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NASA To Allow Private Companies To Hook Up Modules To ISS (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Private space companies may soon get the opportunity to add their own habitat modules to the outside of the International Space Station. That's according to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who announced the new initiative today as a way to help expand the number of companies and people that can do work and research in space. That can eventually help companies gain the experience and capability to create private space stations of their own. "A vibrant user community will be key to ensuring the economic viability of future space stations," wrote Bolden in a White House blog post. The announcement of this new opportunity comes just a few months after NASA asked private companies for ideas of how they might use one of the docking ports on the ISS. Based on the responses NASA received, Bolden said companies had a "strong desire" to attach commercial modules to the station that could benefit both NASA and the private sector. Bolden didn't specify which companies expressed interest, but one company in particular, Bigelow Aerospace, has been very vocal about its desire to hook up habitats to the ISS; the company wants to attach its next big inflatable habitat, the B330, to the ISS as early as 2020. One of Bigelow's experimental habitats is already connected to the ISS, though its stay is only temporary and meant to gather data about Bigelow's habitat technology. While the new ISS initiative is meant to foster innovation in the private sector, it will also presumably help jumpstart the space station's transition from a state-run project to one helmed by the private sector. The ISS is set to retire in 2024, and NASA is looking to move beyond lower Earth orbit and send humans to Mars by the mid-2030s. But before NASA abandons the ISS, the space agency wants to leave the orbiting lab in some private company's capable hands. "Ultimately, our desire is to hand the space station over to either a commercial entity or some other commercial capability so that research can continue in low-Earth orbit," Bill Hill, NASA's deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development, said at a press conference in August. President Barack Obama also said Tuesday that the country will send Americans to Mars by the 2030s and return them "safely to Earth," which is part of a long-term goal to "one day remain there for an extended time."
To be fair, a whole lot of that impact had to do with a bullet's impact on said president's head.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wouldn't NASA need to get permission from it's partners in the ISS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... or are they just going to hijack it for corporate America?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
It's modular, drop the outdated/worn-out modules to burn up, attach new modules, build it out, expand it. having an arbitrary retirement date for a modular facility does not make sense. If they are serious about Mars they should be planning on adding on to the ISS, in order to use it as part of the process and route out of Earth Orbit to Mars. It can be a fueling station, build the Mars space craft of smaller modules sent up and parked at the ISS as they are assembled. Just abandoning it eight years from now seems very short sighted.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Just make sure to not connect the OpenOffice module to the Microsoft Office module, those two never work together.
I for one, welcome our inevitably to come space pirates.
Aaaargh!
As we start to seriously consider space exploration it would be a major step to go ahead and create some standards for space equipment, doors, ports, and connections need to be standardized so that they can be more modular, anyone should be able to build something using the standards for connecting and powering modules.. Like USB/microUSB.
And the direct military applications of space technology.