The old approach, he said, runs the risk of turning NASA’s space technology program into a “hobby shop,” he said, subject to whims from policymakers. “That’s the wrong focus.”

SLS, sometimes lovingly called the Senate Launch System, came directly from congressional legislation. It was Congress that insisted that NASA make a superheavy launch vehicle and specified the capacities of three versions, but there was no mission to inform the design. Congress designed the rocket to make sure that Shuttle contractors continued having government contracts — economical efficiency and appropriateness to any mission were not priorities. Thus, NASA acknowledges that there are better ways for it to work than to be a toy for politicians and their staffs. NASA administrators are holding their own revolution, apparently attempting to make NASA useful, again.

Through this process, people will be able to rate the importance of some or all of the technology shortfalls NASA has identified. They can also list technologies they think should be included or identify those shortfalls that they believe have already been solved.

Well, it isn’t a perfect step, but it is an important step in the right direction. NACA was useful to help the American aviation industry solve their own problems, but this step helps the American aerospace industry solve NASA’s problems. NACA had important resources and facilities that were too expensive for individual companies to build. One example is large wind tunnels.

Many startup NewSpace companies have been able to use NASA’s expertise and knowledge to design their own successful vehicles and spacecraft. This has been a great help.

NASA’s facilities have not been perfect for American industry. Science conducted on ISS is required to become public domain within five years, which limits the ISS’s usefulness for the company that performs that science. Rather than creating proprietary information, they are spending their own money creating public domain information. Hopefully, the commercial space stations will allow companies to keep their own trade secrets to themselves, making it much more profitable to do research in space, greatly increasing the demand for space research. Hopefully, the commercial space stations will allow space manufacturing, which NASA does not let them do now.

While NASA will not release individual inputs, it does plan to disclose how different stakeholder groups in industry and academia ranked technologies. But Vogel emphasized the public inputs will be just one factor in the overall prioritization.

Just one factor, out of how many factors? On the other hand, maybe this will not do what we hope it does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACA_cowling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACA_airfoil#Origins

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_rule

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-shock_body