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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.
I'm not a fan of discontinuing the ISS. Especially when it's still functional and appears it will be so for many more years. Even more so if there's no direct replacement for it.
While I wasn't a fan of the space shuttle to begin with, I also think it was foolish to retire it with no valid replacement.
I'm not sure how the international community is going to feel about the US selling off the ISS since several other countries have invested it the ISS as well. But Russia has also sold tourist trips to it in the past.
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
I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where private industry would be interested since there is no obvious profit motive or path to profitability in an orbiting laboratory. Even if they gave it away it would cost a huge amount of money to keep it running and how is any responsible private company going to pay for it?
I have no doubt that someone in this clusterfuck of an administration thinks "privatizing" the ISS would be a good idea, but I can't even see how it's a full-fledged idea, let alone a good one.
What's to be privatized? The entire station? Operations? Transit and resupply? All of it?
Private industry doesn't want to own the ISS. It was tailor-made for science, not for tourism, so it would make an awful space hotel. There isn't much demand for science on it from private industry - there's some, but the bulk of it is for NASA et al. trying to figure out how to do deep space exploration better. And let's not forget, half the ISS belongs to other countries. You could probably convince Russia to part with it for enough cash, but Japan? Canada? Seems unlikely. Not to mention, the ISS is nearing end-of-life - it's planned to be de-orbited sometime in the 2020s, because it's just not worth the cost of keeping it running past its designed lifespan.
Operations (replacing NASA's Johnson Space Center with private contractors) is vaguely doable but it doesn't play to private industry strengths. It's a one-off thing, no economies of scale, and it's so safety-critical that you can't shave much cost without risking lives. It's a zero-income project so the only way to squeeze a better profit out is to reduce expenses, and I just don't see how you could do that by any meaningful amount without inviting disaster. If this happens, it's a money-grab - some contractor with lots of donations to the GOP and/or direct connections to Trump will get a contract for several times what we currently pay, and they still will probably fuck it up.
As for replacing transit and resupply... we're already doing that. The Commercial Cargo Development program started under the Bush presidency, and Commercial Crew Development started under Obama. First crewed flights are expected this year. So this is just more of the Trump regime taking credit for stuff Obama (and Bush) did, while doing their best to burn everything to the ground.
If those other countries are concerned they can pick up the tab to keep it running.
There are plenty of people in the US who want to keep it running. They just don't happen to occupy the white house or congress at the moment.
Privatization is better than de-orbit.
You are assuming privatization is possible. I'm having trouble imagining any viable privatization scenario. Explain to me where the profit comes from for a private enterprise taking over management of the ISS. Who would be interested and why? It costs about $3 billion/year to keep it flying so which private enterprise is going to foot that bill?
Someone has to pay the bills. Why should it always be the US?
A) We have the most money by a wide margin so that's why we get to pay for the expensive fancy stuff. There aren't a lot of countries that can afford something like the ISS and that is to our advantage. B) Investments in scientific research have big long term payoffs. If we have gotten everything we can out of the ISS then fine but if it still has value then it is foolish to pull the figurative plug on it early. There is also the opportunity cost to consider. That said though I have trouble with the argument that we should pull the plug on the ISS when we spend $600+ billion per year on a needlessly large military. Heck we spend hundreds of millions each year on tanks that we don't need and that the military doesn't want.
Its not his fault. His ideology was blurring that part of the text so much that it became unreadable to him.
"His name was James Damore."
The story does not read as the headline indicates.
It's "mulling" and reportedly (a) only the Trump team is considering this and (b) *everyone* else in the world -- including Ted Cruz -- thinks it's a monumentally dumb idea. From the original Washington Post article:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said he hoped recent reports of NASA’s decision to end funding of the station “prove as unfounded as Bigfoot.” He said the decision was the result of “numskulls” at the Office of Management and Budget. “As a fiscal conservative, you know one of the dumbest things you can to is cancel programs after billions in investment when there is still serious usable life ahead,” he said.
Boeing, which has been involved with the station since 1995, operates the station for NASA, which costs the agency $3 billion to $4 billion annually.
So far there are *no* private companies that want the expense and responsibility of maintaining the ISS -- especially as there is no business plan for something like this.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Half is Russian and half is mostly American. It should be possible to do what King Solomon refused to do, and split it in half.
The famous story of King Solomon didn't exactly play out like that.
Two women claimed to be the mother of a baby. Solomon called for the baby to be cut in half, and each half be given to each woman. One of the women screamed and pleaded with Solomon to give the baby to the other woman. Solomon then knew who the real mother was.
Threatening to split the ISS in half may very well result in exactly that happening. It has no single "mother" who would surrender it for the greater good.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.