I don't see how a true "commercial" space station would be profitable without long term state-sponsored funding.Forget about the costs to develop, build and launch the station, which will be already be a huge number. How do you keep up with the necessary logistics ? Even a small station that is staffed at half the level of ISS will require multi-billions per year in logistics, crew rotations, and maintenance. Where is that money coming from if the complex isn't owned and funded by a multiple nation states ?
Yes, I think the costs can get to $100 million or below per year if SpaceX or Blue Origin achieve their targets. I think it's more than 50% likely SpaceX will do it within 10 years. Blue Origin seems more of a long shot to me, though it's hard to tell with how secretive they are.
Quote from: Lurker Steve on 01/15/2014 05:48 pmI don't see how a true "commercial" space station would be profitable without long term state-sponsored funding.Forget about the costs to develop, build and launch the station, which will be already be a huge number. How do you keep up with the necessary logistics ? Even a small station that is staffed at half the level of ISS will require multi-billions per year in logistics, crew rotations, and maintenance. Where is that money coming from if the complex isn't owned and funded by a multiple nation states ?I agree with you that the costs are too high to be justified by the commercial market. But "multi-billions per year" is over-stating it. Dragon is already in commercial service supplying logistics to the ISS for $133 million a flight, including all costs from launch vehicle to capsule to pad operations. Crew Dragon is nearing operational status and shows no signs of costing much more than the current cargo Dragon. So the costs for maintaining a small station with six-month crew rotations is likely to be between half a billion dollars and a billion dollars a year with currently-available and soon-to-be-available (2-3 years at most) systems.
I think cargo and crew flights every month makes it a lot more expensive than it needs to be. In my opinion, you could do that if it is a success and you can scale up to more business to make it worth the cost, but the most likely path to initial feasibility is with something like three cargo and two crew flights a year, to minimize total costs.
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 01/15/2014 08:13 pmI think cargo and crew flights every month makes it a lot more expensive than it needs to be. In my opinion, you could do that if it is a success and you can scale up to more business to make it worth the cost, but the most likely path to initial feasibility is with something like three cargo and two crew flights a year, to minimize total costs.And you are still talking about more money than just about every country other than the US and Russia spends on space.
I thought Bigelow does have interested customers, just no way of getting them into orbit (waiting for CST-100 and Dragon).
But the phase of developing cheaper ways of doing what ISS already does, is now.
Yes, I had the same idea, basically NASA would be paying the bills (at a level way below ISS), but will not dictate the station/transportation design, it will just buy space on the station. The same method can be applied to a moonbase later on.However I think it's a bit early to think about this, given ISS may get extended to 2028, and SpaceX may make launch cost a lot cheaper in the next few years.
Quote from: baldusi on 01/16/2014 04:57 pmBut the phase of developing cheaper ways of doing what ISS already does, is now. Is anyone actually working on this?