Meanwhile the Tiangong space station began construction in 2021 and has been continuously crewed since June 2022. It currently has capacity for six people, and via UNOOSA-organized cooperation has plans to host experiments from 17 countries including Belgium, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Spain. The first non-Chinese person to travel there will likely be from Pakistan. (The US would be welcome too but Congress currently prohibits NASA from participating.)
Fucking hell we’re really just going to let the rich control our access to space now aren’t we?
No more global cooperation of these communities, it’s a really sad way to see this all pan out.
We might as well dissolve NASA and just give what’s left of their puny budget to SpaceX that already has like 20x the funding. Then Elon Musk can personally control every future craft the US wants to launch! Yayyyyyy…
NASA should use their brainpower, effort, and money on hard problems, like planetary science and exploration. They’ve literally always contracted out hardware. At this point, industry is mature enough that it makes no sense for NASA to make, for example, a medium lift rocket or LEO satellite bus. It looks like they’re now getting to that point with moon landers and space stations.
Also, for what it’s worth, SpaceX didn’t get a contract for space station studies or hardware, just an unfunded space act agreement.