Dear Editor:
Given the misinformed debate about green energy development that has taken place in this province in recent years, including the question of whether the public or the private sector should be developing our green energy resources, it is interesting to note the direction that NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is taking now that the 30-year old space shuttle program has come to an end: NASA is actively looking to transfer human and low-Earth orbiting spaceflight to the private sector to take advantage of the private sector's ability to innovate and reduce costs.
Space flight has become relatively routine in recent decades and is no longer the exclusive domain of governments and government agencies. Privately owned telecommunications satellites and global positioning systems are now the norm, and they connect our world in a way that few could have imaged at the dawn of the space age.
The innovative power of the private sector is even beginning to make spaceflight accessible to private citizens as Virgin's Sir Richard Branson successfully demonstrated with SpaceShipTwo, the world's first commercial spaceship.
So if a highly respected organization like NASA has seen the light and is looking to the private sector rather than to government to build and operate cost effective spacecraft, then why wouldn't we be looking to the private sector to bring innovation and cost-effectiveness to the development of green energy as well?
NASA is showing us the way to the future, just as they've done since the space age began. Embracing the innovative power of the private sector, and putting that power to work for taxpayers and hydro ratepayers, is clearly the way of the future and clearly it's the way we should be going.
Christopher Law, Coquitlam
