Olson concludes with advice for the government, reflecting on the Aldridge Commission’s suggestion that heavy lift is needed for the new space exploration mission at NASA:

Things the US government could/should do:

1. Incentivize small or startup businesses. Startups will create their own culture and it will be different and better.

2. Prizes, tax incentives, loans, longer patents, deregulation, etc.

3. As patents on the shuttle tech have run out, make the drawings, process, procedure available to any US company that agrees to ITAR. Set up a data repository. If the technology is worthy; it will be used. (If you auction the technology, one of the big aerospace companies may just outbid the smaller companies and it won’t go anywhere. The culture will not change.)

4. Commit to a sustained competitive development of space. One advisor believed the best way to do this is via what he called an “answer” prize-trust fund that is funded each year at a specific but increasing rate. Prizes increase as time goes by so that the incentive is higher as each year goes by without a win.

5. Transform NASA into a buyer of services and end products instead of a technology developer. NASA should buy the data and samples from missions, not the spacecraft itself. NASA should ask the primary scientific and technological questions, put a price on their answers and let industry produce those answers.

6. If heavy lift is required for commercial space it will be developed; let industry decide. Military space is a different situation. The military will get what it needs from Boeing and Lockheed’s EELVs for the foreseeable future