
NASA plans to hand over the ISS to a private corporation - Bloohy
https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/19/nasa-to-hand-over-iss-to-private-companies/
======
sbuttgereit
" _...but it 's going to be tough renting out the station or selling it for
how much it's actually worth._"

Sigh. In monetary terms, it would be precisely worth as much as the price at
which it clears the market[1]. The idea that somehow the value of the space
station has a monetary value that isn't tied to the price at which the market
clears is incorrect.

Remember... the cost of station is not what it is worth, that's simply the
cost.

[1] Yes, there can be fraud or disparities of information between the parties
in the transaction that can cause the selling price to not be properly
reflective of the worth of the property in exchange. But the overall tendency
of market pricing is to draw the monetary price to the value of the
property.... and in my experience the exact opposite of the article's point
tends to be true... the seller almost always knows more about the property
sold than the buyer, thus the buyer is more likely to _overpay_ for the
property rather than the seller getting too little.

~~~
stouset
While this is almost tautologically true for many things (guns, butter), I'm
not convinced it holds for everything.

The market doesn't value everything optimally, especially when you consider
present vs. future value. The market has done a terrible job of pricing in the
future costs of climate change, for instance. It's improving, but slowly and
(seemingly only) with significant intervention (for instance, carbon credits).

Is the market going to properly value future scientific gains from ongoing
operation of the ISS? Would the market have paid for the LHC? For NASA, 50
years ago? Even if you believe the ongoing science collected is of minimal
value, what about the effects of inspiration for kids to enter STEM fields?

I'm not saying the ISS is worth it. I'm only saying I don't believe your
thesis that "market value" is fundamentally equal to "value to society". It
may be a good approximation in many, or even the majority of cases. But acting
like it's the only correct way to value something is, I think, foolish. One of
the benefits of government is to get everyone to chip into large-scale
projects that (hopefully) benefit all, but are difficult to monetize. A
network of roadways, research into science and medicine, and general education
all come to mind.

~~~
hackuser
> The market doesn't value everything optimally

Examples: My time, the skills of guys who chase balls around in sneakers, the
skills of scientists who develop the Theory of Relativity, the Theory itself,
my child's education, or my child.

~~~
adventured
> the skills of guys who chase balls around in sneakers

That's a poor example and you're wrong. A very, very, very large, consistent,
long duration market says that they're worth a lot.

Quality entertainment can be worth a vast amount of money, and it has a very
real/tangible value to it. Whether you personally think a specific
entertainment is quality is purely subjective. What's not remotely that
subjective, is the scale of the market, its historical record, and the
reasonable future forecasts for its business prospects.

~~~
hackuser
> A very, very, very large, consistent, long duration market says that they're
> worth a lot

I agree with that. My point and the point of the GP is that the market isn't
good at valuing some things.

The 'market' is just a tool, a technology, not a God or scripture. Any tool
works well for some tasks and less well for others. Also, the concept 'free
market' is a theoretical abstraction that doesn't exist in reality; the NBA,
for example, operates a monopoly in a market distorted heavily by law,
regulations, a collective bargaining agreement, and market power.

As someone said, _Theory is a useful servant but a bad master, liable to
produce orthodox defenders of every variety of the faith._ [1]

[1] Harry Guntrip, as far as I know

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hoorayimhelping
Misleading as hell headline. NASA would rather hand over the ISS to a private
corporation than deorbit it.

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Vexs
I guess that's significantly better than just de-orbiting the thing.

Wonder who would be interested in such a thing, google and spaceX are really
the only two that come to mind, and I honestly can't come up with much of a
reason for google to buy it.

~~~
jads
That's assuming NASA is planning to sell it. What if they simply gave it to
Google or SpaceX? Perhaps a deal could be made to exchange the ISS for a few
launches.

~~~
zardo
The cost of operating would be... astronomical. They would have to subsidize
it's operation, and convince Russia and the minor international partners to go
along with it.

~~~
bpicolo
What's the cost to just keep it in orbit untouched for decades?

~~~
zardo
It needs to be reboosted a couple times per year. You could cut a lot of
ground crew, but the power and thermal control systems have to remain
operational. Telerobotics could replace astronauts for repair and maintenance.
Probably 200-300 million per year minimum.(decreasing as the cost to orbit
decreases)

~~~
criddell
> It needs to be reboosted a couple times per year.

Is there a elevation that would be a stable orbit? Why not just boost it to
that point?

~~~
snuxoll
To put it in a stable orbit maintained by gravity itself you'd need to put it
at a Lagrange Point, any of the Earth-Moon points aren't exactly LEO last I
checked.

~~~
dalke
The problem with LEO is the Earth's atmosphere, while tenuous, is enough to
deorbit.

Farther orbits are just fine. SNAP-10A, a Soviet nuclear reactor, is in a
1,300-kilometer orbit which won't decay for 4,000 years (estimated).

"Stable" is also very relative. The Earth has been in a stable orbit for a few
billion years, though it's not at a Lagrange point. A satellite in GEO has an
effectively unlimited orbital life.

~~~
dragonwriter
> SNAP-10A, a Soviet nuclear reactor

SNAP-10A is a _US_ nuclear reactor (the only US one launched, apparently),
though the Soviets have launched bunches (just not that one.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A)

~~~
dalke
Oh, my! Thank you for the correction. I didn't realize that we also put one
into orbit.

------
Alupis
How can NASA plan to hand over the ISS to a private (presumably US based)
corporation?

NASA only owns part of ISS... and without the other nation's modules, it's not
much of a functional space station.

~~~
dogma1138
NASA does provide most of the funding for the station, it also provided most
of the funding for the other modules including the Russian ones when they were
built, I'm not sure how the actual "ownership" is actually split.

Remember that the ISS started as "Freedom" NASA passed the designs of the
various modules to be built by other nations.

------
benmorris
Could the ISS be retrofit with boosters and sent to mars? Honest question... I
don't know the physics behind this. Would the structure hold enough fuel to be
able to slow down? We have shown people can live there for a year at a time.

~~~
vanattab
I have asked this same question before and the consensus response was that it
would be more expensive to try and retro fit the station then to build a new
interplanetary vehicle. For example the joints between the compartments are
probably not designed to have a rocket strapped to one compartment and fired
up.

~~~
phire
They already have a rocket strapped to one of the compartments, which they use
several times a year to reboost the ISS to higher altitudes. Getting to Mars
just requires boosting for longer.

------
roywiggins
What do the Russians think of this? The Zvezda module is Russian and provides
pretty much all the life support...

~~~
aschampion
Russia has been planning (or at least posturing) to split off their modules in
2020 anyway.

~~~
dogma1138
IIRC Russia is planning to launch a new space station it's going to be build
around a similar module to Zvezda which they already have mostly built they
aren't going to reuse the existing one.

------
Animats
NASA is lobbying for more funding again.

The ISS just isn't very useful. A list of the four most exciting experiments:
1) 3D printing in zero G, 2) Growing yeast in zero G, 3) Virtual reality to
provide an overlay for looking at the ground, and 4) a small teleoperated
robot.[1] Those are science fair projects with a big budget.

[1] [http://theweek.com/articles/446134/4-coolest-science-
experim...](http://theweek.com/articles/446134/4-coolest-science-experiments-
happening-international-space-station-right-now)

 _Space was the place. NASA 1962-1973_

~~~
binoct
I think that's underselling the ISS just a bit. It has been invaluable to our
knowledge of how humans (and other organisms) can survive in space/zero
gravity, as well as providing comparatively easy access for all manner of
research and commerce in LEO.

If you take the stance that space exploration/utilization isn't useful than
it's possible to argue for decommissioning the ISS as a waste of money.
However if you believe the ongoing exploration of space has significant value
to the world it's hard to say the ISS is/will only be useful for science fair
experiments.

~~~
jodrellblank
I think that's overselling the ISS a bit. Humans survive in zero gravity in
2000 - 2016 the same way they did in 1969.

At the risk of quoting all of this essay -
[http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm](http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm)
\- from 2005, when the shuttle still flew:

 _At the now-usual cost of around a billion dollars , STS-95 spent ten days
engaged in the following experiments: see how microgravity would affect
cockroach growth, Studied a "space rose" to see what kinds of essential oils
it would produce, at the suggestion of elementary school children, monitored
everyday objects such as soap, crayons, and string to see whether their
inertial mass would change in a weightless environment. Preliminary results
suggest that Newton was right. Monitored the growth of fish eggs and rice
plants in space, checked to see whether melatonin would make the crew sleepy
(it did not)_

 _Along with these craggy summits of basic research, the astronauts performed
a raft of prepared experiments in metallurgy, medicine, fluid mechanics,
embryology, and solar wind detection, all of which had one thing in common -
they were designed to minimize crew interaction, in most cases requiring the
astronauts to do little more than flip a switch (NASA policy requires that
experiments on manned missions involve the crew)_

 _Over the past three years, while the manned program has been firing
styrofoam out of cannons on the ground, unmanned NASA and ESA programs have
been putting landers on Titan, shooting chunks of metal into an inbound comet,
driving rovers around Mars and continuing to gather a variety of priceless
observations from the many active unmanned orbital telescopes and space probes
sprinkled through the Solar System. At the same time, the skeleton crew on the
ISS has been fixing toilets, debugging laptops, changing batteries, and
speaking to the occasional elementary school over ham radio_

 _The NASA obsession with elementary and middle school participation in space
flight is curious, and demonstrates how low a status actual in-flight science
has compared with orbital public relations. You are not likely to hear of CERN
physicists colliding tin atoms sent to them by a primary school in Toulouse,
or the Hubble space being turned around to point at waving middle schoolers on
a playground in Texas, yet even the minimal two-man ISS crew - one short of
the stated minimum needed to run the station - regularly takes time to talk to
schoolchildren_

 _This brings up a delicate point about justifying manned missions with
science. In order to make any straight-faced claims about being cost
effective, you have to cart an awful lot of science with you into orbit, which
in turns means you need to make the experiments as easy to operate as
possible. But if the experiments are all automated, you remove the rationale
for sending a manned mission in the first place. Apart from question-begging
experiments on the physiology of space flight, there is little you can do to
resolve this dilemma. In essence, each 'pure science' Shuttle science mission
consists of several dozen automated experiments alongside an enormous,
irrelevant, repeated experiment in keeping a group of primates alive and
healthy outside the atmosphere._

The science which was advanced, effective, worth doing, could have been done
more cheaply with unmanned launches of automated experiments and no ISS.

[..]

 _NASA dismisses such helpful suggetions as unworthy of its mission of
'exploration' [..] Of course, the great explorers of the 1500's did not sail
endlessly back and forth a hundred miles off the coast of Portugal, [..] The
interesting bits in space are all much further away, and we have not paid them
a visit since 1972. In fact, despite an ambitious "Vision for Space
Exploration", there seems to be no mandate or interest in pursuing this kind
of exploration, and all the significant deadlines are pushed comfortably past
the tenure of incumbent politicians._

 _The goal cannot be to have a safe space program - rocket science is going to
remain difficult and risky. But we have the right to demand that the space
program have some purpose beyond trying to keep its participants alive._

Your casual mention of 'ongoing exploration of space' is deceptive because
manned missions to the ISS aren't part of the ongoing exploration of space, by
virtue of them not doing any actual exploring.

~~~
binoct
I completely agree that at this point there is much less to 'explore' in LEO
than in the past. However there's a huge difference between spending 10 days
in orbit in the shuttle and dozens of man-years in zero-g with high radiation
and in an isolated environment.

Several of the goals for the ISS (at least from NASA's perspective) were based
on getting experience operating in space for extended periods of time, for
human health, for construction and engineering, and for operations over inter-
planetary length periods. Experience and knowledge on all those fronts is
needed to progress to further out, more isolated manned missions.

It's also not quite true in sentiment to say that humans survive in zero-g the
same way they did in 1969. None of the early space missions spent that much
time in zero-g, and we continue to learn a lot even after MIR and Skylab about
the lack of gravity and radiation on human health.

Even now there is new research coming out of the Apollo-era missions related
to human health. [1]

A similar situation exists exploring the depths of the ocean. You don't build
a submersible to go 7km down until you've got a good grasp of operating at
300m. Likewise it's still quite valuable to explore at 300m since there's a
lot we don't know (far more than LEO) even though we've been to 7km.

Putting humans into space at all is hugely difficult and expensive. There were
a lot of arguments in the scientific community against a manned mission to the
moon. And it's completely fair to consider the ROI and dollar/manpower value
spent on manned space (and the ISS in particular.) I personally think there is
huge value to manned space exploration beyond first-order economics, and from
that perspective I think the ISS has and continues to accomplish much more
than just random science projects. Especially given the political constraints
it operates under.

[1] [https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-
technology/2016/07/28/apol...](https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-
technology/2016/07/28/apollo-astronauts-experiencing-higher-rates-
cardiovascular-related-deaths/)

------
jimmcslim
In the 'world of the future' type books I read as a young lad of the 80's
there was much said about factories in orbit... Admittedly in hindsight these
books appear quite far-fetched about the pace of humanity's expansion into
space (titles by Usborne and Neil Ardley if you're playing along at home).

Has anything been learnt from ISS about zero-G manufacturing that might make
it a suitable platform for such by a private group?

Isn't the ISS supposed to be a staying waypoint for a mission to Mars?

~~~
gene-h
The big attraction of the ISS is laboratory where gravity can 'removed,' which
can be useful for understanding processes on Earth. This is valuable to some
companies. Right now a couple companies are currently running experiments on
the ISS.[0]

Proctor and Gamble wants to better understand why colloids(shampoo, liquid
detergents, medicine) separate, because that affects the shelf life of their
products. If they can turn off gravity, they can figure out what other
processes cause colloids to separate besides just gravity.

As far as manufacturing goes, there are not many products that are worth
making in space right now. You need a product that is more valuable per unit
mass than the cost per unit mass to launch something to LEO.

Now the interesting thing is that there have been commercial products
manufactured in space. Latex microspheres were produced on the space shuttle
and sold as calibration sources for microscopes.[1] Because microscope
calibration needs literally microscopic amounts of these microsphere, per unit
mass the product was very valuable.

[0]
[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/comm...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/commercial_research)
[1][http://www.panix.com/~kingdon/space/manuf.html](http://www.panix.com/~kingdon/space/manuf.html)
[1][http://www.panix.com/~kingdon/space/manuf.html](http://www.panix.com/~kingdon/space/manuf.html)

~~~
dogma1138
There are a few startup companies that are building solution for zero g
research as we speak.

SpacePharma is designing an end-to-end biological and chemical lab that can be
launched on cubesats to perform experiments in zero g at the fraction of the
cost and they aren't the only ones.

[http://www.geektime.com/2016/01/06/beyond-spacex-10-space-
co...](http://www.geektime.com/2016/01/06/beyond-spacex-10-space-companies-to-
watch-in-2016-2017/)

------
ChuckMcM
I sent an email to Elon Musk[1] suggesting that SpaceX should consider
attaching to the ISS and boosting it to the Earth-Moon L1 point. It could
station keep there more easily, it would be out of the radiation belts [2] and
while it would be "hard" to keep a presence on board (resupply would be a
bigger rocket), it could be a 'stocked cabin' that provides an 'out' in the
event of a problem going to or from the Moon.

[1] He never answered so its likely he never read it.

[2]
[https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/604657main_4-%20GER%20Stakeholders%...](https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/604657main_4-%20GER%20Stakeholders%20Workshop%20Earth-
Moon%20L1_L2%20Bobskill.pdf)

------
stuaxo
Is it entirely Nasas to hand over? Many parts were provided by other
countries.

~~~
gizmo686
I believe Russia designed some of their segments with the intention of
seperating and forming their own station.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orbital_Segment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orbital_Segment)

------
chiph
Maybe instead of selling it, they sell branding rights. "Welcome to Space
Station Pepsi"

------
hourislate
This may sound crazy but it has been my hope that Elon Musk would buy it and
send it to Mars to orbit the red planet. Just attach a couple of booster
rockets to many of the docking ports to slowly send there. Even if it took 5
years it would provide a habitat in Orbit for emergencies, etc.

If that is not feasible I believe that at the end of it's life we should try
to place it on the moons surface as intact as possible. It's parts could be
salvaged to build a base, etc. It makes sense to take anything that is end of
life in orbit around the earth and send it to the moons surface. Sort of like
a wrecking yard that future generations might use for parts if there is ever a
moon settlement.

~~~
krallja
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12323365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12323365)
for calculation of the incredible amount of energy that would require.

Remember that it took an entire Saturn V rocket to launch 3 people and a pair
of tiny spacecraft to the Moon, which is relatively close. The ISS weighs
420Mg; the Apollo LM+CSM pair weighed about a tenth of that.

Landing it on the Moon would also not be possible, because that would require
an engine capable of accelerating the ISS at approximately 1/6g.

------
krschultz
How about an auction where the proceeds are divided among the countries that
built & operated it proportional with their investment?

------
boznz
I would love to see the terms and conditions on that contract, I bet it will
read like PORK all the way through.

------
honkhonkpants
Call S. R. Hadden, he'll buy it.

~~~
milesward
If we had two, he'd buy both.. twice the price :)

------
splatcollision
See my new kickstarter - 200 MM and keep the ISS flying? A deal!

------
foota
Seems to me like having the station in operation would be helpful for going
further.

~~~
nradov
It really isn't helpful. Due to the high inclination orbit that the ISS is in,
you can't actually get anywhere from there; it takes a huge amount of fuel to
get into the right orbital plane. Plus the ISS has no real facilities for
spacecraft construction, maintenance, or refueling. In theory those could be
added, but at that point it wish be cheaper just to build a new station suited
to the purpose.

------
api
Give it to the Rastas and boost it to L1.

~~~
algorithmsRcool
Neuromancer?

------
retbull
Elon needs his space fortress to complete his evil master plan.

~~~
edem
Care to elaborate?

~~~
retbull
No I don't think that the joke went over very well.

