Nate P: Ditto from me. I watched decades wasted on non-achievement because the government wanted it that way. And people wonder why I am hostile to government-run “programs.”

Edward: NASA didn’t “tend to discourage profitable manufacturing.” It downright forbid it. You could do research, but god forbid you manufactured anything for sale afterward.

This stupidity however had nothing to do with the Outer Space Treaty, which puts no limitations on private property or commercial operations on a space station or any free-flying spacecraft. It only limits property rights on planetary and asteroid surfaces. NASA made these rules as a result of Reagan’s edict after the Challenger accident that it was no longer to use the space shuttle to launch commercial satellites. It then took that edict and expanded it absurdly to outlaw any commercial operation on any NASA spacecraft.

NASA tended to discourage profitable manufacturing aboard its Space Shuttle and the ISS. This means that we did not get the space manufactured products that we had been promised, half a century ago. Which means that we didn’t get drugs or useful materials that could have made life even better than it has been.

The Outer Space Treaty said that the use of space should benefit all mankind, but the implementation of this treaty resulted in only some of the world’s governments benefitting, not We the People. We paid for it, but we did not benefit much from the money we paid.

That is about to change, and not at the expense of the taxpayer.