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…
Before anyone brings these up:
- raising the orbit would take a crazy amount of Delta V and is not feasible
- detaching the Russian segment is impossible because of cold welding and all the external connections
- no one commercial wants it because of the insane maintenance work and cost
The commercial replacements could each get multiple articles devoted to them. I feel good about Vast and Axiom beating the ISS deorbit deadline.
I feel good about Vast and Axiom beating the ISS deorbit deadline.
Vast yes, Axiom maybe. I’d give Voyager/Nanoracks a “maybe” as well.
I still think there’s a decent chance that there will be a gap in continuous 30-year streak of crewed U.S. spaceflight. Not that it matters in the long-term, but I suspect it’s a streak which China won’t cede to any other country if they can help it.
Voyager and Blue are such unknowns to me. I haven’t seen hardware, so I’m doubtful.
