IN A NUTSHELL 🚀 The International Space Station (ISS) faces rising safety concerns due to structural cracks and air leaks. 💰 Proposed NASA budget cuts by the Trump administration threaten the safe deorbiting of the ISS by 2030. 🛰️ SpaceX is contracted to develop a U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV), but Elon Musk suggests an earlier
And still no real plan for a replacement in the near future.
Tiangong is gonna be the only space station.
Well there are plans just not directly from governments, NASA awarded contracts in 2023 to commercial providers to develop stations. Vast plans to launch their Haven-1 station in May 2026, it’s a similar size to the Tiangong 2 but a meter wider. Smaller than the current Tiangong station though.
But ya, China will probably be doing the majority of science in space for a while. I’m glad they’re doing it for humanity!
I know this is Hexbear, so probably an unpopular opinion, but I’m hopeful the commercial aspect will be as successful In lowering costs as the NASA commercial resupply /crew programs were in lowering cost to orbit.
I don’t understand why it’s so complicated for people to understand that the government can offer things at the lowest possible cost because the government doesn’t have to make profit. Any private industry running at equal efficiency to public industry will, necessarily, cost more because it must build in margins for profit. Literally anything else a private company can do, so could the government.
Private industry cannot save us. It cannot be cheaper. This is not complicated math it’s extremely simple and yet seemingly completely impossible for the vast majority of Americans to understand