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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?
How's it going to protect crew (and equipment) from hard radiation? Seems to me that getting all that (lots of) extra mass to escape velocity would make it *way* more expensive than.
Would it be more practical to build a habitat in one of those caves that the Moon is supposed to have?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
people that have read way too many Ben Bova novels
Or the news articles that went around last month about the asteroid that just buzzed by with $5 trillion worth of platinum on it.
Clearly no RoI there. Low-orbit docking for such efforts would have no value. :/
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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...
Is there some technical reason the ISS will no longer work after the mid-2020s or is it merely a budget issue? Why are we not keeping it up there if it is still serving whatever purpose it was designed for?
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.
Who Will Pay For a Commercial Space Station After the End of the ISS?
China
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.
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.
Bob Bigelow. He's the guy whose company is sending an inflatable module to the ISS later this year. They already have a proof-of-concept module in orbit, and would already have launched their much bigger BA330, but there's currently no rocket powerful enough to loft it. But the upcoming SpaceX Falcon Heavy will be powerful enough, and that should be flying by this time next year.
Their plan is to rent space in the BA330 to countries and/or companies that want to do something in microgravity, but can't afford to launch a whole station themselves. When the Falcon 9 and Dragon 2 are man-rated (ca. 2017), the cost of getting humans to LEO will plummet, making this a very attractive option for many entities that currently would never dream of such ventures.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I went to this meeting, and I thought it was one of the best commercial space meetings I have been to.
The summary was pretty on point, except that it didn't mention the prospect of tourism really taking off as the costs and complexity of going on-orbit decrease. (Right now, among other things, you have to learn Russian to become a space tourist.) It really looks like commercial space stations will become a reality in the not too distant future.
If you dumped it on the market all at once there won't be any people left alive to buy it.
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.
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.
outgoing Presidents:manned Mars mission::Lucy:football
Obama's doing it
Bush the lesser did it
Clinton did it
Bush sr did it
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
Remember, we're really not able to do that kind of 'deconstruction / rehab' in space. All we've managed to do is bolt / unbolt things and plug some wiring harnesses together. Unless the item was specifically designed to be replaced in space, it will be very difficult to do so.
Now, this would be an interesting and useful exercise in and of itself but I don't see it as sexy enough to get funding.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The greatest, I think it is subjective, but a few Google searches can tell you some of the important findings.
For example there in this video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... the selected three are :
- Cosmic ray detectors on the ISS discovered particles that may confirm the existence of dark matter.
- Study on the effects that living in space has on the body. For example, they discovered that in addition to bone and muscle, the eyes were also affected.
- New generation cancer treatment using micro-encapsulation come directly from the results of research done in micro-gravity on the ISS.
Is there some technical reason the ISS will no longer work after the mid-2020s or is it merely a budget issue? Why are we not keeping it up there if it is still serving whatever purpose it was designed for?
IIRC from a previous ./ article, the gaskets and seals are only rated to work so long and their effectiveness is decreasing with time. The ISS already leaks and has to be resupplied and as time goes on, the cost of maintenance will go up. Any attempt to replace these parts in space would end up costing so much that it would be cheaper to just build a new space station and send it up. This is one of the obstacles to any Mars trip. They'll need something that can contain its atmosphere with minimal leakage over a time period of years. Right now, such a thing would have been like looking for a 50's American car that doesn't leak oil. It's probably possible, but won't be around for many years from now.
I stand corrected, thanks. In any case, the point remains that Bigelow is ready and waiting to launch the "next" space station, and that wait will be over in a couple of years. I think the vast majority of people out there are unaware of how radically different the launch market will be in just a few years from now. Very likely, in about six weeks, SpaceX will "stick the landing" of the booster stage on their next launch. That historic event will bring an order-or-magnitude drop in the cost of getting to space. And that will change everything.
Right now, the "market price" for a ride to LEO is about $70 million per person, and hardly anyone can afford it. But what happens when it's $7 million? There's going to be a waiting list for bunks at the Bigelow Orbital Hotel & Resort, and the "space economy" will be off and running.
The Google Lunar X-Prize will be happening around the same time, opening the moon to private exploration and exploitation. Planetery Resources and Deep Space Industries are also gearing up for their role in that new economy. I think this tipping point is going to happen much more rapidly than most people appreciate.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
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.)
True enough. But even if they land it, only to have it teeter off a bit later, that will still be the proof of concept they need.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC