Let us try to be real about space exploration.
I was reading a story at SPACE.com, written by Leonard David
“After ISS: The private space station era is dawning.” Space enthusiasts seem to be very optimistic to the point of being unrealistic. ISS (International Space Station)
They also seem to resort to tactics I dislike promoting their pet projects.
The story quoted Jeffrey Manber, President, International and Space Stations for Voyager Space, saying “there is bi-partisan awareness, that there can be no space station gap, not with China’s very capable Tiangong already in orbit with advanced research and an international list of customers." This is a red herring; China will not be able to host many foreign researchers and if they did, they are unlikely to be from Europe or the US or Japan. Research on space stations is not revolutionary and is of minimal commercial benefit. Yes, there is some groundbreaking and commercially beneficial activity but mostly it is about building a core capability for human space travel and habitation. A break in that work would not be a huge setback it would just be a political/diplomatic embarrassment. China has a station and nobody else does. NASA has been there before, it was uncomfortable. Russia had a station after Skylab went down. NASA had to rely on Russia to launch our astronauts to ISS. Uncomfortable but not a crisis.
If the ISS is retired on schedule, there will be a gap and almost no amount of money could eliminate the gap unless you fund more extensions to the ISS life.
The story quoted Scott Pace, director of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, saying “The U.S. has said it intends to operate the ISS to 2030, with Europe, Japan, and Canada in agreement, meanwhile, Russia has stated it would commit only to 2028 and that it intends to put in place a separate Russian station.”
We are already halfway through 2024. None of the parties that are working on an ISS replacement are going to get a working station in orbit before 2030 so if ISS is retired on time there will be a gap. In my mind not a big problem, better to get it right than to throw a bunch of money at to and rush to make an artificial deadline.
There is one space station that might be on track to be functional before 2030. It is not an ISS replacement, it has a different role. That Station is the Lunar Gateway. I will be watching to see how that plays out. Given typical delays and NASA programmatics, I doubt it will be ready in 2030 and the way things go, it might even get cancelled.
TEK
