Space is expensive...

NASA will allow private citizens to stay at the International Space Station (ISS) for month-long getaways at a cost of about $35,000 (€31,000) per night, the US space agency said on Friday.

Private space

During an international conference on the 7th of June 2019 at Nasdaq, New York City, NASA announced that they will be opening the International Space station to commercial opportunities in a historic move to gravitate the ISS beyond its national laboratory mandate.

While NASA has laid out the basic roadmap through a commercial crew program, the mission will be largely left up to the US private sector to decide how to use it’s newfound access of the research facility; the largest human-made body in low Earth orbit which can be seen by the naked eye from Earth and is professed as humankinds’ most incredible research facility ever built; consisting of other-worldly pressured habitation modules, experiment bays, and robotic arms.

Science fiction to science-fact

Californian-based SpaceX and Boeing (contactor to NASA’ giant Space Launch System) are set to be the two leading partners in building spacecraft to transport non-NASA employees to ISS. The two companies are set to transport astronauts in up to two private trips to the station per year, with each lasting up to 30 days and an estimated cost of a flight being $50 million per seat, with Jeff DeWit CFO of NASA quipping that “it won’t come with any Hilton or Marriott points”. The first mission is set to launch as early as 2020 – closing the gap on Russia’s pioneership in transporting ‘space tourists’ through it’s company called Space Adventures. The commercial activities must require the unique properties of the microgravity environment, have some connection to NASA’s overall mission, or support development of an LEO economy, NASA said.

NASA’s shift in directive (which had previously prohibited private enterprise) was enacted through a change in policy made by NASA itself and required no legislative change from Capitol hill. ISS has opened up space (literally) to commercial activities, allowing the private sector to seek out revenue generating pursuits. NASA said that it is setting aside 5% of their resources on the station to enable enterprise to seek out commercialisation and revenue-steams of lower-earth orbit.

Deep(er) space

Key drivers behind the shift by NASA stem from finance and pressure to reassert itself in space. NASA’s annual expenditure is estimated to be over 300 billion dollars a year, and with recent remarks from President Trump declaring NASA “should be focused on the much bigger things… including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science”, NASA is seeking to “defray some of their expenses”, through opening it’s doors of ISS. Indeed NASA’s astronauts only current route to ISS is through the Russian made Soyuz, which launches from Kazakhstan, so it is NASA’s hope to be able to count on the likes of SpaceX and Boeing in shuttling it’s crew in the near future to offset expenditure and refocus it’s space objectives.

To infinity and beyond

As NASA resets it’s gaze on the moon and taking humankind into deep space, lower-earth orbit is on a trajectory to be lead less by NASA and more by economic market development and the commercial sector,

It is an exciting time in this new race to space but the future is far from certain: a new Government Accountability Office report has just recently demanded NASA develop a contingency plan to maintain access to the station as both Boeing and SpaceX are experiencing technical issues and an uphill battle to maintain their schedules while SpaceX continues its investigation into an incident in April which saw the destruction of the test version of the company’s passenger vehicle, ‘Crew Dagon’, for reasons yet unknown.

The landscape of the new economic frontier of space is also to be defined: will it be an endeavour championing scientific research, and a sustainable human presence as outlined by the NASA directive, or a door left open to manipulation by the privileged few and the profit makers of this world?