Trump administration considering privatizing International Space Station

The Trump administration is considering turning the International Space Station over to private enterprise, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Post, and ceasing to fund the orbiting lab by 2024.

While the plan does not recommend “deorbiting” the 1990s-vintage space station, which is currently contracted to Boeing and costs Nasa more than $3bn a year, the Nasa documents say “it is possible that industry could continue to operate certain elements or capabilities of the ISS as part of a future commercial platform”.

“Nasa will expand international and commercial partnerships over the next seven years in order to ensure continued human access to and presence in low Earth orbit,” the documents state.

The administration is set to request $150m in its 2019 budget proposal, due on Monday, “to enable the development and maturation of commercial entities and capabilities which will ensure that commercial successors to the ISS – potentially including elements of the ISS – are operational when they are needed”.

The plan to terminate funding is not unexpected. Last week former astronaut Mark Kelly appeared to predict the impending proposal in an a New York Times editorial in which he described the space station’s recent “surge in commercial activity”.

But Kelly warned the activity would cease if the administration abruptly cut funding.

“As the cost of access to low earth orbit continues to decline, more opportunities for commerce in space will emerge, with the International Space Station at the nexus and the United States at the helm,” he wrote.

“But all of this will come to a screeching halt (though you won’t hear the ‘screech’ in the vacuum of space) if the Trump administration ends funding for the International Space Station program beyond 2024, a step it is considering.”

He added that the reason for cutting off funding was unclear, although “Trump has said that he wants to prioritize human travel to the moon”, calling this sort of trade-off short-sighted.

“Cutting funding for the station, now between $3b and $4b a year, would be a step backward for the space agency and certainly not in the best interests of the country.”

Since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, the US currently has no means to deliver or return astronauts to the station, and currently relies on Russian Soyuz rockets.

But the plan to privatize a space platform the US spent around $100b to construct will be widely opposed. Last week, Texas senator Ted Cruz, reacting to early reports of the defunding proposal, said he hoped they would “prove as unfounded as Bigfoot”.

“As a fiscal conservative, you know one of the dumbest things you can to is cancel programs after billions in investment when there is still serious usable life ahead,” he said. A number of private space ventures are located in Texas, among them Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

The ISS is already operating in part as a platform for private enterprise, under steps taken by presidents Bush and Obama to outsource cargo supply flights to the station. SpaceX – which last week raised the profile of private space industry by launching the most powerful working rocket in the world – and Orbital ATK are contracted to deliver supplies.

Two years ago, Budget Suites of America billionaire Robert Bigelow funded an inflatable module that has since been designed to increase living space on the station.

But space association officials told the Washington Post they doubted if the plan to fully privatize the platform would be popular with existing commercial partners.

“It will be very hard to turn ISS into a truly commercial outpost because of the international agreements that the United States is involved in,” Frank Slazer, the vice president of space systems for the Aerospace Industries Association, told the Post.

“It’s inherently always going to be an international construct that requires US government involvement and multi-national cooperation.”

Last month, Boeing’s space station program manager Mark Mulqueen warned the Post that “walking away from the International Space Station now would be a mistake, threatening American leadership and hurting the commercial market as well as the scientific community”.

The administration’s proposal envisions “the emergence of an environment in [low-Earth orbit] where Nasa is one of many customers of a non-governmental human space flight managed and operated enterprise, while providing a smooth and uninterrupted transition”.

The proposal is consistent with Trump’s vision for continued US involvement in space exploration. In one of his earliest policy proposals, he declared space “the next great American frontier” and ordered Nasa to head back to the moon. “This time we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and perhaps someday to many other worlds beyond.”

However, the administration has not proposed budget increases to realize these ambitions. The agency’s current budget has hovered around $19bn a year recently – about 0.5% of federal spending, compared to 24% spent on social security and 15% on defense. A shift from low earth orbit scientific exploration like ISS to the construction of a moon base would require billions in additional spending.