SPACE POLICY
- policy recommendations for the current administration -



COMMERCIAL LEO


SUBSIDIZED "COMMERCIAL" SPACE
"Without the ISS, I would be buying a ride from some of these fine gentleman's companies at orders of magnitudes greater costs which for a commercial entity might not be possible...
"But we can't jump from making a little bit of money or no money to paying for a significant portion of his module or anyone's facility because the math just doesn't quite solve."

-- Andrew Rush, CEO Made in Space

“Candidly, the scant commercial interest shown in the station over its nearly 20 years of operation gives us pause about the agency’s current plans,”

-- Paul Martin, NASA Inspector General

We need to be very careful about trying to establish a "commercial" station in LEO. If it is likely that it could transition to a fully commercial, profitable in the near term then this would be a worthwhile policy. But the ISS is coming nowhere close to becoming commercially viable and it would seem to be very speculative to say that a commercial station in LEO would be profitable.

For these reasons, the Space Development Network advocates that the near-term focus of space policy be to develop the closest location where there are substantial resources which could substantially reduce the amount and hence cost of launch -- namely, the Moon and to leave the commercial development of LEO to the private sector.

We need to be careful that commercial operations in LEO support themselves and don't become a permanent budgetary drain.


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