Axiom Space has announced that it is creating an office park and production center at Houston SpacePort at Ellington Field.
The development is a hopeful sign that, despite being dragged off by Congress, a commercial replacement for the International Space Station (ISS) could take place. The United States has the chance to avoid a “space shuttle” when the ISS reaches the end of its operational life, like the one that happened between the end of the space shuttle program and the first launch of the SpaceX commercial crew’s Dragon Space mission.
When Jim Bridenstine
James (Jim) Frederick BridenstineNASA-Canadian agreement demonstrates how Artemis is an international moon NASA selects the next Artemis moonwalkers while SpaceX flies with a starship First to break the sound barrier, Chuck Yeager dies at 97 MORE became a NASA administrator, one of the questions he faced was what to do to maintain a low-Earth presence after the ISS. The idea he and NASA experts pushed is to encourage private companies to build their own space station. NASA would provide the necessary support by committing to becoming an anchor tenant for such orbiting facilities. However, commercial space stations should also find private customers.
The problem is that Congress has been remarkably stingy when it comes to putting real money into this approach. The 2020 budget request included $ 150 million for commercial space stations. Congress funded support for orbiting private labs for a total of $ 15 million. The 2020 fiscal budget request repeated the $ 150 million request. Congress chose to be a little more generous: $ 17 million.
It is not that Congress opposes keeping the human presence in the low orbit of the Earth. Indeed, as reported by Space.com, the Senate version of NASA’s draft law extends the operational life of the ISS to 2030. Given the flow of scientific and technological discoveries that have taken place from the orbiting laboratory, it is not difficult to see why. Early ISS critics, including the late James Van Allen, were deeply discredited.
Congress does not seem to have any urgency about planning a future post-ISS. The year 2030 is almost 10 years away. Elected politicians do what they do best, hitting the box on the road.
Meanwhile, NASA is doing everything it can, given the resources allocated, to help launch a commercial space station industry. An inflatable module called BEAM, thanks to Bigelow Aerospace, has been attached to the ISS for the past three years. Unfortunately, a number of factors, the least of which was the coronavirus pandemic, forced Bigelow to lay off his entire workforce. Bigelow is now seeking NASA funding for a free-flying space station created with its inflatable modules, ironically using technology developed by the space agency called TransHab.
Axiom Space nodded to attach one of its own modules to the ISS. Waiting for Congress to cough up funding for NASA, Axiom announced a facility for manufacturing space station modules at Ellington SpacePort in Houston. The company will also have private astronaut training facilities.
In addition to employing 1,000 people, the new Axiom facility is a commitment to creating a commercial space station industry. The fact that a company is willing to invest money to build the parts of a private space station should have an effect on other stakeholders. The axiom should be able to attract commercial customers willing to pay for time spent in an orbiting research laboratory.
Positioning the Texas Axiom facility is no accident either. The Texas Congressional delegation, for obvious reasons, has supported NASA and, increasingly, the commercial space sector, which has expanded its presence in Lone Star State in recent years. A good old-fashioned policy that causes members of senators and senators to favor funding projects that mean jobs in their states will combine with a sound space policy to help increase funding in the years to come.
It’s also no coincidence that the Axiom facility is about a five-hour drive from the SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, near the southern tip of Texas. Without a doubt, the CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk The richest people in the world have added .8T to their combined fortune in 2020 Trump ends Obama’s 12-year run as the most admired man: CEO Gallup Apple ignored the meeting request to discuss the sale Tesla, Musk says MORE would be delighted to launch finished modules into space, using the powerful Starship rocket, and later crews and cargo.
In the midst of a pandemic, part of the space future is taking shape in South Texas. This time it is led by the private sector. NASA would be best off jumping on board or risking being left behind.
Mark Whittington, who frequently writes about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why Is It So Hard to Return to the Moon? as well as “Moon, Mars and Beyond”. He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. It is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, LA Times and the Washington Post, among other places.