In my own twisted idea of what constitutes a book review I looked at whether Victor Koman’s KINGS OF THE HIGH FRONTIER had it right that NASA could stop private sector competition. I concluded that NASA couldn’t use the FAA’s policy review to do so.
There are other laws and policies that stop NASA from competing with the private sector. In 51 U.S.C. § 50504 Use of Government Facilities, “Federal agencies…may allow non-Federal entities to use their space-related facilities on a reimbursable basis…if equivalent commercial services are not available on reasonable terms…” In other words, a private person may rent NASA’s facilities if no others are available on reasonable terms. In furtherance of this statutory requirement, the 2010 National Space Policy directs government agencies to “refrain from conducting United States space activities that preclude, discourage, or compete with U.S. commercial space activities, unless required by national security or public safety.” (emphasis added). Finally, NASA’s own policy on Space Act Agreements states “It is NASA policy not to compete with commercial entities in providing services or goods, property or resources to entities outside the Federal Government. The policy includes, but is not limited to, sales or leases.” https://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/
For example, if there were a space station on orbit other than the International Space Station, NASA might not be able to compete with it in offering ISS resources to private entities. Any analysis would look at the commercial alternative’s availability and whether its terms were reasonable. This allows a lot of room for interpretation. Hence, the use of the word “might.”
Earth-based polities, in general “slaves to some defunct economist” [Keynes], have this strange idea that giant intra-solar city-states drifting ever outward from our system’s inner “habitable zone” will give a rodent’s derriere about their diseased collectivism and various parasitic mulcts.
Any fool can draft a comprehensive, succinct, enumerated small-government Charter of Rights and Duties, fundamental policies, principles, procedures– as we have. Whatever this entails, socio-cultural/political-economic competition will rapidly winnow out the Cubas and Venezuelas, the suppurating China and Great Russian-model kaligarchies.
Halfway decent, sensible structures tending to constituents’ benign well-being are not beyond the mind of man. Cheap-junk despots’ accustomed divide-and-rule, something-for-nothing, us-against-them appeals to envy, greed, and soul-destroying hate need not be exfoliating refugias’ default mode. Who knows, by c. AD 2100+ humanity will have devolved to hyperlinked cyber-organisms, more-than-mortal exo-symbionts, in any case.