A ‘zero gravity, zero taxes’ strategy to replace the International Space Station 

A frank exchange of views has broken out concerning the future of low-Earth-orbit infrastructure.

Phil McAlister, a retired senior NASA manager who was heavily involved in both the Commercial Crew and Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems programs, is on one side. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is on the other.

McAlister notes that when the International Space Station retires in 2030, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk intends to end the Falcon 9 and the Crew Dragon. At that point, neither NASA nor anyone else in America will have a way to take astronauts to and from low Earth orbit. A number of private companies are planning commercial space stations with no certain way of getting to them.

McAlister finds the alternatives to the Crew Dragon, particularly the Boeing Starliner, to be wanting, to put it mildly. In response, he suggests that NASA start a low Earth orbit strategy that involves paying private astronauts to perform experiments and other work on commercial space stations.

Isaacman responded with salient points. Although NASA has not given up on low Earth orbit and commercial space stations, he found problems with too much space agency involvement. A commercial space station with NASA as a principal customer is likely, in his view, to be one with the space agency as the only significant customer and thus commercial in name only.

According to Isaacman, if a company proposes to build and deploy its own space station, it must raise the capital and find the customers to do so. With........

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