Over the next several months, NASA will finalize a strategy for its operations in low-Earth orbit after 2030. Then, toward the end of next year, the space agency will award contracts to one or more private companies to develop small space stations for which NASA and other space agencies will become customers, rather than operators. But none of this is certain, and as NASA faces a transition from its long-established operations on the International Space Station.
  • ptfrdEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    Is it the end of days if NASA goes without a low-Earth orbit space station for several months or even years? One key commercial space official at the space agency, Phil McAlister, suggested that maybe it wouldn’t be.

    He’s right, and I hate him for it :)

    Expedition 1 arrived at the International Space Station on 2000-11-02. That’s 59-and-a-bit days before[1] the start of the 21st Century. So whatever disappointments people may have about the 21st Century compared to their expectations, at least we can (currently) say there has been a continuous human presence in outer space for the entirety of it. Pretty cool!

    Strikingly, it could easily be the case that there will never again be a time with humans only living on Earth. If that’s because AGI kills us all in a decade, with any people in orbit / on the moon being the last to have their atoms repurposed, that’s not ideal. But if it’s because we spread out through the universe, and outlive our sun and even our galaxy, that could (potentially) be very cool indeed.

    Perhaps everyone reading this either witnessed the start of, or was born during, humanity’s Second Age!

    Or perhaps the current period of continuous off-Earth habitation will finish around 2030 and all my attempts at profundity were a waste of time! After all I’m not sure how much I’d want NASA to spend just to maintain it.

    Of course, the ISS isn’t the only hope here. The Chinese space station might fill in any gaps after the ISS, although that would be a concern for other reasons (assuming China is still controlled by its communist party, with other parties banned). And then there’s the moon. The Artemis Program in its current form won’t bring about the start of a continuous presence on the moon by 2030. But I wouldn’t put it past SpaceX to shake things up in that regard.

    [1] - If you thought the 21st Century started at the start of 2000, see this or even this.