Marco Caceres, the director of space studies for the Teal Group, an aerospace industry analysis firm, predicted Wednesday that the launch failure would inevitably lead to "Monday morning quarterbacking" from "people within Congress and the space industry who continue to believe that NASA should continue to own, manage and operate its own launch vehicle instead of leasing launch services from private companies."

But, Caceres said in an e-mail: "The reality is that catastrophic launch failures like the one we saw yesterday have little to do with whether it's a private company managing things or NASA. NASA has had its share of horrendous failures — both in terms of launch vehicles and satellites. The idea that the government is inherently better suited for spaceflight is a myth."

NASA's shift to leasing services rather than owning its own rockets as part of its human-spaceflight program has been "a bold move and certainly risky in some ways – primarily because you're changing the paradigm," says Marco Caceres, senior space analyst and director of space studies for the Teal Group Corp., an aerospace-research firm based in Fairfax., Va.

The move has been driven in no small part by an agency asked to do more than either presidents or Congress were willing to pay for, especially when thinking about eventual replacements for the space shuttles.

Tighter budgets, cost overruns, and the agency's reputation for overestimating the amount of money the space shuttles would save in operating costs because they were reusable didn't help, Mr. Caceres suggests.