What would privatization of the International Space Station look like?

[C C]

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17014...vatization

EXCERPT: The Trump administration wants to end direct NASA funding for the International Space Station by 2025 — but that doesn’t necessarily mean the US will stop sending people into orbit around Earth by then. Instead, NASA hopes to transition the domain of lower Earth orbit, where the space station resides, to the commercial space industry over the next seven years.

But what would it take for private space companies to take over this area of space — and what exactly would they do up there? [...] Without a plan, NASA could find itself in the same scenario it’s in now with regard to launch vehicles. When the Space Shuttle program was canceled in 2011, the agency called upon the private sector to develop spacecraft that could take the place of the spaceplane and send astronauts to and from the space station. But it’s 2018, and neither SpaceX nor Boeing are ready to send people to the ISS yet, and NASA has had to rely on Russia to launch astronauts to lower Earth orbit. NASA has the opportunity to learn from that decision and ensure that there is a viable alternative to the ISS before the station goes offline. Otherwise, we could lose a valuable place to do science in microgravity....

MORE: https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17014...vatization

[Syne]

Generally, private is better than public, largely because they have to show results to justify expenses. This also means they may be more liability adverse.
Hopefully what it means is that governments pay less for more efficient private contractors to maintain the ISS.

[Leigha]

Private over government all the way. Compare amazon to the USPS for example. No contest. I would LOVE to see our space program, privatized. I think the government keeps too many secrets as well, and when it comes to science and space, there should be no secrets. I can see that changing if things were privatized, especially if there were investors to report, etc.

[Yazata]

Big inflatable balloons!

http://www.bigelowspaceops.com/

It sounds ridiculous, but high-tech rubberized fabrics can be packed small and inflated once in orbit and are just as safe as the metal tin-cans they currently use.

There's already one of Bigelow's small inflatable modules attached to the ISS as a proof-of-concept. The ISS uses it as storage space.

http://bigelowaerospace.com/pages/beam/

Here's their much bigger B330 module.

http://bigelowaerospace.com/pages/b330/

Now they are marketing entire inflatable space stations consisting of two B330's. Customers might be corporations that need a weightless laboratory for some reason, or foreign countries that want a space station to call their own. Commercial customers and foreign governments could contract with SpaceX to use their Dragon capsules get their astronauts there.

All in all, it will be tremendously less expensive than the original Shuttle and ISS concept, which ate up all of NASA's budget and made further manned space exploration impossible.

http://www.bigelowspaceops.com/alpha.php

(And yes, this is the same Robert Bigelow that founded the National Institute for Discovery Science and bought Skinwalker Ranch.)

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The Trump administration wants to end direct NASA funding for the International Space Station by 2025 — but that doesn’t necessarily mean the US will stop sending people into orbit around Earth by then. Instead, NASA hopes to transition the domain of lower Earth orbit, where the space station resides, to the commercial space industry over the next seven years.

But what would it take for private space companies to take over this area of space — and what exactly would they do up there?

Presumably whatever they are doing up there now. (The ISS has always seemed like a vehicle without a mission to me, existing more as an icon of international cooperation than for any practical purpose.) It's just that instead of flying the Shuttle into orbit, at tremendous cost, or paying the Russians to get us up there as is done now, they will ride reusable SpaceX Falcons for a fraction of the price.

Without a plan, NASA could find itself in the same scenario it’s in now with regard to launch vehicles. When the Space Shuttle program was canceled in 2011, the agency called upon the private sector to develop spacecraft that could take the place of the spaceplane and send astronauts to and from the space station. But it’s 2018, and neither SpaceX nor Boeing are ready to send people to the ISS yet

SpaceX could fly astronauts right now in their Dragon 1 capsules that are being used for supplying the ISS. They could use the Dragon 2's (the Crew-Dragon) too, except it probably needs an unmanned test flight first. NASA is hugely risk averse and won't man-rate the Dragon and Falcon without a cumbersome process. So part of the reason things are moving slowly is NASA.

I'm not sure what they can do with the ISS. It's a shame to break it up and de-orbit it, given all the work that's gone into it. But it's just too expensive to continue operating. It sounds like a good idea to turn it over to private industry, but it's hard to see what private company would take the job unless there was some prospect of making money doing it.

I like the iSS and kind of hate losing it, but I liked the Shuttle and hated seeing it retired even more. But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

These projects were so expensive that humanity would never go deeper into space as long as they existed. If we want to return to the Moon and travel on to Mars, we probably have to lose the International Space Station, unless somebody can figure out how to make it profitable or Europe, the Russians, Japanese or somebody picks up the tab for sustaining it. (Maybe China might purchase it. They have plans to build their own space station so buying one off the shelf might be attractive to them.)