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Will There Be a Commercial Replacement for the International Space Station? (thehill.com) 96

Posted by EditorDavid from the today's-sponsor-is-Orbit dept.
"Axiom Space has announced that it is creating an office park and manufacturing center at the Houston SpacePort at Ellington Field," notes an opinion piece for The Hill by Houston-based space writer Mark R. Whittington.

"The development is a hopeful sign that, despite foot dragging by Congress, a commercial replacement for the International Space Station may well happen." The United States has a chance to avoid a "space gap" when the ISS reaches the end of its operational life, like the one that happened between the end of the space shuttle program and the first launch of the SpaceX commercial crew Dragon mission. When Jim Bridenstine became NASA administrator, one of the questions confronting him was what to do about maintaining a presence in low Earth orbit after the ISS. The idea that he and experts at NASA have been pushing is to encourage private companies to build their own space station.

NASA would provide needed support by pledging to become an anchor tenant for such orbiting facilities. However, the commercial space stations would also have to find private customers. The problem is that Congress has been remarkably stingy when it comes to putting up real money for this approach. The fiscal 2020 budget request included $150 million for commercial space stations. Congress funded support for private orbiting labs for a grand total of $15 million...

Axiom Space has won the nod to attach one of its own modules to the ISS. Not waiting for Congress to cough up funding for NASA, Axiom has announced a facility to manufacture space station modules at the Ellington SpacePort in Houston. The company will also have private astronaut training facilities. Besides employing 1,000 people, the new Axiom facility represents a commitment to creating a commercial space station industry... It is also likely no accident that the Axiom facility is about a five-hour drive from the growing SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica near the southern tip of Texas. No doubt SpaceX CEO Elon Musk would be pleased to launch finished modules to space, using the mighty Starship rocket, and later crews and cargo.

In the midst of a pandemic, part of a space future is taking shape in South Texas. This time it's being driven by the private sector. NASA had best jump on board or risk being left behind.
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Will There Be a Commercial Replacement for the International Space Station? More

Will There Be a Commercial Replacement for the International Space Station?

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  • Private industry needs to make a profit (Score:3)

    by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Sunday January 03, 2021 @07:46PM (#60892404)

    Or at least have a business plan that assumes eventual profit. Other than pure research, what kind of product or service requires an orbiting space station?

    • Have you never seen a James Bond movie??

    • Giving rich people the opportunity to fly to space and take a vacation on a space station requires an orbiting space station. Zero G recreation for more than the length of a hyperbolic airplane, and more team members that can fit in said plane.

      We're going to have private business try to profit off this whole space thing like there's no tomorrow, as soon as the pioneers get it stable, especially nailing down what the approximate costs should be. Once Musk et al figure out the costs involved, you can set

      • I'd like to see your math on that one. I'll even spot you 10% of the ISS installation and operating costs to account for a private company doing this fast and cheap to make money. And you can have Falcon launch and resupply costs.

        I bet given all of that you still can't get anywhere near balancing the budget on rich tourists alone.

        • The International Space Station cost $150,000,000,000. Yes, a tenth of that aka fifteen billion is way more than private industry will pay. But a single Starship has roughly the same volume as the International Space Station, and should cost around $10,000,000 -- less than a thousandth the cost of the ISS. There's a market for that.

          • The International Space Station cost $150,000,000,000.

            Of course, that's in Congressional Pork and Defense Contractor dollars.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            You can't live on Starship long term though, it doesn't have the needed facilities to generate its own power or sustain human life. Once it's specced up for long missions the cost will rise dramatically.

            Also $10M for a Starship is ridiculous. Maybe $10M per launch one day if they can reuse them many, many times, but even that's probably pushing it.

            The next space stations should also be a lot cheaper.

      • So? If someone wants to spend some cash and fly to space whatâ(TM)s the problem?

        Itâ(TM)s not your money and they canâ(TM)t spend it how they want.

      • Rich people at first, but success will mean more capacity and lower prices in the long run. Won't be that long before it costs as much as a week on a cruise ship. And that's when I'm going.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

      Or at least have a business plan that assumes eventual profit.

      SpaceX is going to Mars with no plausible path to profit from the venture.

      Other than pure research, what kind of product or service requires an orbiting space station?

      That depends on the price. The cost of getting to space has fallen dramatically and is likely to fall even more in the next few years.

      A space hotel offering a week in orbit for $50k would likely get many customers.

      There are proposals for zero-g manufacturing that may be feasible once the cost-to-orbit is low enough.

      The space station could house repair crews for communication satellites and orbiting solar arrays.

      • Re:Private industry needs to make a profit (Score:4, Informative)

        by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Sunday January 03, 2021 @08:46PM (#60892642)

        SpaceX is going to Mars with no plausible path to profit from the venture.

        SpaceX is getting massive international and government marketing benefits from it, they most definitely are profiting from it.

        A space hotel offering a week in orbit for $50k would likely get many customers.

        sure it has gotten a lot cheaper but $50k would not even pay for the cost of getting a body into space let alone holidaying their. SpaceX has massively lowered the cost but it would still cost over $200k to put a 70 kilo person into space and that is before the costs of their belongings and food, water oxygen etc etc. You would need orders of magnitude reductions in cost to make space holiday's viable, we are still decades away from any of what you are suggesting being viable.

        • Re:Private industry needs to make a profit (Score:5, Interesting)

          by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Sunday January 03, 2021 @10:22PM (#60892930) Journal

          SpaceX has massively lowered the cost but it would still cost over $200k to put a 70 kilo person into space and that is before the costs of their belongings and food, water oxygen etc etc.

          On a Falcon 9, the cost per kilogram to low Earth orbit is $2720. So the cost of launching a 70-kilo person's into orbit (ignoring baggage, and life support supplies) is around your $200k figure. However, Musk says that Starship will reduce launch cost to $10/kg. He's probably being overly-optimistic, of course, but even if he's off by an order of magnitude, that's only $7k for a body-mass-only ride to LEO. As you point out, consumables and luggage will add to that, plus the necessary mass for life support equipment, seat, safety gear, etc. Still, $50k is not out of the realm of possibility at 10X Musk's target. If SpaceX can get closer to the target, $50K is totally reasonable.

          The reason such low costs are even remotely feasible, of course, is the full reusability of Starship and Super Heavy, plus the plan to build a lot of them. A fleet of 1000+. The idea is that mass production will bring the per-ship cost down to a few million dollars (Musk says $5M), and each one will fly 1000 times. Again, assume he's off by an order of magnitude and each ship (incl. booster) costs $50M to build, and only flies 100 times. That still produces a per-flight amortized cost of $500k, and since Starship will be able to loft 100,000+ kg into LEO, that's $5 / kg. Of course, you also need fuel, which is another $3-5 / kg, and there will be additional costs. Still, $10-20 / kg isn't unrealistic -- if they can really build the rockets that cheaply and reuse them that much.

          • Musk claims $900k per flight [space.com] in fuel costs for Starship + booster, so at 100+ tonnes to LEO that's $9 / kg in fuel. Support costs will bring that up to $20 / kg minimum, plus amortised capital & development costs.

            That's still astoundingly cheap compared to today, but there's a lot of unknowns. Maybe fuel costs will come down from there, or maybe Musk's fuel estimates are also off by an order of magnitude, or maybe other costs will dominate. Let's wait until it's flying regularly before opening the metho

            • Musk claims $900k per flight [space.com] in fuel costs for Starship + booster, so at 100+ tonnes to LEO that's $9 / kg in fuel.

              The cost of fuel has never been the cost driver for launch.

              Fuel is cheap. Jet fuel right now is $1.34 per gallon, or about 20 cents a pound. Liquid oxygen is cheaper. Even if your mass ratio is 1:20, that would be an intrinsic cost of about four dollars a pound in fuel.

              the price of getting to orbit is everything else.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            That's $2720 for an unpressurised cargo kilo, with insurance that covers replacement cost if it blows up.

            The cost of sending a person up will be much, much higher. There will be additional costs on the ground too, to make sure they can survive the trip in the first place.

            The other question is if 1000+ Starships is economically feasible. Ignoring the environmental impact for a now is there actually a market for that many of them? What/who are they going to be lifting into orbit?

          • On a Falcon 9, the cost per kilogram to low Earth orbit is $2720. So the cost of launching a 70-kilo person's into orbit (ignoring baggage, and life support supplies) is around your $200k figure. However, Musk says that Starship will reduce launch cost to $10/kg.

            Bah. Dunno about Musk's estimate, but I guarantee I can get the cost down to less than $1/kg with my space catapult.

        • The cost per kilogram is not really a thing. You certainly won't save thousands of dollars by leaving a 1kg bag of frozen Swedish meatballs on the ground if it would have fit onboard. Launching an empty capsule to the ISS would cost almost as much as one filled with supplies.

          Spaceflight is expensive because spacecraft are expensive to build and operate, and there are very few of them around. "Passenger spacecraft" don't even exist yet. This is somewhat like aircraft in the early 20th century. For some time,

        • A space hotel offering a week in orbit for $50k would likely get many customers.

          sure it has gotten a lot cheaper but $50k would not even pay for the cost of getting a body into space let alone holidaying their.

          Na it's fine. Just make the tickets one way.

      • SpaceX is going to Mars with no plausible path to profit from the venture.

        SpaceX is talking about going to Mars... But they're doing very damm little about actually going to Mars. (Before you bring up Starship - transportation technology is just one piece of the puzzle of getting there, let alone surviving there. And SpaceX isn't doing any significant work on the rest of the puzzle.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      > what kind of product or service requires an orbiting space station?

      Zero Gravity Porn. The novelty could drive a year or two of costs. A backdoor approach to science if you will.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Zero Gravity Porn.

        Squirting goo randomly in a space station can't be good for reliability.

    • Well pure research can make money; there are universities with the dosh to do that sort of thing. But aside from that there are advertising, corporate virtue signalling, tourism, perfect zero-g spherical items, a stop on the way elsewhere, telescopes that can benefit from humans being nearby and military equipment that can benefit from having a human nearby.

    • Or at least have a business plan that assumes eventual profit. Other than pure research, what kind of product or service requires an orbiting space station?

      Recreation, tourism, education, people pay a lot of money for this. Education might be rather lucrative since there's no education on Earth like one in orbit. What could people learn in orbit that they can't learn on Earth? Medicine in low-g, any of a number of astronomy and astrophysics topics, and so on. I know people that studied aerospace engineering at university and as I recall it was a required course to take a ride in an airplane. I guess so that the people making future airplanes know what an

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Government does the infrastructure, private industry is allowed limited access to invest in and generate a profit by using that infrastructure. So a large joint earth space station, funded by governments, where private corporations can rent access for commercial purposes. So a government Lunar Ferry, that private corporations can rent people and cargo space. For a government funded moon base, various governments, creating various linked together moon bases for safety and where corporations can rent access.

    • Hi.I'm a beautiful and naughty girl who wanna be your lover and friend!! Come and see FOLLOW MY BIO LINK =>> https://kutt.it/UqsfGy [kutt.it]
    • Tourism and specialized manufacturing?
  • Per kilo that is.
    Including nearly off the shelf inkjet printers (they flew them several times on the vomit comet and did a whole bunch of questionably needed work, and will probably ship two to ISS).
    Starship is in principle able to launch hardware with a shipment cycle rather more like 'go to home depot, find five candidate models, have a tech look at them for a day to see if any showstoppers, and then launch.
    This has the ability to reduce the cost of hardware a thousandfold.

    • Delivering cargo to the ISS cost more than gold because it was run by socialists.

      Now that the capitalists are taking over, the cost has fallen by 95%.

      Space Shuttle: $54,000 per kg.

      SpaceX Falcon 9: $2500 per kg.

      The SpaceX Starship may bring the cost down to $30/kg.

    • I'm sorry but regular hardware doesn't work in space. Radiation ruins it.

      That, and lack of gravity, is what those tests are for.
      No tech csn determine thar by looking at it. Unless it says "radiation-hardened" and "it's OK to turn this upside down" on the box.

  • ... applies here.

    No.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • No artificial gravity habitat = unhealthy for humans.
    • Funny, I don't remember any of the people going to the ISS getting ill because of the lack of artificial gravity.

      • > Funny, I don't remember any of the people going to the ISS getting ill because of the lack of artificial gravity.

        The effects are very well studied and popularly known. They've even completed a Twin Study.

      • Then you haven't been paying attention. There's actually a "garn scale" for measuring one's incapacity due to "space motion sickness" or "space adaptation syndrome". 1 garn is 100% incapacity, unable to perform any function due to motion sickness. There's training and medication to counteract this, and people are selected to go to ISS to be no more than 0.1 garn during training. There have been cases of people falling ill on ISS, but none like Jake Garn on STS-51-D. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Tha

      • ISS tour does impact health of the astronauts. It's true that artificial gravity would be great for habitation, for now it's simply too expensive to do it (big -> expensive station).

        Astronauts get older faster in microgravity than when on Earth, they eyesight degrades, and they can relatively sustain they health only with 2h daily exercise and still it works for up to more less 6 months. The recent experiment of 1 year in space also shows cognitive decline. It's hard to say the reason for now, might be d

      • But they do. 60 to 80% of astronauts [nasa.gov] experience space motion sickness in the first 3 days of their mission. This tends to subside after ~3 days.

        There are also long-term health effects, with astronauts taking months to recover (rebuild atrophied muscle) after a 6-month ISS mission.

      • Bone mass loss, aorta blood clots, muscle mass loss, vision loss...

    • No artificial gravity habitat = unhealthy for humans.

      You can rotate the space station to generate artificial gravity. But if the station is too small, the centrifugal force differential between the head and feet can cause discomfort. The minimum diameter is about 40 meters. The ISS is way too small.

      • Yes. They need to design a structure that can rotate: an even number of habitats separated by a large enough distance, connected by a tunnel.
  • What happened to the Transhab modules?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Or Bigelow's modules?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Seems that the tech already exists.

    • Man, imagine a deflated hab the size of a Starship. Inflated, that thing would be HUGE. Bigelow's BEAM nearly doubled in length and diameter when inflated. 30' diameter x 164' length expanding to say... 55' diameter and 300' length would give it some real space inside. I know it would most likely end up divided up into cabins, but imagine the fun of something like zero G sports... Handball? Laser tag in something like the battle room from Ender's Game?

  • not only of a few pathetic narrow-minded shortsighted useless profiteers, thank you very much ..

    • Goddammit!

    • Y'know, they could have said the same thing about the steam engine back a century or so ago...

      Or the airplane.

      Hell, it could have been said about the plow....

    • Narrow-minded and shortsighted people don't make long-term investments in things like commercial space travel, so you're barking up the wrong tree already. It's also worth noting that it is the private vision of people you dismiss as pathetic, useless profiteers that drive the innovation and progress that results in things that are good for all humanity.

  • Seriously, if I compare the nasa space projects of the last 20 years with a typical sowjet master plan then the sowjets do actually win. Ok, they only win in failing less hard but still win.

    The only ones failing even harder are commercial projects with maybe two small exceptions which promised little and actually delivered.

    Unrealistic programs, underfinanced projects, ego trips, design by comitee or worse by presidential bigheadedness.

  • There is nothing worthwhile up there. All the fun stuff is planetside.

    • Well, for one thing while there's definitely some fun stuff to indulge in, there's a lot bad stuff too on Earth .. some of us want to get away from that stuff -- that alone is something. Second, it's cool .. and you have either can appreciate that or not. It's like if you don't understand that it can't be explained .. it'll be like explaining why you wanna sleep with a woman to a gay person -- or to an asexual person. They won't get what the big deal is, they'll be like "you wanna shove your what where? Umm

  • We should only be looking at three options for the next space station:

    1. A station that is ten times bigger than the current one.
    OR
    2. A base on the moon. Note, not in orbit around the moon like the current proposal (which is dumb) .. but an actual base on the moon.
    OR
    3. A base on Mars.

    Replacing the ISS with some stupid incremental thing is dumb, typical of the current NASA that's been in decline since Nixon.

    The only person who gives a shit about space exploration is Elon Musk, NASA doesn't care about space a

  • There are almost 3,000 billionaires in the world today (and growing). Eventually, one or more of them will make this a checkbox for their ego and it won't matter if it's profitable or not. It will happen and probably relatively soon.

    Film at 11.

  • Unless you can point to the opportunity to make zillions, or to the Bond type super villain that wants to destroy or rule the world.

  • Governance by billionaires, kings, pharaohs... via their perfidious pelf satraps, plutocrats, aristocrats... creates iniquitous inequality on earth, as in space. Wealth Accumulation Society Peerage (WASP) exclusivity causes the destruction of cultures and people.

    Governance by US/People [Isocracy] create peace, wealth, communities, schools, art, roads... and end slavery, oppression, wars, iniquitous inequality... by egalitarian and efficacious sharing resources [wealth] created by all of US, EU... and defend

  • Manned spaceflight is not profitable at current launch rates. Until you fix that there will be no private space industries except sattellites.
  • Just pay Musk to throw a couple of mostly gutted starships into orbit and link them up with 100m or so of truss and then rotate them around a central access. Maybe put one in the middle if you want microgravity. A mini pseudo gravity station made with COTS parts.

  • NASA would provide needed support by pledging to become an anchor tenant for such orbiting facilities. [...] NASA had best jump on board or risk being left behind.

    It sounds like NASA is already on board as an "anchor tenant." I don't see how they'd be "left behind."

  • "It is also likely no accident that the Axiom facility is about a five-hour drive from the growing SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica"

    Huh? It might as well be in Seattle. I mean, 5 hours away doesn't give you much benefit of proximity.

  • as long as the govt is the primary customer. ISS been operational for years but I don't see investors rushing to get in the action. Or there has been business plans but assumes govt pays for significant infrastructure and operations costs.

  • The ISS was a vast waste of money and scientific momentum.
    I mean, sure, I guess you take what you can get, but it was too low, too small, too stunted, too skylab/mir, etc.

    Space stations are about scale - kind of like a fish tank, the small ones take a ridiculous amount of energy/maintenance to make/keep habitable and even then they're...marginal. Once they're large, a lot of the environmental variables disappear into bigger bell curves meaning things like shirtsleeve atmospheres, gravity-by-rotation, radia

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