The International Space Station cost $100 billion and included 42 different assembly flights. The International Space Station will shut down after two decades in space, as NASA focuses on sending humans back to the moon.
NASA has awarded $400 million to fund private replacements for the station's hardware, and they plan to keep it functioning as long as possible. They think it will save them $1 billion a year.
What happens after that? NASA will guide the ISS into the atmosphere when these stations are ready. At that point, anyone hoping to work in space will have to choose between several different outposts. The new stations will be used to strengthen national space programs, but also as lucrative business ventures. "Commercial companies have the ability now to do this, and so we don't want to compete with that," said the director of the ISS. The government and NASA can use the resources of the commercial companies to do more things in deep space.
As many as four space stations could be launched by private companies over the next decade, according to a report. The living quarters of the Gateway space station will be carried on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that is scheduled to launch in four years.
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Russia and India are planning to launch their own space stations, as well as China's, which is currently under construction. Russia may leave the space station as soon as 2025, the same year its space agency plans to launch a $5 billion space station. The European Space Agency, which represents 22 different European countries, is training its astronauts for future missions.
ompetition for customers could get even more intense as space stations are launched by China, Russia, and India.
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Recode believes that private sector customers will choose from competing space stations, and even have to consider the political consequences of favoring one nation's space station over another. In the best of scenarios, the new stations will learn from each other and expand scientific knowledge. They will make global politics a bigger part of space, which could impact what happens on Earth and how humans explore the moon and Mars.
