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February 10, 2020 02:39 am

NASA Moves Forward With International Space Station 'Hotel'

Last June NASA announced plans to host visitors on the International Space Station for just $35,000 a day. "And now we know where they'll be sleeping," reports the Motley Fool:Earlier this week, NASA announced that it has selected Axiom Space to build "at least one habitable commercial module to be attached to the International Space Station...." In this particular demonstration project, Axiom will deliver to the ISS an "element" which "will attach to the space station's Node 2 forward port," giving access to the rest of the space station, and also a place for weary private astronauts to lay their heads at night... "Developing commercial destinations in low-Earth orbit" is a priority for NASA, explains the agency -- whether those destinations are attached to the ISS or not... The "habitable commercial module" that Axiom is building will facilitate onboarding private businesses to do work on the ISS, creating potential new revenue streams to subsidize NASA's more adventurous endeavors farther out from Low Earth Orbit. With NASA's budget today stuck below where it was in 1972 -- the year of America's last crewed mission to the moon -- the agency's going to need significant new funding to perform planned missions to Mars and beyond in future years. If Congress won't pony up additional cash, therefore, the agency may hope to raise cash from private industry... NASA says it "also plans to issue a final opportunity to partner with the agency in the development of a free-flying, independent commercial destination" at some point in the future. This latter opportunity should be of particular interest to both Axiom and Bigelow -- which, like Axiom, has expressed interest in building its own space stations independent of the ISS. "If Axiom succeeds in building and operating a commercial space station," writes Axios, "it will mark a turning point for how space is used and who has access to it..." They also report that Axiom expects to procure flights to the ISS from both SpaceX and Boeing. And when the International Space Station reaches its end-of-life, "Axiom plans to remove its modules and become a free-standing station that can be accessed by the company's customers."

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