Philip McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA’s headquarters, has said the space agency’s collaboration with the private sector has resulted in a cultural change, broadened the scope of ideas and allowed NASA to view how commercial techniques operate, Federal News Radio reported Friday.
“We’re giving more responsibility to the private sector for them to use their own kind of design techniques and use their own culture and bring some of their own business case assumptions into building their spacecraft,†McAlister told the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.
He said the collaboration with industry has helped NASA to focus more on missions and leave decisions on hardware, design, propulsion and other technical aspects to space companies.
McAlister noted that NASA has embedded its staff with engineers of SpaceX, Boeing and other space companies to have “an extensive insight†into space platforms.