Your Space Station Vacation Just Got More Expensive
NASA Updates Pricing Policy to Full Value for Commercial Activities on Space Station
“In June 2019, NASA first released its commercial marketing pricing policy to establish subsidized pricing to stimulate and enable the use of resources on the space station. NASA anticipated revisiting the pricing policy periodically and adjusting prices as market forces dictated in response to interest, market growth, and competition (reference NID 8600.121). The pricing policy from June 2019 did not reflect full reimbursement for the value of NASA resources; it was intended to stimulate the market and was planned to be adjusted. Based on discussions with stakeholders, the current market growth, and in anticipation of future commercial entities capable of providing similar services, the agency has updated the Commercial Use Activities pricing policy effective immediately.”
Keith’s note: NASA has done a stealth increase on the cost of making commercial use of the ISS. This is what it cost on 13 July 2019. And this is what it costs now.
ISS expedition crew member time used to cost $17,500/hr. Now it costs $130,000/hr. Upmass (passive cargo) used to cost $3,000/Kg – now it costs $20,000/kg. The earlier rate chart included fees for private astronaut missions which cost $11,250 per day for life suport/toilet and crew suplies (and food) at $22,500 per person per day. The basic cost (without internet or power) was $33,750/day per person. NASA has yet to post a revised rate chart for private visitors but since everything else has increased by a factor of approximately 7, that daily cost will probably increase to around $236,250 per day.
– NASA Announces A Space Station Pricing Plan, earlier post
– OIG Announces Review Of NASA’s LEO Commercialization Activities, earlier post
– SpaceX Announces First Wholly Civilian Crewed Space Mission, earlier post
– ISS Commercialization Is Here: Reality Shows and Perfume Ads, earlier post
– Trying To Figure Out The Axiom Team’s NASA Agreements (Updated), earlier post
– Expanding The ISS For Customers That No One Can Identify, earlier post
So the only conclusion to draw is that NASA does it want any further human commercialisation of the ISS.
A further conclusion might be that they will use future lack of such use as an argument for earlier than anticipated phase-out of the station.
Cheers
Neil
Does it make sense to charge $3K/kg when it costs NASA $71,800/kg (CRS-2 average cost)?
Perhaps, if there isn’t much demand, and they are trying to fill rack space, but is there any shortage of experiments awaiting travel to the ISS? At $20K/kg, they are still subsidizing most of the cost.
Yea. There’s something missing gin the rationale for their cost calculations ….
NASA might think they will get much more money, not seeing that this will lower both use and revenues.
This isn’t just a NASA decision. They got instructions from Congress to stop subsidizing commercial work on ISS which involved marketing, advertising, or entertainment. It sounds like they implemented that in a poor way, impacted more legitimate commercial users heavily and did so more or less by surprise. But it wasn’t as if the decision to stop subsidizing commercial work was an all-NASA decision.
Perhaps this will drive efforts for a separate, commercial space station.
$236,250 per visitor per day is ~ $2M for an eight day stay, which is less than 4% of the $55M/seat Axiom Space-1 flight. At $8M for the four members, that still isn’t much for the reported in-kind payment for a seat on Soyuz MS-18. (We expect to know more about that at the end of next week.)
$20,000/kg for passive upmass is only 28% of the $71,800/kg CRS-2 average cost.
https://arstechnica.com/sci…
It’s the most effective way to kill interest and ambition for commercialization with NASA. Wonder if a major aerospace player has announcement for a new space station coming out soon. Wonder if any federal subsidizes or tax credits for construction, operations and product developed in space are in works.?