NASA exploring commercial space stations after ISS

James Dean
Florida Today
Orbiting 250 miles above Earth, the International Space Station is home to six crew members and has been continuously occupied for nearly 18 years. NASA will operate the outpost at least through 2024, and has requested industry concepts on how to commercialize all or some of the ISS or a private station as soon as 2025.

Nearly seven years after retiring the space shuttle, NASA is wrestling with how (and when) to move on from the International Space Station, the $100 billion orbiting laboratory largely built by shuttle crews.

Offering the living area of a five-bedroom house and in a metal structure stretching the length of a football field, flying 250 miles above Earth, the ISS will continue to host astronauts through at least 2024, according to NASA's current plans.

After that, NASA envisions becoming just one of many tenants on the ISS, or perhaps renting space on a smaller, privately-operated outpost. That might save money for lunar missions the space agency aspires to fly, but right now can’t afford.

“Unless NASA’s budget is significantly increased, there are not enough funds both to maintain direct federal support for the ISS and return American astronauts to the surface of the moon in the 2020s,” U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, chairman of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said last week during one of two congressional hearings on the subject.

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The Trump administration wants to end direct federal support for the ISS in 2025 — a suggestion rejected outright by U.S. Senators Bill Nelson and Ted Cruz, who play key roles in shaping space policy.

They want NASA to extend the station’s life until at least 2028, when engineers say it will still be structurally sound.

NASA says it will not abandon low Earth orbit, which will remain a critical area for training astronauts, testing technologies and performing research close to home.

But the space agency is eager to scale back the nearly $4 billion spent on the ISS each year, including the cost of flying supplies and crews to and from the complex.

“Even a small savings helps us advance what we want to do in deep space,” Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA’s human spaceflight programs, told the House committee Thursday.

NASA on Thursday asked companies to submit ideas by June 18 for how they could make money running all or parts of the ISS, or by fielding free-flying stations that could spur business beyond the government’s.

Bigelow Aerospace and Axiom Space are two companies proposing to build and operate private stations, which could start by adding modules to the ISS that would later split away. Other concepts include repurposing cargo modules or a rocket's upper stage.

Private stations hope to attract wealthy tourists, nations wanting to fly astronauts, and pharmaceutical and other companies interested in research or manufacturing in weightlessness.

Made in Space, which has an office in Jacksonville, is studying the potential for making a fiber optic cable that works better than alternatives manufactured on the ground.

Those businesses hope to build upon NASA’s model for delivering cargo and, soon, astronauts to the ISS, which has helped companies like SpaceX and Orbital ATK develop new, relatively affordable rockets and spacecraft.

But independent analysts doubt a commercial space station could replace the ISS as soon as 2025.

An Institute for Defense Analysis study determined NASA would still need to spend about $2 billion a year to support a private station one-third the size of the ISS in 2025, even after making optimistic assumptions about a drastic drop in launch costs.

“Overall, our analysis showed that it is unlikely that a commercial station would be economically viable by 2025,” Bhavya Lal, a research staff member at IDA’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, told the House committee. “Venture capitalists we spoke to indicated that projected revenue streams are too far in the future and too uncertain to warrant making significant investments to date.”

Paul Martin, NASA’s inspector general, reported “scant commercial interest” in the ISS so far, and said it was “questionable” whether a business case exists for a private station not subsidized by the government.

Competition also could emerge in the form of a Chinese or Russian space station in the 2020s.

Given those realities, Smith, the space committee chairman, questioned whether a more commercial space station by 2025 would offer much of a boost to NASA's deep space ambitions.

"If that is still going to cost us upwards of $2 billion, that’s not much of a savings," he said. "That’s not going to get us back to the moon, it’s not going to get us elsewhere."

Senators Nelson and Cruz argued that the administration's 2025 transition date is premature, and NASA should now be focused on getting commercial crew launchers and its own Space Launch System rocket ready for first test flights.

"It’s not fair to NASA or to industry to force a transition based on an arbitrary date," said Nelson.

Gerstenmaier said now is the time to assess options, in part to avoid an abrupt, shuttle-like shutdown of the ISS program that would disrupt missions and jobs.

“The fact is, we’re looking ahead now,” said U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California. “We want to have as many creative ideas as we possibly can to meet this challenge, so what’s left of the space station’s mission is not a waste.”

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FlameTrench.

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