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Who Will Pay For a Commercial Space Station After the End of the ISS?
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.
there will?
At the time it was being proposed, there was a lot of doubt about its value, and it hasn't done much of value except look pretty and produce some fun pictures. The research would almost certainly have been done FAR cheaper on unattended satellites. The main motivation was political.
Of course if the Chinese threaten to launch one on their own, then Congress will suddenly find the money - but probably by raiding lots of other Science budgets. This probably would not be a good thing...
conceived by President Ronald Reagan in 1984
Thank you, samzenpus. I wasn't sure what to thank Saint Ronnie for today. Did he forge the structure with the same death-ray eyes that he used to tear down the Berlin Wall?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I don't want a commercial space station. Commercial entities have already fucked up everything there is to fuck up on earth.
Captcha: fascism
Ronald Reagan no more conceived the International Space Station than he painted the Sistine Chapel. First, ideas for space stations go back to the 1920s, and in the 1970's the US and the USSR both started flying space stations (Skylab and Salyut, respectively). Second, while in 1984 Reagan proposed Space Station Freedom in his state of the union address, it is not what we have flying now. Third, while Reagan was not totally senile in 1984, he was never a technologist, and did not himself play any role in the development of the (proposed) station; the plans were developed by NASA and just announced by the White House.
Sure, if you mine it and dump it all on the market at once.
In reality, anyone able to pull off a commercially viable asteroid mining operation probably has enough savvy that they wouldn't just flood the market: they'd control the supply to keep prices just below that of available terrestrial sources.
This is really no different from De Beers controlling the price of diamonds, or OPEC controlling the price of oil.
Don't forget the top tax bracket rate was 50% under pinko Ronnie.
Ronald Reagan would never make it as a republican any more, he is far too liberal on that and many other things as well. Hell, Reagan was more liberal than our "liberal" POTUS on many things.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Yeah the benefit definitely is dwarfed by the cost.
Oh unless we manage to move off this rock and colonise space then the benefit of the research done thus far may break even with the cost.
If we're in space and the earth gets wiped out by an asteroid then the benefit becomes priceless.
That's the problem with science. With hindsight we can see a great deal more than with foresight.
Hertz and Maxwell both sunk money into completely useless theoretical research that didn't have any foreseeable practical applications and Dirac created a completely useless equation. People called for de-funding all of this research and said it was a waste, yet we have our modern way of life thanks to these people, electricity, radio, lasers, etc.
Don't worry you're not alone in your thinking. In the UK it's a hot topic with Lord Mandelson recently saying that we should only be funding practical science which increases future prosperity. Now he's facing backlash from the entire scientific community as it's almost impossible to predict how for example theoretical physics would affect future prosperity.
Could it be a big money pit? Maybe. Could it be the best investment humans have ever made? Maybe.
Mark blames Obama in the last paragraph. Yet Obama increased NASA funding when dems were in place, but since the gop took congress, they have cut NASA, as well as funneled money from private space to putin and SLS. Iow, the gop have become supporters of Russia over American business and big expensive wasteful communist style projects over fast inexpensive private launchers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If the GOP will quit trying to kill private space, then bigelow and ilc/dover can get their private space stations going. That by itself will NOT be money makers. However bigelow wants the moon. If he starts making progress to get to the moon, then every nation that can afford it , will want to put ppl on the moon for exploration. At that point, every nation will use private space to build their space agencies on. In effect, you will see at least 50 ppl in space training to go to the moon. All that is needed is to get the GOP to quit supporting Russia and have them support America's private space.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And what is the benefit you are getting from the F-35 program? Or the $1B or $2B tank refurbishment program that the army didn't want? Or how about the $3T spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? Or the $800M on Wall St. bailouts? (And yes I know there are programs that waste large amounts of money in my country too.)