HOW THE ISS CAN SURVIVE IN THE FUTURE
PRIVATE MISSIONS COULD GENERATE REVENUE WITH ADVERTISING, BRANDING AND ENTERTAINMENT
Igot my lust for travel and adventure from my mother. She was born the seventh of eight children to a poor Italian immigrant family in East Boston. Her desire to see the world motivated her to take the civil service exam and travel the world with the Department of Defense, and then to work for NASA. My father imbued in me the notion that anything is possible with hard work and focus. He left Spain after meeting my mother while a Spanish army infantry officer. When they moved to the U.S., he spoke no English and had no marketable skill for the U.S. But my father learned English, went to trade school, worked as an electrician, earned a B.S. in electrical engineering at night school and slowly took positions of everincreasing responsibility.
Growing up, I had dreams of being an astronaut. My best friend and I played “rocket ship” in the closet of my bedroom, whose interior had been mocked up to look like some kind of space vehicle. My mom — who worked for a NASA education office — brought home brochures about the space program called NASA Facts. The day we listened to the decent of Eagle to the lunar surface was transformational. And with the lessons learned from both of my parents, I achieved those dreams as a four-time astronaut. I look forward to returning to the International Space Station this year, not as a NASA employee, but as the commander of the first Axiom Space mission.
As we look to the next chapter in human spaceflight, where private citizens increasingly join government astronauts as spacefarers, we must avoid a gap in access to low Earth orbit. The International Space State, which some people view as an outdated relic, still has a role to play. Axiom, where I serve as a vice president, is developing a commercial space station that will start attached to the ISS.
Having spent seven months on the ISS as the commander of
Expedition 14, I can attest that the station a singular achievement in human history — an incredibly complex engineering project made even more challenging by its international proprietorship of five agencies and 15 countries. Starting in 1998, it was assembled, piece by piece while moving over 17,000 miles per hour hundreds of miles above Earth. Many of these pieces had never been in the same country, let alone the same room. They were designed and built around the globe by people speaking different languages, using different alphabets and even different measurement systems. Today it is a fully operational microgravity and space environment laboratory. It has been continuously inhabited for 21 years and well over 3,000 experiments have been performed on board, many of which have had profound impacts on life on Earth.
But, as magnificent as it is, it’s a machine, and one day it will wear out. None of those five agencies or 15 countries have made any serious indication of their intention to build a followon government platform. The partnership with Russia, in particular, is strained. Yet many have indicated their strong desire to continue to send their astronauts to low Earth orbit to continue the important human research, physical science investigations and technology development and demonstration that can only be accomplished in a sustained microgravity environment. Technology for travel to more distant parts of space is also tested in low Earth orbit.
So, what’s the solution? A commercial space station. Preferably more than one, where government space agencies are but one of many consumers of microgravity services.
In 2005, NASA very wisely invested in commercial cargo, and later, crew transportation capabilities. Today two companies — perhaps soon to be three — are providing robust and reliable transportation of tons of supplies and experiment material to the ISS. Similarly, SpaceX has demonstrated safe, reliable and cost-effective crew transportation to the orbital outpost, with Boeing expected to come online soon. These capabilities will no doubt outlast the ISS, and will be ready to serve commercial destinations. But, will those destinations be ready when the ISS is retired?
NASA’s commercial low Earth orbit development program, including private astronaut missions, is an attempt to mirror its commercial cargo and crew investment, though smaller in scale.
“We did experience a gap in our transportation system when we retired the shuttle that we do not wish to repeat with our U.S. human presence in low Earth orbit,” Robyn Gatens, NASA’s director for the International Space Station, told a congressional subcommittee in September last year.
But commercial destinations must be, by their very nature, profitable. In order to grow a viable economy in low Earth orbit, lines of business that
NASA — as a government agency — has previously appropriately ignored must now be considered. For example, as the Houston Chronicle recently reported, Axiom is working with a U.K. company called Space Entertainment Enterprise that is in production on a Tom Cruise movie to be filmed in space. Axiom will build an inflatable entertainment arena and content studio to attach to the space station.
While it is the role of governments to expand new frontiers and to then step aside in favor of commercial entrepreneurs, without a profit incentive, the merchants will stay home. Gatens is right. NASA can ill afford a gap in access to a low Earth orbit platform; it must expand its horizons and allow private astronaut missions to plumb the gamut of revenue generating opportunities — including advertisement, brand placement and even entertainment. The recent filming of a movie by the Russians aboard the station is an early example of what is to come. While I understand selling access to the International Space Station is anathema to many, it is an imperative step toward building the demand that commercial platform providers need to close their business case. Otherwise the enterprise will fail and our access to low Earth orbit, and all the opportunities to be found there, will end with it.
My mother passed before the first iSS module launched, and my father died while I was in training for Expedition 14. The concept of a commercial space station was probably outside their grasp. But to their parents and others of the previous generation, commercial air travel was incomprehensible. Who’s to say that commercial human spaceflight won’t be as routine a generation from now?
López-Alegría is a four-time astronaut and recent inductee to the U.S. Astronaut Hall of fame. He holds NASA records for the most extravehicular activities (EVA) or “space walks” (10) and cumulative EVA time (67 hours 40 minutes). He is also the director of business development at Axiom Space, and will serve as mission commander for Axiom Space’s Ax-1 orbital flight set for Feb. 28.