{"id":13994,"date":"2018-02-12T20:27:35","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T12:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/trump-administration-supports-transition-to-commercially-focused-space-station\/"},"modified":"2018-02-12T20:27:35","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T12:27:35","slug":"trump-administration-supports-transition-to-commercially-focused-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/trump-administration-supports-transition-to-commercially-focused-space-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration supports transition to commercially-focused space station"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
File photo of the International Space Station from the final space shuttle mission in 2011. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Trump administration is proposing to end direct government support of the International Space Station in 2025, but plans to include $150 million in NASA\u2019s fiscal 2019 budget, to be unveiled Monday<\/span><\/span>, to begin work on transitioning, if possible, to a more commercially focused outpost, according to an internal NASA review.<\/p>\n

The idea is to ensure a seamless transition from government-funded ISS operations to an outpost using new components, or even elements of the current space station, that would be operated as a base for private sector innovation, international cooperation and NASA experiments and research needed for eventual flights back to the moon and on to Mars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision to end direct federal support for the ISS in 2025 does not imply that the platform itself will be deorbited at that time \u2014 it is possible that industry could continue to operate certain elements or capabilities of the ISS as part of a future commercial platform,\u201d according to a draft summary of NASA\u2019s ISS Transition Report required by Congress in the agency\u2019s 2017 Authorization Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cNASA will expand international and commercial partnerships over the next seven years in order to ensure continued human access to and presence in low Earth orbit,\u201d said the summary, obtained by CBS News. It was earlier outlined by the Verge and The Washington Post.<\/p>\n

To support and facilitate a transition to a commercially-focused platform in the mid 2020s, one in which NASA could be one of several users, \u201cthe administration is proposing to end direct federal support for the ISS in 2025 under the current NASA-directed operating model.\u201d<\/p>\n

The administration is requesting $150 million in fiscal 2019, with increasing amounts in downstream years, \u201cto enable the development and maturation of commercial entities and capabilities which will ensure that commercial successors to the ISS \u2014 potentially including elements of the ISS \u2014 are operational when they are needed,\u201d the draft said.<\/p>\n

The goal is to \u201cmaintain seamless access to a human platform in LEO that meets NASA\u2019s and the nation\u2019s goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The space station currently is authorized through 2024 and while many at NASA believe the outpost\u2019s lifetime could be extended at least another four years to 2028, no such decisions have been made by the United States and its international partners \u2014 Russia, the European Space Agency, Canada and Japan.<\/p>\n

And even if extending the station\u2019s life to 2028 is politically viable, additional studies would be required to determine if its components and modules, some of which will be more than 30 years old by then, remain structurally sound.<\/p>\n

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A view of the International Space Station\u2019s power-generating solar arrays taken by an astronaut in January 2017. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cNobody that I\u2019ve heard is talking about operating beyond 2028,\u201d said John Logsdon, a noted space historian, author and analyst who had not yet reviewed the draft report. \u201cSo we\u2019re only talking about three years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s plan, he said, may be \u201cto find a way in those three years to have the private sector use enough of the station to see whether there\u2019s a justification for a post-station LEO (low-Earth orbit) platform that would be commercial.\u201d<\/p>\n

But any transition to a more private-sector operation using any part of the International Space Station would be difficult given the lab\u2019s design.<\/p>\n

NASA currently spends about $3 billion a year on station operations and support, maintaining the U.S. segment of the outpost, supplying spare parts and other critical cargo and buying seats aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry U.S., European, Canadian and Japanese astronauts to and from the outpost.<\/p>\n

NASA also supplies the lion\u2019s share of the station\u2019s electrical power through four huge sets of solar arrays and operates the four massive gyroscopes used to maintain the station\u2019s orientation as required without using rocket thrusters.<\/p>\n

But the gyros are not able to change the station\u2019s altitude and the U.S. segment does not include any thrusters or fuel storage tanks.<\/p>\n

Propulsion is provided by the Russians, who deliver a steady supply of rocket fuel aboard Progress supply ships. Without periodic reboost maneuvers, using Russian propellant and thrusters, the station would eventually fall out of orbit due to friction with trace particles in the extreme upper atmosphere.<\/p>\n

NASA astronauts are not able to operate the station\u2019s propulsion system and Russian cosmonauts are unable to operate NASA\u2019s power systems or the control moment gyroscopes. Both nations are required for the space station to function with any degree of safety using separate flight control centers.<\/p>\n

Any use of the station as a more commercially focused research platform would require Russian cooperation, and it\u2019s far from clear the Russians would be willing to extend operations beyond 2024 in any case.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, the idea of a fully commercially operated facility using the ISS is a pipe dream,\u201d Logsdon said in a telephone interview Sunday<\/span><\/span>. \u201cIt\u2019s too big, anyway. And we don\u2019t know what the Russians will or won\u2019t do. They\u2019ve been talking about pulling some of their modules (off) and going off on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean NASA can\u2019t \u201ccontinue to put enough money in to allow the private sector a few more years to try to see if they can turn a profit doing things at the station,\u201d Logsdon said. \u201cThere are people, knowledgable about the station, who think there could be some form of profit-making operation using some portion of the facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bigelow Aerospace, for example, has talked about attaching a huge inflatable module to the space station that could be used by NASA or private industry. A smaller Bigelow inflatable is currently attached to the lab as a test article.<\/p>\n

And NASA already relies on commercial providers \u2014 SpaceX and Orbital ATK \u2014 to launch and deliver cargo to the space station and plans to use commercially developed spacecraft built by SpaceX and Boeing to ferry astronauts to and from the outpost starting next year.<\/p>\n

The draft transition proposal states that a platform of some sort in low-Earth orbit is needed for medical research to learn more about the long-term medical impacts of the space environment and to develop the life support and other critical systems needed for eventual long-term stays on the moon or even longer flights to Mars.<\/p>\n

The ISS also serves to reinforce NASA leadership on the high frontier, which the Trump administration says it wants to encourage and extend. But the clear goal is a more public-private partnership requiring less government funding.<\/p>\n

Since the project was first mentioned in President Reagan\u2019s 1984 State of the Union address, NASA and its partners have spent more than $100 billion designing, redesigning, building and maintaining the current space station. Assembly began in 1998 and the station has been continuously staffed by rotating astronaut-cosmonaut crews since October 2000.<\/p>\n

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, made it clear last week that he opposes any plan to terminate the International Space Station as long as it can be productively operated.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a fiscal conservative, you know one of the dumbest things you can do (is) canceling a program after billions of investment when there is serious usable life ahead,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have invested massively in the ISS. It has produced enormous benefits to the United States and to the world, and we should use that asset as long as it is technologically feasible and cost effective to do so.<\/p>\n

Cruz said that as long as he is chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee\u2019s Space, Science and Competitiveness Subcommittee, \u201cthe ISS will continue to have strong and bipartisan support in the United States Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017 directed NASA \u201cto develop a plan to transition ISS from the current regime that relies heavily on NASA sponsorship to a regime where NASA could be one of many customers of a LEO non-governmental human space flight enterprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

A variety of options have been considered, ranging from continuing normal operations through 2024, de-orbiting all or part of the station and transitioning to a public-private partnership with NASA as one of many customers. The transition draft says NASA will continue to consult with its international partners \u201cto ensure consensus.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration recognizes the benefits of international cooperation in space, the document says, and is willing to expand collaboration with U.S. allies \u201cwhile working with a broader range of partners at all levels of capability.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION File photo of the International Space Station from the final space shuttle mission in 2011. Credit: NASA The Trump administration is proposing to end direct government support of the International Space Station in 2025, but plans to include $150 million in NASA\u2019s fiscal 2019 budget, to be unveiled Monday, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[291,1545,717,1883],"class_list":["post-13994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-commercial-space","tag-human-spaceflight","tag-international-space-station","tag-nasa-budget"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13994"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}