"This is really high level and it probably takes about 10 minutes all by itself to present this slide, but this kind of shows you a timeline. We are recommending and not announcing — I have to be careful not to say announcing — but recommending to our stakeholders that we extend International Space Station to 2030. While we enable what these commercial LEO destinations that will take over after Station in order to not have a gap in low earth orbit, that's critically important to us. So, our timeline is we're hoping to have one or more commercial LEO destinations by 2028, so that we have a two year overlap to do this transition from all these utilization pieces that are now on the international space station over to commercial LEO destinations. We're also doing all we can through the ISS today to enable demand. So we're opening up private astronaut missions. We're stimulating the feasibility of manufacturing projects through our ISS national laboratory. And we're trying to refine and refine our government forecast, what the services are: the government will still want to do our commercial LEO destinations after ISS."- Robyn Gatens, NASA
Interesting post, thanks. So what is the ultimate driver for decommissioning/deorbting the ISS? Removing the ISS from NASA's annual budget and shifting to the commercial LEO stations? What happens if engineers decide the station can be safely and productively operated for X additional years? Hand it over lock, stock and barrel to a commercial operator? The final chapter of the ISS will be interesting indeed.PS: I'm aware all this has been hashed out already on other threads.Welcome to the forum!
Quote from: AS_501 on 11/15/2021 10:35 pmInteresting post, thanks. So what is the ultimate driver for decommissioning/deorbting the ISS? Removing the ISS from NASA's annual budget and shifting to the commercial LEO stations? What happens if engineers decide the station can be safely and productively operated for X additional years? Hand it over lock, stock and barrel to a commercial operator? The final chapter of the ISS will be interesting indeed.PS: I'm aware all this has been hashed out already on other threads.Welcome to the forum!Hi AS_501,Thanks for the warm welcome! From what the topic seemed to be during today's meeting, NASA is leaning into the philosophy from an infamous Jim Bridenstine quote a few years back: even though NASA is currently providing both the supply and demand, they want to shift to just being the demand. In the place of NASA, commercial companies can fill the void of supply, as we have already seen in the Commercial Crew Program. Just for additional context, companies such as Blue Origin (Orbital Reef) as well as Nanoracks were represented on the panel this quote was pulled from.Hope that helps!- Jonah
The fly in the ointment is going to be a political push to privatize ISS.
Quote from: Danderman on 11/16/2021 03:19 amThe fly in the ointment is going to be a political push to privatize ISS.Privatize something that is already in the process of falling apart?Russians tried that with MIR. Didn't work out so well.
Quote from: woods170 on 11/16/2021 08:08 amQuote from: Danderman on 11/16/2021 03:19 amThe fly in the ointment is going to be a political push to privatize ISS.Privatize something that is already in the process of falling apart?Russians tried that with MIR. Didn't work out so well.I vaguely remember a person with the name of D. Anderman being involved with Mircorp (but I may be wrong or mistaking that person for Jeffrey Manber)
Presumably they could only be salvaged for use in a similar orbit.
Quote from: Danderman on 11/16/2021 03:19 amThe fly in the ointment is going to be a political push to privatize ISS.Is there still appetite for such a push? There was one under Trump administration but it quickly died, and now we have CLD, I just don't see the reason for another push, a privatized ISS is not going to be able to compete with private stations, just like a privatized SLS won't be able to complete with private rockets.
Quote from: Garrett on 11/16/2021 11:31 amPresumably they could only be salvaged for use in a similar orbit.The Axiom station will be right there, literally. And Orbital Reef have a stated goal of recovering and reusing ISS hardware.
I resemble that remark.To set the record straight, private operation of Mir was actually going well, until The Powers That Be demanded Russia de-orbit the station. There is a lot of backstory that has not been revealed about the end of Mir, although Orphans of Apollo tells some of the story.
Brian Burroughs in Dragonfly describes the desperate atempts by the crew in 1997 at repairing the glycol leaks... and it wasn't pretty. Mir was on its knees...