Current plan for private space station is to just fund a small part of the station, but NASA still has long list of requirements about how the stations are supposed to be built. NASA wants to have their cake and eat it. Operating a space station would require at least a billion dollars a year, and with 2-4 seats from NASA per year, it would only cover about 20% of the funding. This means a station like that would need dozens of tourists per year, with more than hundred million dollars per seat. Current NASA plan is unfeasible without using Starship for launching tourists to those stations.
ferrel_hadley on
Well Shuttle became so expensive and so embedded into the pork barrel politics they built a space station to give it something to do. The space station was so expensive it prevented NASA from having the budget to do anything but Shuttle and ISS, they agreed to let go of Shuttle then forced them to effectively replumb it to be its replacement, SLS. Now SLS is so expensive they cannot afford to replace space station. We could do the Moon and have space stations on the current NASA budget but only if they change the funding and procurement model. And there is no way The Hill will allow that.
2 Comments
Current plan for private space station is to just fund a small part of the station, but NASA still has long list of requirements about how the stations are supposed to be built. NASA wants to have their cake and eat it. Operating a space station would require at least a billion dollars a year, and with 2-4 seats from NASA per year, it would only cover about 20% of the funding. This means a station like that would need dozens of tourists per year, with more than hundred million dollars per seat. Current NASA plan is unfeasible without using Starship for launching tourists to those stations.
Well Shuttle became so expensive and so embedded into the pork barrel politics they built a space station to give it something to do. The space station was so expensive it prevented NASA from having the budget to do anything but Shuttle and ISS, they agreed to let go of Shuttle then forced them to effectively replumb it to be its replacement, SLS. Now SLS is so expensive they cannot afford to replace space station. We could do the Moon and have space stations on the current NASA budget but only if they change the funding and procurement model. And there is no way The Hill will allow that.