Now is the time for NASA to blast into a new future after slowing to a crawl

To ensure the future of spaceflight, NASA must stop building rockets.That counterintuitive notion is borne out by the agency’s sad post-Apollo history.

For the past 50 years, America’s dreams of space exploration have been stymied by NASA’s failure to build an affordable, reliable launch system.Today, the private sector builds rockets faster, cheaper, and better.Ending the agency’s sclerotic rocket-building program will be the first of many challenges facing Jared Isaacman, President Trump’s nominee to be NASA administrator, who is expected to be confirmed.America’s space program has slowed to a crawl in recent decades, hobbled by cost overruns and lax management. This is a bad time for US space policy to stumble.

China is launching missions at a record pace and vows to put its taikonauts on the moon by 2030.If China beats the US back to the moon, “they are going to write the rules of the road up there,” warned Texas Congressman Brian Babin in January.NASA’s biggest obstacle to progress is its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and conjoined Orion capsule.

This huge, Apollo-style program was intended to carry US astronauts back to the moon.Unfortunately, the SLS rocket is years behind schedule and billions over budget. Unlike the reusable rockets being pioneered by SpaceX and other private-sector companies, the SLS is entirely expendable, meaning all the rocket’s components must be discarded during each flight, at enormous expense.

NASA’s inspector general estimates each SLS/Orion mission will cost over $4 billion.No wonder space analysts call the program “a national disgrace.”There’s got to be a better way to get US astronauts to the moon and beyond.And there is.

Two decades ago, innovative NASA leaders quietly launched a program that pays private space companies, principally SpaceX, so far, to ferry US astronauts and cargo into orbit using their own space vehicles.In essence, NASA’s commercial program allows the agency t...