Bloomberg By Justin Bachman August 6, 2018
The Trump administration wants to end U.S. funding for the International Space Station and turn it over to the private sector. But does the math work?
For 18 years, the International Space Station, the orbiting zenith of global scientific cooperation, has hosted a continuous human presence and thousands of science experiments in its microgravity environment. But the $100 billion laboratory won’t last forever and President Donald Trump’s proposal to withdraw federal funding in 2025 has jolted a discussion about its future.
The idea of ending the U.S. taxpayer’s role—the station costs more than $3 billion annually in a partnership with Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan—has stirred congressional opposition. It also raises a perplexing question: Who might run the place if the U.S. government doesn’t?
The Trump administration is betting on private enterprise to take over, freeing up billions to spend on a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, a planned outpost designed to return U.S. astronauts to the moon in the 2020s and to Mars the following decade.
“I do believe there’s an opportunity for a commercial consortium to manage it and I believe that if we can make that transition then the money that we’re currently spending on the ISS can go toward the Gateway and get us to the surface of the moon,†NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said last month in an interview with Bloomberg News.
In his budget request, Trump also sought $150 million from Congress to promote new commercial developments in space. This plan has an array of doubters, who don’t see low earth orbit as commercially viable by 2025.
NASA’s Inspector General, Paul Martin, is one such skeptic. “We question whether a sufficient business case exists under which private companies will be able to develop a self-sustaining and profit-making business independent of significant federal funding within the next six years,†Martin wrote in a July 30 report about the station’s management, reiterating comments he made before Congress in May.
NASA will confront “significant challenges†in trying to get companies interested in taking over an “extremely costly and complex enterprise,†especially as it creeps toward its planned retirement in 2028, the Inspector General said.
More:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-06/got-ideas-for-an-aging-space-station-nasa-wants-to-hear-them
