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Who Will Pay For a Commercial Space Station After the End of the ISS?

Posted by samzenpus on from the picking-up-the-bill dept.

MarkWhittington writes: While NASA is planning its road to Mars, a number of commercial interests and place policy experts are discussing what happens after the International Space Station ends its operational life. Currently, the international partners have committed to operating ISS through 2024. Some have suggested that the space station, conceived by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, could last as long as 2028. But, after that, there will still be a need for a space station of some sort, either in low Earth orbit, or at one of the Lagrange points where the gravity of the moon and Earth cancel one another out.

3 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Answer by Digital+Mage · · Score: 4, Informative

    Who Will Pay For a Commercial Space Station After the End of the ISS?

    China

  2. Re:No one. by PvtVoid · · Score: 3, Informative

    Or the news articles that went around last month about the asteroid that just buzzed by with $5 trillion worth of platinum on it.

    Clearly no RoI there.

    If you ever managed to mine that platinum, it wouldn't be worth $5 trillion any more. It's a commodity. The market would collapse. Gross demand for platinum in 2013 was only about 260 metric tonnes.

  3. Re:"need"? "benefits"? by Mantrid42 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, with a $100 billion dollar price tag, and 122 million federal income tax payers, you've probably paid closer to $819.67. That's a pretty good deal for 17 years of space station.