WP: trump wants to turn the ISS to private enterprise on a commercial basis
According to the newspaper, Washington is going to stop funding the ISS for NASA line after 2024.
WASHINGTON, February 11. /TASS./ The administration of U.S. President Donald trump’s plans to privatize the International space station (ISS) and turn it into a kind of “private enterprise on a commercial basis”. This was reported in the Sunday newspaper The Washington Post, which got the project documentation.
Washington is going to stop funding the ISS for NASA line after 2024.
But he did not intend to abandon the space station and is working on a plan that would remove her from the public to the private sector.
“The decision to stop direct Federal support ISS in 2025 doesn’t mean that the station itself will be returned from orbit at that time — it is possible that the [relevant] industry can continue to control certain elements or functions of the ISS in the future commercial platform, — the document says. — NASA will extend the international and commercial partnerships over the next seven years in order to provide continuous access to people and their presence in low-earth orbit”.
In the budget project for the 2019 fiscal year (which begins in the US on 1 October), which will be published on Monday, the Washington administration will request $150 million for “development and establishment of commercial structures and opportunities” for further privatization of the ISS. Such plans, says the publication is likely to face criticism in the us Congress, given that the United States spent about $100 billion on the construction and operation of the station. Currently, NASA is studying the question of extending the service life of the ISS until 2028.
Since 2011, when the US wrote off its fleet of shuttles, delivery of crews to the International space station and return to Earth deals with Russia. The US leased from Russia for its astronauts seats on the spacecraft “Soyuz”. The ISS is costing NASA $3-4 billion a year.