ISS after completion



As I understand it, NASA is planning on "retiring" the ISS at the end
of its nominal planned lifetime of ten years past its completion date
of 2010, that is, in 2020. The ISS will be somehow retired and moved
off NASA's books. But they are still going to need it around to serve
as a shipyard/staging area for expeditions to The Moon or Mars. I
suspect something like a private consortium will be encouraged to
purchase it, or a "Port Authority" will be formed to manage it. Then,
NASA will sign on as something like an anchor tenant, to be able to
use it as such a shipyard/staging platform.
This has several consequences. For one thing, a quasi private
organization will be able to actively go after profit making
activities that NASA can't go after - space resort tourists and so on,
so that NASA is only paying a couple of hundred million per year as a
tenant in this facility, rather than paying the entire one and a half
or two billion that it currently is costing them. The assumption is
that if the ISS is being run by a private consortium, or a quasi-
private "Port Authority", the managing organization will be able to
make up the difference in the cost of maintaining the ISS with income
generated by its various private income generating activities.
This brings up questions about what possible other income generating
activities those might be, and what income can be expected to be
generated. And what activities are mutually exclusive?

Bigelow has announced he will charge 15 million dollars for a 4 week
stay for a single tourist, or lease a 300 cubic meter module for 88
million per year. This does not include transportation, or, I'm
assuming, spacewalks. If we assume that the ISS might accommodate 6
guests per week, that might translate into 78 tourists per year, for a
total income of 1 Billion, 170 million dollars.
But those tourists are going to want an orbit that is a high
inclination orbit, to go over their home country. A space shipyard
for Moon and Mars expeditions will want a much lower orbit, if not
strictly equatorial.

Other income producing concepts include microgravity research, but
that requires a vibration free environment. Including guests and a
shipyard on a space station provides excessive amounts of bouncing and
vibration, so I don't see those uses as being compatible. Is there a
good option for a "free flyer" module to accompany the ISS and be used
for research? That essentially requires a separate spacecraft, power
supplies and all, to be developed, that can dock with ISS, undock,
drift along on its own for a while, and then either be retrieved, or
accelerate on its own to dock again with the ISS.

What options are out there for money making projects for a privately
operated ISS?
Harmon

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