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The Trump Administration is Moving To Privatize the International Space Station: Report (techcrunch.com)
The Trump administration is planning to privatize the international space station instead of simply decommissioning the orbiting international experiment in 2024, The Washington Post reports. From a report: According to a document obtained by the Post, the current administration is mulling handing the International Space Station off to private industry instead of de-orbiting it as NASA "will expand international and commercial partnerships over the next seven years in order to ensure continued human access to and presence in low Earth orbit." The Post also reported that the administration was looking to request $150 million in fiscal year 2019 "to enable the development and maturation of commercial entities and capabilities which will ensure that commercial successors to the ISS -- potentially including elements of the ISS -- are operational when they are needed." The U.S. government has already spent roughly $100 billion to build and operate the space station as part of an international coalition that also includes the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Russian Space Agency.
It's the international space station. It is neither owned nor controlled by the US.
The US paid about 2/3 of the cost to build the ISS so you better believe some of the parts of it are owned by the US government. In fact all the modules are owned by the countries that built them.
It wasn't even originally built by the US, although they have certainly added part to it since.
That is not even close to true. The first section was Russian follow a few weeks later by the first US section. The US has been involved from the start and has financed the majority of the project.
OTOH it's 420000 kg worth of materials already in space. The Falcon Heavy takes $90M for 8000 kg to GEO or ~20000 kg to LEO, so it's 21 launches = ~2B in launch costs alone. If you need a space station a few booster shots are pretty cheap by comparison, the problem is what's a profitable business in space. The Falcon Heavy launch costs work out to $4500/kg, which means you'd pretty much have to produce solid gold to turn a profit. Maybe if you could grow huge gemstones, create some crazy nano-tube materials or run zero-g experiments people would pay tons of money for but most likely it can be done cheaper on earth.
The other market is information, but that market is pretty well tapped out by communication satellites, broadcast satellites, GPS etc. and one ISS in a totally useless orbit isn't worth much at all. It's got man rating, but I don't think the market for space tourism is ready. And I don't think there's much commercial interest in astronaut experience just yet. Or ever, I mean it's not the 1960s anymore and rockets fly like it's CGI so you'd mostly be cargo to Mars or the Moon or whatever. And you can't simulate that on the ISS, low gravity is very different from zero gravity. Then again, maybe Musk will need a staging area....
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Also, the only country that is able to take people there is Russia.
This isn't really true. The Dragon capsule is quite capable of taking people there; it just hasn't been certifies yet because the FAA / NASA is still investigating the explosion of the Falcon 9 rocket from last year.
That's a good thing, of course; there hasn't been much need to rush development, so erring in favour of safety makes sense. But if the US really wanted to get a crew to the ISS next week and Russia refused to cooperate, SpaceX has the capability to get them there.
The first manned Dragon flight is scheduled for May, at which point it should recieve full certification and start doing regular runs to the ISS.