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NASA's Changing Approach to Public-Private Partnerships in Low-Earth Orbit Co-creating and directing Innovation Ecosystems? NASA’s changing approach to public-private partnerships in low-earth orbit Mariana Mazzucato, Douglas K. R. Robinson To cite this version: Mariana Mazzucato, Douglas K. R. Robinson. Co-creating and directing Innovation Ecosystems? NASA’s changing approach to public-private partnerships in low-earth orbit. Technological Forecast- ing and Social Change, Elsevier, 2017, 10.1016/j.techfore.2017.03.034. hal-01703940 HAL Id: hal-01703940 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01703940 Submitted on 3 May 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Please cite as: Mazzucato, M., & Robinson, D. K. (2018). Co-creating and directing Innovation Ecosystems? NASA's changing approach to public-private partnerships in low-earth orbit. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 136, 166-177. Co-creating and directing Innovation Ecosystems? NASAs changing approach to public-private partnerships in low-earth orbit Mariana Mazzucato1,2 and Douglas K.R. Robinson 1,3 * 1 Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London, UK 2 Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, UK 3 Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés (LISIS), CNRS-INRA-ESIEE-UPEM, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France * Corresponding author: [email protected] Abstract A recent report from NASA’s office of the chief technologist positions a self-sustained “low-earth-orbit ecosystem” as a desirable objective for NASA’s human spaceflight policy and linking to its larger aims of deeper exploration of the solar system. The report follows a wave of mission shifts and space policy directives which emphasize that the private sector should be given more power and receive public agency financial support to stimulate space services. To understand how US space innovation activities are changing, and to be able to make assessments and policy recommendations, we use an innovation ecosystems approach to help understand the types of relationships between actors in low-earth-orbit and to determine the ramifications for US space policy. Our findings reveal four new forms of relationships between NASAA and other parties in the emerging innovation ecosystem and we discuss how these lead to policy challenges for NASA as a mission-oriented public agency with the new additional objective of creating an economic zone in orbit. 1. Introduction Historically, NASA’s mission-oriented programs for innovation have been driven by security concerns and by the need for maintaining technical leadership over other nations. The situation is now shifting. NASA is attempting to create new markets that fuel a sustainable Earth-LEO economy, or, as Sam Scimemi, director of the ISS, put it, to “sustain economic activity in LEO enabled by human spaceflight, driven by private investments, creating value through commercial supply and demand” where the “destiny of LEO beyond ISS is in the hands of private industry outside the government box.”1 A recent report from NASA’s office of the chief technologist, the drive towards a self-sustained “low- earth-orbit ecosystem” has been positioned as a desirable objective for NASA’s human spaceflight policy 1 Presentation given by Sam Scimemi at NASA Headquarters Washington, DC December 10, 2014; http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/NASA_Sam_Scimemi.pdf 1 and linking to its larger aims of deeper exploration of the solar system (see Emerging Space report pp4).2 The report comes after a wave of mission shifts and space policy directives which emphasis that the private sector should be given more power and be supported to stimulate space services. There is also evidence of actual activities stemming from these policy changes, for example the first fully commercial launches of cargo to the international space station by SpaceX and Orbital-ATK, along with other commercial service providers onboard the ISS such as microgravity experiment services (NanoRacks) and in-orbit 3D printing virtually controlled by the private firm Made-In-Space (where NASA does not own the onboard printer). There is a growing emphasis and action on stimulating/creating a low-earth-orbit economy, where markets will produce economic benefits for the US as well as a low-earth-orbit industry that can provide services for NASA when needed. However there are also indications that the way the shift towards an ecosystem approach is being actioned by NASA is leading away from a “market creation” approach, to something resembling a “fixing market failure” approach (Mazzucato 2015).3 Indeed, at first glance, it seems that NASA has moved from a role as dominant director of innovation and development with active mission-oriented polices (Foray et al 2012) towards more diffusion-based policies (Chiang 1991) where their role is to support the creation of the right conditions for markets to emerge (a standard market failure approach). This support role focuses on catalyzing an “innovation ecosystem” with a mix of private, not-for-profit, and public actors in LEO.4 In this paper, in line with the focus of this special issue, we take an innovation ecosystem approach to understand (a) the changing population of the low-earth-orbit ecosystem, (b) the forms and functions of the relationships that connect between members of this population and (c) use these findings to understand the changing relationship between NASA and low-earth-orbit human spaceflight activities. Innovation ecosystems require different types of policies. Vertical policies are more directional and ‘active’ focusing on directing change.5 Horizontal policies are more focused on the background or framework conditions necessary for innovation, allowing the direction to be set by the private sector.6 While both horizontal and vertical policies are required, it can be said that horizontal policies are more 2 http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Emerging_Space_Report.pdf 3 Market failure theory takes the ‘First Fundamental Theorem’ (FFT) of welfare economics (Arrow 1951) as the starting point. The FFT states that markets are the most efficient allocators of resources under three specific conditions: (1) There is a complete set of markets, so that all supplied/demanded goods and services are traded at publicly known prices; (2) all consumers and producers behave competitively (that is, all agents are price-takers); and (3) an equilibrium exists. Under these three conditions, the allocation of resources by markets is Pareto-optimal (no other allocation will make a consumer or producer better off without making someone else worse off). 4 In this paper, when we describe NASA policies, we focus on those related to human spaceflight and operations in low-Earth orbit (LEO). The focus of the study is on human-spaceflight based activities in low-earth-orbit (LEO) a region of space stretching from 160 km to 2000 km from the Earths surface. Aside from the 24 astronauts that flew to the Moon during the Apollo program, all human space activities have been restricted to this region of space. It is the location of the International Space Station, and is distinct (at present) from sub-orbital space flights, which at the moment just break the 100km altitude limit. This is not the full scope of NASA’s activities, of course, which also include deep- space scientific missions, aeronautics, planetary landers, etc. For full details, see www.nasa.gov. 5 Vertical approaches to innovation policy focus on direct investments (in both basic and applied areas) on specific technologies and sectors (e.g. biotechnology, nanotechnology, clean-technology), and financing specific firms through public venture capital or public loans. Vertical policies determine not only improve the occurrence of innovation but also guide ‘direction’– determining the boundaries within which private sector innovation and experimentation can happen. 6 Horizontal approaches to innovation policy focus on (a) creating the framework conditions for innovation through the background (necessary) conditions, e.g. education, science-industry links, fundamental research and infrastructures; and (b) supporting innovation in the private sector, through indirect measures such as tax incentives. The horizontal approach tends to rely on the ‘market’ to decide the direction of change. 2 about ‘facilitating’ innovation in the private sector, while vertical policies embody a more active role for the public sector in directing change not only facilitating it, often through missions which require actively creating and shaping markets—not only fixing them (Mazzucato, 2015). We shall return to this in the conclusions In the following section we draw on the literature around systems of innovation to help us create an innovation ecosystem “lens” to probe into the changes that are occurring both within NASAs space policy regarding low-earth orbit, and the multi-actor activities (actual and planned) in low-earth orbit. With this in mind, section 2 will also describe how we will use this meso-level model of the innovation ecosystem to help us connect the broader US human spaceflight policy (macro) with the individual activities of firms and other organizations in low-earth-orbit (micro). Section 3 will describe the emergence of US human spaceflight during NASA’s first 5 decades of activity, detailing the nature of the bi-lateral relationships between NASA and other parties, where NASA is the central organizers of US human spaceflight in LEO. Section 4, will dig deeper into how this has shifted from a single actor space, to an emerging innovation ecosystem, detailing the new forms of relationships between NASA and other actors in LEO.
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