A couple of days ago, NASA called a press conference at which it announced it was making the International Space Station completely open to business. Previously, commercial organizations were allowed to use the ISS exclusively for scientific purposes, for example, for various research experiments. The agency has now allowed private businesses to engage in lucrative business in low Earth orbit.
What are the ISS flight rules for private companies?
To support commercial activity on the ISS, the agency is going to allocate annually up to 5 percent of the budget, which it spends on maintaining the station (and this amounts to about 3-4 billion dollars a year). Before manned missions to the ISS, NASA will train private traders as real astronauts. It should also be clarified that NASA is not going to let anyone and anybody into the station, so it announced a list of rules and restrictions.
Thus, during the year only 175 kilograms of commercial cargo will be allowed to be delivered to the station, while only 90 hours of station working time will be allocated annually for commercial activity on board the ISS. In addition, private manned missions to the station will only be allowed twice a year, and the duration of private manned missions on board these missions should not exceed 30 days. According to the program of private flights to the ISS, it will be able to visit up to 12 people a year.
How much is a day on the ISS?
The US space agency has also published a price list that lists prices for various commercial activities aboard the space station. So, within the framework of unmanned missions to the ISS, the cost of delivering a kilogram of cargo into orbit will be $ 3,000. Another $ 3,000 per kilogram will have to be paid to dispose of it. If the client wants to return the cargo back to Earth, it will cost an additional $ 6,000 per kilogram.
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In the framework of manned missions, prices will be an order of magnitude higher. For example, the cost of using the toilet and life support systems by one person per day would be $ 11,250. You will have to pay $ 22,500 a day for such things as food, water, air, medical drugs, and so on, necessary for life on the ISS. You will even have to pay for electricity - $ 42 per 1 kWh. According to NASA CFO Jeff DeWitt, a total of a day aboard the ISS for one person will cost about $ 35,000, that is, over a million dollars per person for a 30-day visit.
It should also be added that the price list does not include the cost of space launch services for these unmanned and manned missions. On this issue, business will have to negotiate with companies such as SpaceX and Boeing, since only they from private American space companies will potentially be able to deliver people to the ISS. However, the manned spacecraft they are developing are not yet ready.
You can also fly to the ISS on the Soyuz. It will cost over $ 80 million per seat - this is the price Roscosmos exposes for NASA. But the Americans will soon expect to reduce the cost of flights: a seat on board the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon will cost "only" $ 58 million (although it is not known whether the price will remain the same for private astronauts).
Commercial module on the ISS
NASA wants private companies to start developing technologies for the construction of space dwellings on the ISS, so it is giving commercial organizations access to the Harmony Module's front docking station. Back in 2017, it was reported that they were going to use the docking gateway of the Tranquility module for private space missions, but it was exclusively about cargo missions.
Nikolay Khizhnyak