With this project falling behind, and the reducing likelihood of delays in the Lunar Gateway/Artemis program, I think there’s a good chance that NASA and the ESA will not have access to a space station following the ISS’s decommission. It’s not the only “public-private” partnership for an ISS successor, but I don’t think the other candidates are making much progress either.
I also thought that this quote was pretty amusing, and highlights the futility of trying to privately fund commercial station projects:
To bring in some much-needed cash, Axiom Space started selling seats for trips to the ISS on board SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.
It was also awarded a NASA contract to fund a space suit for the first crewed mission to the lunar surface, Artemis III.
But the suit appears to have been a massive distraction — not to mention a major money pit — from its plans to build a space station. SpaceX trips to the existing orbital outpost were also not a sustainable solution to Axiom Space’s woes.
“Turns out that there’s not a lot of billionaires that want to set aside their life for 18 months to go train to be an astronaut for the ISS,” a former Axiom executive told Forbes.
Call like any university and say “hey you got 3000 pounds of shit you want on a solar orbit? It might blow up, this is a test flight” And the answer will be “Yes, absolutely!”
I would have been fine with that. It may have actually promoted the bazinga corporation more than a narcissistic product flex, but this was