NASA to companies: Please tell us your wildest business ideas for space
As NASA prepares to stop funding the International Space Station (ISS) in about a decade, the agency is appealing to companies to use the science lab to test their wildest space-business ideas while they still can. Eventually, NASA hopes that low Earth orbit will become a hub of commercial activity, with enterprises operating in space independently of the ISS.
鈥淣ASA is interested in what exciting, new ideas people have for using the ISS that could lead to space being just another place to go to work or school,鈥� NASA said in a .
In response, 11 submissions 鈥渇rom a broad range of respondents including individuals, small companies and large companies,鈥� came in, said Sam Scimemi, division director for the ISS program, in an e-mail to Bloomberg.
While the nature of the ideas has not been made public, some of the research already taking place aboard the ISS might offer some clues. Merck, Novartis, and Procter & Gamble are among the companies that have taken advantage of the microgravity environment of the space station to do drug research. Another company has , or metals that are used extensively on Earth in car parts, golf clubs, electronics, and medical devices.
Just a few of weeks ago, a research lab developed by Texas-based private company NanoRacks was attached to the space station with two experiments on board. One, sent up by a company called Yosemite Space, is testing how in future space missions to power autonomous vehicles and data processing.
"What I really hope is what we鈥檙e doing with these early commercial researchers, there will one day be way more than the ISS can handle,鈥� Michael Read, who manages , an economic development program of the ISS, told 海角大神 in January.
The ISS is well-suited to research in areas like health to materials sciences, and as a testbed for technologies that could be used for missions deeper into space. But there could be other possibilities that NASA hasn鈥檛 even considered, the agency says.
鈥淪ome companies are asking to use the ISS as a stepping stone for other, more 鈥榦ut-of-the box鈥� concepts, such as future space stations that are commercially owned and operated,鈥� NASA says on its blog. 鈥淲hether a commercial space station is a hotel, a research facility, a university, or a combination of all of these ideas is open for discussion.鈥�
A space hotel is not out of the realm of possibility. Tourists delivered to space by Blue Origin, a space tourism company owned by Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, might one day need somewhere to stay. The company has said that it could start shooting paying passengers into space as early as 2018.听
NASA, in the meantime, is scheduled to leave the space station by 2028. As the primary funder, the agency is spending $3 billion annually to run the 16-year-old science laboratory orbiting Earth 240 miles up in the air. That聽expense is expected to rise to , according to ArsTechnica. NASA is promising a crewed mission to Mars in the 2030s, and it cannot afford to support both the space station and a deep-space mission, William Gerstenmaier, the agency鈥檚 chief of human spaceflight,聽said last year.
鈥淲e鈥檙e going to get out of ISS as quickly as we can,鈥� Mr. Gerstenmaier said at a December meeting, as ArsTechnica reported. 鈥淲hether it gets filled in by the private sector or not, NASA鈥檚 vision is we鈥檙e trying to move out.鈥�
