Since the LSPA is now being called a pioneering step in the new direction of NASA, I will post here my unofficial history of the enactment of the LSPA. Note that this is simply my gnat's eye view of what happened:Several members of the Tucson chapter of the L5 Society, Mark Voelker and Ron Nichols recalled an early idea conceived and advocated in the early 1980's by noted science fiction author Dr. Jerry Pournelle - that the US government should offer to pay $500 a pound launched to orbit by private companies, even if the payload were only sand. The Tucson L5 chapter pursued this idea as the basis for Federal legislation that would create a new market for launch services companies. Unfortunately, when they approached their congressman, Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), they were told that there was no way that Congress would appropriate funds for a 'sand in orbit' program.
Jim Bowery (another participant) used to have his testimony posted online (the Wayback Machine has it, but you'll probably need to try a few times to get it to work).
Was this the space incentive act ?http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/1986-spacepolicy.htm#commercialI started a thread on that a while back but results were not exactly encouraging http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=16182.0
Very interesting and also very interesting to see you had a role in it. The sand in orbit idea sounds vaguely familiar, but I may be imagining it. Replace sand with propellant for exploration and it suddenly sounds a lot more realistic. I wonder if proponents of using propellant this way trace their ideas back to Pournelle. Jon recently pointed out that the idea for propellant depots themselves goes back at least as far as one Baron Guido von Pirquet in 1928. Jon, do you know about the history of the idea of using propellant purchases in orbit to jump-start cheaper access to space?