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Commercialization

NASA Picks Three ISS Follow-on Concepts

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 2, 2021
Filed under
NASA Picks Three ISS Follow-on Concepts

NASA Selects Companies to Develop Commercial Destinations in Space
The total estimated award amount for all three funded Space Act Agreements is $415.6 million. The companies that received awards are:
Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, for $130 million
Nanoracks LLC, of Houston for $160 million
Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation of Dulles, Virginia, for $125.6 million
Nanoracks, Voyager Space, and Lockheed Martin Awarded NASA Contract to Build First-of-its-Kind Commercial Space Station
Northrop Grumman Signs Agreement with NASA to Design Space Station for Low Earth Orbit
NASA Selects Orbital Reef to Develop Space Station Replacement

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

21 responses to “NASA Picks Three ISS Follow-on Concepts”

  1. rb1957 says:
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    apologies, but I have to be a nay-sayer … we’re having trouble filling ISS with commercial projects … aren’t we ? if we weren’t we wouldn’t be talking about deorbiting the ISS … it’d be a revenue stream. why would commercial interest suddenly appear for some new space station …
    unless we designing this one with some specific commercial involvement or some new pursuits that are only now opening up (but then why not on ISS ?).

    • Steve Pemberton says:
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      NASA concentrated almost exclusively on building ISS, with seemingly very little attention on eventual utilization. I even seem to remember Charlie Bolden admitting that. From what I have read the process of getting experiments onto the station has for the most part been bureaucratic, expensive, and not organized very well. NASA eventually outsourced to CASIS to help with this, but as Keith has documented thoroughly here they did not seem to improve things much if any. It’s possible also that the design of ISS was not optimized for some types of commercial activities.

      Now that in itself doesn’t prove that there is a big untapped market for commercial activities in LEO, but at least there are a lot of people and companies who think that there is, and that there will be an increased amount in the future. Especially as it becomes cheaper and more efficient to do so, with lower launch costs likely being a big part of that.

    • Chris Owen says:
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      If you build it, they will come.

    • Todd Austin says:
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      There is talk about de orbiting ISS because the structure is getting old and will eventually fail. Zarya is already showing cracks and to the best of my (limited) knowledge, no one has a module in their back pocket ready to launch that can fill its role in the ISS. Demand for LEO will really take off once Starship is flying and the cost to orbit drops by another chunk. Have you heard something about NASA not being able to keep the extra astronaut busy?

    • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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      It’s my understanding from this site that there would be more commercial projects on ISS if it were not being blocked by the extremely obdurate NASA bureaucracy acting as a gatekeeper.

    • Ian1102 says:
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      Once there’s a real private station, there’s a bunch of stuff that can happen that NASA would never even dream of letting happen right now on ISS

    • Vladislaw says:
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      No NASA hoops to jump through. It is always going to come down to transportation costs and turn around times. Send up an experiment, conduct it, bring it down, iterate and send it back up. Instead of a months and months or even years between iterations it could be done in weeks.

  2. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    Shouldn’t we be at the point we just use incentives to fund some module space in a larger commercial station. Why does NASA need a LEO station post ISS? Isn’t it time move further out, focus on learning what is needed in cislunar and lunar surface on how to live work in partial gravity and radiation environment? What more is LEO offering at this point?

    • Vladislaw says:
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      Why not both.

    • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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      Crewed space travel isn’t yet so developed as commercial providers can do without a governmental ‘anchor tenant’ in LEO. That’s an unfortunate fact. A government-sponsored microgravity lab in LEO can still do a lot of good in its own right, even if funding never appears for BLEO and other LEO activities.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        There will be many government funded customers for the commercial space stations…including but not exclusively limited to the U.S.

    • Richard Brezinski says:
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      NASA IG recently reported that NASA will be no where near complete in the kind of research it planned to conduct on ISS by the time it is ready to dispose of the orbiting lab. NASA’s goal is expanding human exploration into the solar system. So in answer to your question, NASA still needs a LEO station.

  3. Nick K says:
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    It was not just a single issue.

    NASA is using the Russian modules as an excuse. The Russian modules are much older than any others, manufactured decades before the others. Their shape is also far more susceptible to space exposure.

    NASA had been investing in space research to be conducted on space stations, including ISS, but terminated that support before ISS was flying, in order to give its contractors more profits. Many researchers pulled out when NASA funding was terminated. Many have never forgotten the calous way in which NASA terminated grants and research commitments.

    As designed the ISS crew is mainly kept busy maintaining ISS. A larger crew, and more automated systems and robots could do much more to alleviate crew time availability.

    NASA had decades of experience integrating payloads more and more efficiently from Skylab, to Shuttle, to Spacehab and Mir and instead of using experienced integrators, reassigned operations personnel from Mission Control to lead ISS integration. They have never recovered from the beureacracy. CASIS caused further confusion; you now had the blind leading the blind. Many researchers prefer to work through the other internationals, even the Russians, because they all work more efficiently.

    NASA is now trying to redirect its funding towards manned lunar or Mars missions. So NASA is looking for any excuse it can find to ditch money going to ISS.

  4. Winner says:
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    Good luck finding enough money for all of these private space stations.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      Mr. Money man himself, Jeff Bezos, doesn’t seem to be too worried about it. Him and a lot of other businesspersons far more successful than you or I seem to think it’s a great idea.

    • Terry Stetler says:
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      Axiom Space has the first node and habitation module of their station under construction at Thales Alenia (who built ISS modules). They’re funded, including by NASA, connected, have 4 Crew Dragon flights manifested, and they have a 2-3 year head start.

  5. Bad Horse says:
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    This is a win for NASA, the American people and space exploration. ISS was about learning to build large structure in space and working with people from all over the world. Science was and is secondary. Also sitting at the NRL is the flight ready, stored ICM waiting for a change to fulfil the roll of the Russian SM (for a period of time). I agree an active effort has been in place for years to keep commercial development off ISS. Look at the price increase. Commercial space station and spacecraft/launch vehicles can set a price people and companies can/will pay.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      I just read up on that (previous to your remark, I didn’t even know that the ICM existed)…

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

      It is not “flight ready”. It is mothballed at the NRL’s Payload Processing Facility and would take between 2 and 2.5 years to work up. I should think that that would likely include assembling and training a new development and mission support team for it, write all-new ground-based support software, etc. All of that means that someone will have to spend some money on it.

      If we have any doubts that Zvezda will last through to 2028 (when Axium’s station will supposedly be ready to undock from ISS and about when these other three stations plan to start coming online), then we should probably start thinking about (metaphorically) dusting off the ICM and tearing off the (metaphorical and actual) shrink-wrap fairly soon.

      And don’t even get me started on what Russian military action in Ukraine could do to our ISS partnership with Russia.

      If Zvezda dies, and/or Russia becomes unpartnerable, and replacement modules aren’t ready to fly, operations on the ISS could cease. That could kill Axium’s station building, as well as cut the legs out from under the transportation services that the new space stations will need rolling in order to function.