"Commercial modules would join the 15 US, Russian, and Japanese modules that comprise the ISS."
Did they ditch Columbus, did I miss a memo?
NASA has opened the door to allow private sector companies to add modules to the International Space Station (ISS). The US space agency will begin this year to offer private sector organisations the potential to build out the 17-year-old station. Agency administrator Charles Bolden says the effort is a bid to foster a " …
Free fall porn movies?
But you may have problems with that (NSFW)
Hopefully, once it's had it's 2 years up with no leaks (which is what it's there to test).
It'll be interesting to see how many flights it would take to launch enough Bigelow modules to double the volume of ISS. Obviously they'd need fitting out afterward but again the problem with the big rockets and the Shuttle flights was large volume x heavy mass of structure.
I suspect the low(ish) mass of the Bigelow modules and their very compact size changes things quite a bit.
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Once SpaceX (or other commecial companies) are able to do the ferrying of equipment and people up to the ISS, it might well be time to retire the Zarya and Zvezda modules. Firstly because they are the oldest, and secondly how long can we continue to work with the Russians the way things are going? They did threaten to fly them off and form their own station if the ISS was privatised, so good luck to them.
Well you'd then end up with no way to keep the station boosted, so it would then re-enter. And the Russians said about separating their modules because the other partners were talking about cancelling the ISS and de-orbiting it. (especially since some are newish, and not even up there yet). I would think that they'd be more than happy to make some money from the ISS, given that their major source of cash, oil, currently sells for less than it costs then to get it out of the ground.