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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.
Who Will Pay For a Commercial Space Station After the End of the ISS?
China
It's funny to see the rose-colored glasses for Reagan these past couple of years considering he tripled the national debt, sold arms to Iran and packed up the troops and left Beirut after ~250 Marines were slaughtered in the barracks bombing with no one held accountable and a whole host of other shit no one cares to remember.
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.
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.
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.
No, you could not have done it on Mir. Mir was small, horribly kludged together and really not extensible. It was going to deorbit in a bunch of pieces by itself or more gracefully (as was done). It was beyond EOL. Well beyond. It was a testament to Russian engineering that it stayed up as long as it did.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.)