
Who's Going to Buy the International Space Station? - shahocean
https://www.wired.com/story/whos-going-to-buy-the-international-space-station
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avmich
It's interesting to read about such prospects, but quite a few questions here
are left aside.

Why 3-4 billions upkeep a year? Good analysis would probably break this into
smaller chunks, like transportation - crew and cargo, communications - some
satellite links as well as ISS-Earth ones, ground control for systems - keep
working existing ones, add and replace what's necessary, space defense - from
meteoroids, management for utilization - who when uses what how... what else?

Is splitting the station better than making specialized - perhaps free-
floating - units in addition to what's already there? In this sense current
ISS serves as an extendable platform to future manufacturing, assembling,
experimental, tourist, refueling and other modules, but the one which is
already "flight proven", the core of infrastructure. ISS itself started
similarly with core modules which ensured minimum of functions allowing it to
grow from that.

