Trump administration plans privatization of the ISS American segment after 2024

International Space Station with docked Soyuz (left) and Atlantis (right) spacecraft, 2011

For all the existence of the International Space Station, the United States has invested about $ 100 billion in it. This is the amount spent on launching, operating and supporting the orbital station. But the life of the ISS is not endless, so now the Americans are considering the possibility of ending the financing of the project after 2024.

What will happen next with the American segment is not yet clear. Perhaps, access to it will be obtained by private companies, which will be able to dispose of the former state property at their discretion. Unidentified individuals handed NASA's internal document to The Washington Post , which sheds light on Trump's administration plans to privatize the ISS.

“The decision to stop direct federal funding of the ISS by 2025 does not mean that the platform itself will go out of orbit by this point,” the document explains. “It is possible that the industry will be able to continue to use some of the elements or capabilities of the ISS as part of a future commercial platform.” In the next seven years, NASA plans to "expand international and commercial cooperation to ensure that it can continue to have human access and presence in low Earth orbit."

The document that has appeared in the press is a request for funding new administration plans. In fiscal 2019, she plans to receive from the budget $ 150 million for the implementation of the plan to privatize the ISS and “expand international and commercial cooperation”. This money will be spent on maintaining the elements of the ISS in working condition, so that everything works fine by the time when this infrastructure is needed by commercial partners. $ 150 million is an order of magnitude less than NASA is currently spending on station maintenance.

It should be noted that the decision of NASA to stop funding the ISS has provoked sharp criticism from some American politicians. For example, Republican senator Ted Cruz said last week that this decision "proved to be inconsistent as Bigfoot." According to him, the decision was made under the influence of "stupid" people working in the Administrative and Budgetary Administration: "As a financial conservative, you know that one of the dumbest things you can do is cancel the program after billions of investments in it, when it is still suitable for further work, ”said Cruz.

The decision to stop funding after 2024 is not final. NASA is also considering an option to extend the operation and funding of the station until 2028.

The International Space Station is one of the most expensive scientific projects in the history of mankind. Many experts question the privatization option, because the station was built for scientific purposes and space exploration, and not for profit. So its commercialization looks blasphemous in some sense. But this is just one of the options for how to extend the life of the station, which has been in space since 1998.

Experts also note that the ISS privatization plan will not be easy to agree with NASA's foreign partners, since it generally contradicts international agreements that the US space agency has concluded. Americans need to remember that this is not a national, but an international station, so that any actions can be carried out only with the permission of other project participants: these are Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, France, Switzerland, Sweden.

The general contractor of Boeing, against which NASA allocates from $ 3 billion to $ 4 billion annually for the maintenance of the station, also comes out against the termination of funding and privatization of the station. The space station’s program manager, Mark Malkin (Mark Mulqueen), issued a statement saying that “the transfer of a rare national asset to commercial companies before the private sector is ready to support it could have disastrous consequences for American leadership in space and for the chances of creating private space industry companies. "

This is not the first step by NASA and the US administration to encourage private space companies. As it is known, private companies SpaceX and Orbital ATK are already delivering cargo to the ISS, and soon astronauts will also be delivered there. But the new document from NASA does not say how private owners will operate the ISS and which companies will have the opportunity to participate in the privatization of the station.