Welcome, I'm Anastasia Glova bringing you the Cato Daily Podcast.

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Last month, marked 37 years since the crew of Apollo 11 took the first moonwalk in

recorded history. Since this momentous event many have wondered what is next for

NASA and whether it's engineers and astronauts will ever be able to take humans to Mars.

Cato adjunct scholar and director of the DC Office of the Objectivist Center, Edward Hutchins, ponders the future of NASA.

Why aren't we a space-faring civilization today almost 40 years after the first moon landing?

One word, government.

Look, governments can do a good job throwing lots of money at some particular

limited problem for example producing an atomic bomb or going to the moon

but what government simply cannot do ever is commercialize goods and services, that

is to bring down the cost, bring up the quality and make them available to the public,

whether it's automobiles, whether it's airplanes,

whether it's airline tickets, whether it's personal computers, whether it's the

internet. All of those things, it has been the private sector that has

commercialized them. The government has tended to monopolize

space travel, both civilian and as well as of course defense, since the days of Apollo. And that is why we're not a space-faring civilization today.

The government simply crowds out or regulates out

the private sector alternatives.

What if NASA assembly doesn't have the resources that they need?

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee just approved a 16.75 billion dollar budget for NASA.

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