Amid the serene ecology of Boca Chica Beach, SpaceX is building a stepping-stone to the stars.

The private rocket company's plan to construct a launch site near Brownsville is proceeding at a steady pace, receiving a thumbs up from the federal government and working well with local environmentalists. If all goes according to plan, SpaceX will launch up to 12 rockets a year from Texas' Gulf Coast as early as 2016.

The company's Falcon 9 rocket already has several successful missions under its belt, including cargo trips to the International Space Station. SpaceX has done this with an efficiency and low cost that stands in stark contrast to other launch vehicles. At the rate things are going, SpaceX could replace Russia as our astronauts' ferry to the ISS.

While President Barack Obama has generally failed to provide a solid vision of NASA's future - and Congress has failed to provide adequate funding - NASA's collaboration with private space transportation has been delivering promising results.

It feels as if NASA is on the precipice of yielding low-Earth orbit transportation to the private sector, allowing the government agency to focus on new missions.

But not everyone is happy about this partnership. U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., wants to drag companies like SpaceX back to Earth and force them to comply with NASA's usual regulatory paperwork. This idea threatens to kill the goose that could lay the golden egg.

Under the current Commercial Crew Development program, SpaceX contracts with NASA for a flat payment. If SpaceX comes in under cost, it gets to keep the profit. If it goes over budget, SpaceX has to make up the difference. This system gives SpaceX more flexibility to operate as it sees fit.

Shelby has inserted language in a Senate appropriations bill that would instead force SpaceX to work on NASA's old cost-plus model. This would require the private company to track every step of its development, assign a cost to those steps and charge it to NASA, plus an additional fee. This stilted payment model forces engineers to be accountants and removes disincentives for bloated budgets.

SpaceX's success comes from the fact that it follows its own business model. Unlike the usual web of contractors necessary to build rockets, SpaceX keeps everything under one roof. This means more efficient management and better collaboration between engineers.

NASA itself knows that SpaceX has a good thing going. In August 2011, the NASA associate deputy administration for policy published a policy report estimating the cost of developing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Under NASA's environment and culture, the Falcon 9 was estimated at nearly $4 billion. Under SpaceX's commercial development approach, the cost would be less than half of that, at about $1.7 billion.

Shelby may have his own reasons for wanting to burden SpaceX. NASA's Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Ala., is working on the $9 billion Space Launch System - the largest NASA rocket in decades.

As fans of the Johnson Space Center, we can sympathize with Shelby's desire to protect his constituents' jobs against a perceived competitor. But Shelby's policy is misguided. Freeing up NASA's focus on low-Earth orbit could actually allow it to direct more funds to projects like the SLS, which will take us to the Moon and beyond.

In Texas, SpaceX's cheaper rockets would also make the ISS - the Johnson Space Center's key focus these days - less of a burden on the budget. Adding Shelby's unnecessary expense could further threaten Houston's status as Space City.

Texas' own senators should go to bat for SpaceX and ensure that its multimillion dollar investment outside Brownsville doesn't get tied up in Shelby's red tape. Shelby is fighting for his state. Where are the Texans fighting for Texas?