NASA and the Space Industry

Joan Lisa Bromberg

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9780801873508
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Science History
• Index: History

Few federal agencies have more extensive ties to the private sector than NASA. NASA's relationships with its many aerospace industry suppliers of rocket engines, computers, electronics, gauges, valves, O-rings, and other materials have often been described as "partnerships." These have produced a few memorable catastrophes, but mostly technical achievements of the highest order. Until now, no one has written extensively about them.

In NASA and the Space Industry, Joan Lisa Bromberg explores how NASA's relationship with the private sector developed and how it works. She outlines the various kinds of expertise public and private sectors brought to the tasks NASA took on, describing how this division of labor changed over time. She explains why NASA sometimes encouraged and sometimes thwarted the privatization of space projects and describes the agency's role in the rise of such new space industries as launch vehicles and communications satellites.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Partners in Space
• 2 Legacies
• 3 A Tale of Two Companies
• 4 The Space Shuttle
• 5 Space and the Marketplace
• 6 In the Wake of the Challenger
• 7 Trends in NASA-Industry Relations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index