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.

Comments

Re:Elon Musk

[afidel]

Yeah but he won't want a fixer-upper, by the time NASA is out of the ISS he'll hopefully have BFR up and running and can just buy a few modules from Bigelow and launch them himself, more space and probably a fraction of the cost with none of the upkeep headaches. Plus that way he can lay them out the way he wants them with the most modern tech, not something from the 80's.

Problems with privatization

[Rick Schumann]

While I think that inevitably there needs to be more private-sector involvement in space development, I don't think my (and others') reasons for this are the same as Trumps' reasons. I also see some problems with privatization at this time:

1. There's great expense and little profit, currently, in anything space-related, that doesn't involve launching satellites. Private corporations aren't interested much in scientific research, they're interested in return-on-investment, and at the moment anything that isn't a productive satellite being launched into LEO isn't profitable. Perhaps in 50 to 100 years, given steady development of space vehicles, potentially lowering costs, there might be, but I just don't see it at current.

2. If it all becomes privatized, is there going to be goverment oversight (or perhaps U.N. oversight) to prevent covert militarization of the ISS, or it's future replacement? More specifically, how do we prevent some corporation, de-facto owned and operated by, say, China, from making it a covert military station in LEO?

Re:Problems with privatization

[Spy Handler]

1. There's great expense

Main reason for the great expense (of putting up the ISS and maintaining it) was that the govt spent $1 billion - $2 billion (depending on who you ask) per Shuttle launch to get up there.

Falcon Heavy costs less than 1/10th of that now, perhaps 1/100th of that in the near future, and carries more payload per launch to boot.

and little profit,

Actually it's no profit, because profit was never a mission requirement. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent for some science missions and international cooperation kumbaya. But really the biggest (but unspoken) mission requirement was to give Shuttle a reason for existing, and keeping the gravy train coming for defense contractors.

More specifically, how do we prevent some corporation, de-facto owned and operated by, say, China, from making it a covert military station in LEO?

Don't sell it to China? Seems like a real simple solution.

When the times nears that ISS needs to be de-orbited or given costly maintenance, it might be sensible to just give it away to SpaceX in return for promising to keep it in orbit and operational for a certain number of years. They might be able to do something useful with it. Because whatever the government ends up spending to repair anything, you know Elon can do it for an order of magnitude cheaper.

Some actual numbers

[sjbe]

Main reason for the great expense (of putting up the ISS and maintaining it) was that the govt spent $1 billion - $2 billion (depending on who you ask) per Shuttle launch to get up there.

The Shuttle hasn't been involved since 2011 and the ISS costs somewhere around $3 Billion/year according to NASA. According to NASA launch and transport costs account for about 34% of ISS operating costs. Systems operation and maintenance accounts for about 43% of costs.

Falcon Heavy costs less than 1/10th of that now, perhaps 1/100th of that in the near future, and carries more payload per launch to boot.

They don't need Falcon Heavy to support the ISS at this point. Falcon 9 is already supply resupply missions.

When the times nears that ISS needs to be de-orbited or given costly maintenance, it might be sensible to just give it away to SpaceX in return for promising to keep it in orbit and operational for a certain number of years.

Give me a credible reason why SpaceX would be interested. Their only interest in the ISS is in providing transport services to and from. There is no obvious profit in actually owning the station to them.
 

Re:Meh...

[Archtech]

Do you have any concept of how much 100 billion dollars is?

About 12% of the annual US "defence" budget.