NASA Jacks Up ISS Commercial Prices, Neglects to Tell Users
A month ago, it cost $3,000 per kilogram to send a payload to the International Space Station (ISS). Today, it will cost you $20,000 per kilogram for exactly the same payload.
NASA jacked up the price by 666 percent on Feb. 25, apparently without any prior notice to its user community. The change was quietly announced on the space agency’s website.
SpaceNews reports the decision has caused some consternation over at Nanoracks and other companies that regularly send payloads to the orbiting laboratory.
In announcing the policy change, NASA said it had previously subsidized transportation to and from the station in order to foster the development of commercial space applications.
“Since making these opportunities available, there has been a growing demand for commercial and marketing activities from both traditional aerospace companies and from novel industries, demonstrating the benefits of the space station to help catalyze and expand space exploration markets and the low-Earth orbit economy,” the space agency said. “As a result, NASA has updated its pricing policy for commercial activities conducted on the station to reflect full reimbursement for the value of NASA resources.”
“The new pricing applies to proposals submitted under NASA Research Announcement (NRA) NNJ13ZBG001N Focus Area 3 Purchase of Resources for Commercial Purposes. NASA is in the process of reassessing the value and amount of available resources for private astronaut missions and plans to update that pricing policy in the near future,” NASA said.
The space agency removed a section governing the cost of visits by private astronauts to ISS. NASA said it is still revising this section of the user policy.
Under the old policy, NASA would have charged $11,250 per person per day for use of the station’s life support system and toilet. The daily cost of food and other provisions would have cost $22.500 per person, while power was pegged at $42 per KWh.
A number of visits by private astronauts are planned to the station by groups in the United States and Russia.
26 responses to “NASA Jacks Up ISS Commercial Prices, Neglects to Tell Users”
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The “users” should be very grateful that NASA even allows them to use the ISS for capitalist commercial activities.
It also shows well the dangers of a monopoly supplier and should make the case for commercial stations now that there is a means to launch them (Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy) and fly Space workers to them (Dragon 2).
While your sarcasm is “dripping,” (and NASA’s 666% increase in launch rates is outrageous) you may have a point. Commercial activities are dependent on taxpayer-subsidized facilities for everything from space to work to air to breathe. The components currently exist to orbit a commercial space station which can be launched, provisioned, “manned,” and maintained without government assistance. We may as well see if they can do it now because they’re going to have to do it eventually, anyway.
If NASA is advertising the actual costs, then it just shows how impossible it is to support a “Private” space station without the government around to pick up a majority of the costs. The cost to provide on going logistics to the station is huge, and with all the time that the crew needs to spend on regular maintenance, the time they have available to spend on other tasks is even more valuable.
That depends to a considerable degree on how much the NASA “costs” are driven by the methods used in the design, management, and operation of the ISS. It seems quite likely that the couple of decades of experience with ISS plus the previous on Mir would show the way to drop maintenance costs considerably. Not to mention the difference in incentives to an entrepreneurial design that needs to make a profit compared to bureaucracy controlled design that needs to satisfy pork requirements.
Not to mention how the costs are assigned in the accounting system NASA is using. In terms of private systems it gives a price point for demand to use in building their business models. The big business risk is if NASA decides to reverse policy and once again starts subsidizing commercial activities on the ISS undermining their business models. Again, the risk when you are in competition with the government.
No it doesn’t. What it shows is that ISS was designed without regard to its economics of construction and operations. The private sector can, and will do much better with any new LEO station. The Axiom complex that is to start being attached to ISS in 2024, for example, will, when complete, have about as much habitable volume as ISS, but will cost a tiny fraction of what ISS did to build.
Commercial ISS users need to push back on this NASA sneak attack while also quickly ramping up alternatives to the new NASA rate card.
Nanoracks, and some other significant ISS users, need to get together with SpaceX and see what can be done about standing up an entirely non-NASA infrastructure – including the construction of additional Cargo Dragon 2s and the addition of another ISS docking port or two – to support their operations on ISS going forward. All this new infrastructure should also be able to be transferred to any new LEO destination once ISS is decommissioned. Axiom likely can’t accelerate its schedule for adding its own modules and extra ports to ISS, but some sort of interim, non-interfering solution might be possible on a shorter timeframe.
If nothing else, NASA has administered what may turn out to be a useful gut-check/call-to-action to commercial ISS users.
yes this was a mistake a bad one
Not if NASA wants to get rid of the ISS by driving the commercial users away. It also illustrates how impractical it is to commercialize the ISS.
if the first sentence is correct then they need new management at NASA …and really the station needs new “managment” completely.
Its not that hard to commercialize ISS and that has to happen …because other wise without federal support there wont be another space station
NASA has only so much money and resources. Given the national debt and state of the economy it will be difficult for NASA to afford both the ISS and a lunar facility, even if it’s just a gateway station. One or the other will have to go, especially if NASA keeps funding SLS/Orion.
ISS is the glue that holds the worlds space programs together
Only until it crashes to Earth when it finally suffers a failure they are unable to fix, then it will rip them apart as they point fingers at each other being responsible for the tragedy. Better to end it in a controlled fashion and transfer that “glue” to a lunar facility.
none of those things will happen, parts may come and go but the concept will stay for awhile
The core elements will be hard to replace. But yes, but like the Shuttle it will go on until it fails.
they are not that hard. the shells will probably have to be redone ie whats in them updated but well its not that difficult. the Russian leak thing is puzzling but the Russians are the weak person in the program…
And their modules are at the core of the problem since they are controlling the ISS, especially the Zvezda module that provides both life support and orbital boosts for the ISS. Unlike the U.S. modules it’s elements are not designed to be replaced and so are wearing out. The Elektron elements, the last of their kind, were built in 1980’s for Mir by a firm that went out of business decades ago, the designer long dead, and being Russia there is little documentation on it…
there are short term American replacements.
Time will tell as the folks at NASA play Technological Russian Roulette with it like the Shuttle.
Actually, there are long-term American replacements. The non-Russian segment has long had the ability to shoulder pretty much the entire ISS ECLSS load on its own given how frequently – and for how long – the Russian life support has tended to be down in recent years.
It’s not puzzling at all, especially in view of recent reports of multiple cracks in Zvezda requiring repair. Russian Soyuz and Progress craft hit the ISS a lot harder when docking than does Dragon 2 or will Starliner and Dream Chaser. HTV and Cygnus, which are berthed, also touch lightly. Zvezda simply wasn’t built sturdily enough to stand the gaff for more than 20 years.
Which is already in the works – minus the Russians. That lack of Russians is a good thing, by the way.
That job seems in the early stages of being transferred to Gateway and Artemis. ISS certainly has a “best used by” date and it is likely less than a decade away – perhaps even closer if the Russian segment of ISS continues to decay. We can’t let ISS become another Shuttle – something everyone knew was doomed years before it finally left service, but no one saw any urgency about replacing.
There is now a sizable commercial “penumbra” surrounding ISS. It’s about time for that “penumbra” to gin up a new centerpiece(s) for the rapidly approaching post-ISS era.
Right now, my money would be on SLS-Orion going much sooner than ISS. But ISS will go too and its current users need to be planning for that. A number of them already were. This latest indication of Congressional/NASA inconstancy will, one hopes, wonderfully concentrate their minds and speed up their schedules.
There’s plenty of potential business in LEO to support one or more commercially built stations. ISS can’t be commercialized because it was never designed and built to support commercial objectives. It was insanely expensive to build and is far too maintenance-intensive. No viable commercial LEO station can be either of those things.
I think it was deliberate rather than a mistake. Though if the intent, on the part of some die-hard old-school NASA lifers and their counterparts and patrons in Congress was to jam up NewSpace, that will prove to be a mistake even if the new rate card sticks. Especially if the new rate card sticks. This is just going to accelerate efforts to establish a non-NASA LEO infrastructure.