What if there were a six-bedroom, with two-bathroom house with a gym and a gorgeous view that cost $150 billion? You probably won't find that on earth but it does exist a little farther away.
The International Space Station has more livable room than a six-bedroom house. It also has a couple of washrooms, a workout area, and a 360-degree view. Humanity's only permanent outpost in space is the most expensive object ever built. US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has called it home for the last two decades but the managers are planning on moving out, marking a new era in space.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan approved the construction of freedom but because of budget constraints, it was never built and eventually, the vision morphed into the ISS (International Space Station) - the combined effort of five different agencies representing fifteen different nations.
The first component of the international space station launched in late 1998, from Kazakhstan by a Proton rocket, the Russian built Zarya, just few days later, shuttle Endeavor carried the next component, Unity, the first American element built by American aerospace and jet maker company Boeing. When Zarya and Unity joined together, that was the beginning of an engineering marvel. Dozens of launches over many years followed, building the station piece by piece by piece, fitting together tens of thousands of parts and finally the end result was a 109 meter long structure the length of an American football field.
Even though it often seems the International Space Station is gliding at a slow pace, it's actually moving at a speed of 17,500 mph, so fast that it can circle the planet every ninety minutes. More than two hundred people have visited the large spacecraft, living and working on what's really a giant floating laboratory, conducting research and science experiments that have led to many inventions.
NASA's scratch resistant helmets created scratch resistant lenses. The rubber molding in those helmets is found in the soles of athletic shoes, the polymer fabric in spacesuits protects firefighters. Technology used to track astronauts' eyes is essential for laser eye surgery. NASA helped develop the first computer mouse and the list goes on but the main reason the International Space Station exists is to help humans learn about living and working in space in order to send us even further.
By 2024, using Space Launch System (SLL), which will be the foundation for the agency's exploration beyond Earth's orbit, it's no coincidence Washington initially proposed ending NASA's funding for the space station and the same year it wants to go to the moon. Although funding can now be extended for a few more years but NASA spends between $3 to $4 billion to maintain and operate the ISS every year while its annual budget is about $19billion.
Though, the Trump administration has been increasing funding the last few years, providing nearly $23 billion in 2020. Obama administration tried to turn more of NASA's responsibilities over to the private sector. NASA gave billion of dollars contracts to Boeing and SpaceX , through its Commercial Crew Program (CCP) so they could build their own spacecraft.
Elon Musk's company won the race against Boeing when it sent two astronauts to the ISS aboard Crew Dragon in May 2020. Boeing should have flown astronauts by now as well but an un-crewed test flight in December 2019 didn't go as expected when the Starliner spacecraft went into the wrong orbit, so a crewed mission will have to wait until 2021. Opening up the ISS to private companies is also changing the way it looks. NASA gave the Texas, startup World's First Commercial Space Station, Axiom a $140 million dollars contract to build a segment that can be attached to the space station in 2024 and used for commercial business activities. And when the ISS eventually retires, that component will detach and operate freely as a private space station.
Axiom is also teaming up with SpaceX to fly three people to the space station in 2021 and the price per seat is $55 million and one is already taken. Hollywood is showing interest as well. Super star Tom Cruise could board Crew Dragon to film a movie at the ISS and Russia state corporation Roscosmos is set to get back into the space tourism industry with flights to the space station planned in the coming years.
SpaceX plans to circle the moon on a trip financed by Japanese billionaire, Yusaku Maezawa, who will also take a group of artists with them in 2023. They'll be traveling on Starship, a fully reusable system currently in development. Starship will eventually be modified so that it can land on the moon. Musk’s SpaceX is one of three companies selected by NASA to design a lunar landing system competing against Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and the relative newcomer Dynetics. This is the agency's first step toward creating a long-term presence on the moon with the aim of leading to an even greater goal “Mars”. NASA hopes to send humans to the red planet in the 2030s, as the agency keeps its eyes on the moon and off the ISS, its partners appear to be doing the same. The European Space Agency (ESA) is working ever more closely with China. In 2022, China aims to build its own space station and fly European astronauts.
US Congress banned Beijing from the ISS due to security concerns and America's partner Japan is teaming up with India on a mission to the moon in order to counter the rise of China. While everyone's attention is turned elsewhere, the ISS is not getting any younger. Wear and tear on the 20 year old structure means the end of its life will be some time in the next decade. Going to the graveyard involves a controlled destructive reentry into Earth's atmosphere just like animation of the Russian space station Mir deorbiting in 2001. The ISS will burn up, break up, and vaporize into fragments, although some parts would survive and fall into a stretch of ocean in the South Pacific. The total weight of the debris is expected to be between 53,500 to 173,000 pounds or as many as 32 Model X's. Even when the ISS is no longer with us, it will be remembered not only as the most expensive man-made object ever built, not only as a triumph of international cooperation but as a building block toward deeper missions in space.
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