There is a struggle afoot in NASA. More accurately, it’s a fight for taxpayer resources between several big players and a dozen or so smaller ones, with the future of US space exploration laying in the balance. This fight does not break down along the traditional left-right axis. Here there be an alternate political universe: A political world turned on its head. You may have to leave political preconceptions at the door. It’s a world gone mad!

The simplest way to understand it is a fight between Newspace and traditional aerospace. The crux of that change isn’t the use of private contractors — NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Gaver pointed out to me last year that NASA has always spent around 75% of every dollar in the private market — it’s the way contractors are paid. Newspace contractors would be paid a flat rate for things like rockets and services like capsule recovery. Traditional aerospace contractors developed many of our spacecraft and booster rockets under an older, cost-plus system. Garver explained to me that back in the day, building experimental spacecraft was too unsure, too unpredictable, for companies like Lockheed or Boeing to offer it at a flat price. The only way to entice them was to pay a fixed percentage, say 10%, over the total developmental cost. That system served its purpose, it was also hugely profitable, and that’s why some traditional aerospace corporations are working to hang on to it as long as they can.

That era is coming to an end. Because of the pioneering work done developing and testing all kinds of design ideas, concepts were worked out, standards created. Nowadays, a number of Newspace firms will be able to offer cargo and manned spaceflight services at a much lower cost than ever before. There’s big bucks involved, there’s not enough to go around to everyone. A bewildering and shifting set of corporate, institutional, and political players all competing for a hunk of space-buck pie has emerged which resembles no other political issue in play today.

There is a bipartisan faction that agrees with a democratic President who backed a program utilizing the best of what free enterprise has to offer. That usually conservative approach came under intense fire from fellow progressives, and some conservatives with NASA and traditional aerospace contractors in their district, but who otherwise voted to turn what they call socialized medicine, i.e., Medicare, into a commercialized insurance coupon program. A few of those conservatives are working their hind ends off to preserve what are arguably the worst pork projects under the guise of NASA while a number of progressives are pushing free market solutions to future spaceflights.

There also thousands of people employed by all sides in this cast of characters worried about their jobs. Darting back and forth between them all is a small army of lobbyists representing everyone and everything from Silicon Valley moguls deeply invested in economical rockets to organizations of starry-eyed dreamers, to traditional aerospace companies happy to maintain the lucrative cost-plus arrangement with NASA.

One of the players in that confusing battlemix is Alliant Techsystems, better known as ATK. It’s a defense-aerospace conglomerate that makes, among other things, solid rocket engines. ATK might stand to benefit if a certain controversial rocket project, affectionately referred to as the Senate Launch System, were to be done a certain way. One internal NASA report estimated at current funding the evolved SLS won’t be ready until 2032, and will cost close to half a billion dollars a year. Along the way some manufacturers would like to see some of that money crossing their earnings reports. Including solid rocket manufacturers making very expensive solid rocket engines. Those engines have advantages and disadvantages like any other piece of technology, and critics point our, rightly I believe, that solid rockets are not ideal for a bunch of technical reasons. Not to mention there are far cheaper rockets in final testing right now that could perform the same missions as the SLS, and one or two could be available in the next two or three, ready to put people and cargo into space and thousands of Americans back to work at great jobs with excellent benefits, if a modest slice of that NASA pie accelerating that final testing and shake out schedule were directed their way.

Into this political environment a letter has quietly appeared and circulated among the lawmakers involved making the case for solid rocket engines, and the note reportedly has some heft behind it, even though no one’s saying publicly who wrote it (I posted the full letter as provided by a credible source here. No one’s claiming it either. But the letter seems to align most closely with the faction of conservatives who have big defense outfits in their region. Beyond that, comparing the words and terminology, one possible author might be Sen. Orrin Hatch. Who happens to represent Utah, where ATK employs a ton of people.

That’s but one tiny thread in one story going on at NASA right now. And I apologize if the crash course version above is confusing to those new to the issue or overly simplistic for those heavily involved. But don’t worry! I’ll explain it as best I can in the near future. Shining some light of clarity on space exploration policy is one the things I plan to write about regularly here on the Zingularity.