA has created competition and speed up the rate of innovation and double up meant. In the later part author discusses about the public sector impact, in which the states that spaceX is developing a reusable rocket that could decrease the cost of launch of to one hundred fold. Further, author emphasises the important benefit of this partnership, that they have increased national sovereignty, as the US no longer must rely on Russia for transport. By contracting flights abroad a spaceX launch vehicle, the government will no doubt save money when compared to the Russian alternative. Despite the many benefits of new PPP models, however NASA has not yet fully embrace the new philosophy.

And based on three appendix namely, 1) institution hybrid framework, 2) forms of privatization framework and 3) rethinking business frameworks author tries to make an effort to bring up the new PPP model in action.

To conclude the same, the author in this paper have made an effort to examine how public-private partnerships are enabling the development of the commercial space industry. Further the author tried to demonstrate that the NASA versus commercial space agreement is a false dichotomy and that only by working together can boot sector continued to push the boundaries of space travel and exploration. The author tries to explore what a public-Private partnership (PPP) is, as compared to other government privatization scheme, and explained by space act agreements are significantly different from anything done previously. At the end and analysis has been drawn on the impact of this agreements and their benefits in order to demonstrate the value they create, especially in areas of mutual value creation and economic development.