Listener supported. WNYC Studios. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato, here with Laura Lichtman. Today on the podcast, why is the International Space Station getting retired? And what will replace it? Just as our various technologies age and start to have issues here on Earth, the International Space Station is... also started to show its age over time. I've got good news and bad news for you space fans. Which do you want to hear first?
How about the good? How about the bad? The bad? Okay. NASA's planning to decommission the International Space Station in, what, 2030, which will make it 30 years after it began operations in 2000. Okay. Now, for some possible good news, the space agency has been anticipating this retirement for quite a while, and it's turning to private companies. Why are we not surprised to build future space stations?
So who's in the running? How could next-gen space stations be different from the one we know today? Here to help us help bring us up to speed is Lauren Grush, space reporter at Bloomberg News. He joins us from the studios of member station KUT, of course, in Austin, Texas. Welcome back to Science Friday.
Thanks so much for having me back. Nice to have you. I think some people have vaguely heard that the space station is going away in a few years. Can you give us the exact plans for decommissioning? Right. So during the Biden administration, the plan was to extend the lifetime of the ISS, but to give it an end date. with the retirement happening at the end of 2030. And so, yeah, at the end of the decade, after 30 years of continuous human presence on the International Space Station.
The plan is to take it out of orbit and I hate to say it, but plunge it into Earth's atmosphere where it will likely burn up. Wow, it sounds very, very dramatic. If you want to hear the rest of the drama, our listeners can call us at 877- 925-9174-877-925-9174. Can any parts of it be saved for people who want to have a piece of it? I do not believe the plan right now is to do so. I will tell you though that it is a very big vehicle.
And so parts of it will likely survive when it is plunged through Earth's atmosphere. And so that's why NASA is taking great care to be very delicate and plan out that deorbiting process. They've given a contract. to SpaceX to create a vehicle. that will attach itself to the International Space Station and guide it out of orbit so that it is placed over an uninhabited area of the ocean. And so if there are any chunks that do survive, it will hopefully not rain down on Earth.
populated areas. I'm old enough to have covered the demise of Space Lab. Yes. In 1979. That was a pretty teary goodbye, if I remember correctly. I was unfortunately not alive during that time. We'll talk over some coffee. Can you talk about the main reasons it's being retired? I mean, is it falling apart? I mean, has it lost its usefulness? What's going on?
Well, there's still quite a bit of utility that is gained from research on the International Space Station. It's become a really... impressive platform for studying the effects of microgravity on certain materials, on technologies, for deploying small satellites. But most of all, for studying how the human body fares during long-term stays in microgravity. And we've learned quite a bit about what happens to our various biological systems thanks to the ISS.
But yes, just as our cars and our various technologies age over time and start to have issues here on Earth, The International Space Station has also started to age and show its age over time. And so while the main reason of the ISS is to perform research... The inhabitants of the space station have also spent a great deal of time just maintaining it and keeping it up to date. So a lot of the spacewalks that are done by the astronauts in orbit.
are done to do repairs on the outside of the space station, to do upgrades, to swap out things like batteries and other technologies to make sure that the ISS keeps functioning. And that takes up a lot of their time and their energy and their resources. It can get expensive over time. And so, yeah, it's just become...
As much time as the astronauts spend doing research, they spend quite a bit of time just making sure it stays up in orbit. Yeah, well, we now know that there are private companies that are putting satellites up and building spacecraft. Is it going to be a private company that builds the next space station? Well, that is ultimately what NASA wants. So NASA has been undergoing this really interesting transition period where they've been...
offloading a lot of the things that they used to be in charge of to the private sector. So a great example of that is... has been the cargo and crew services that they use to get to the space station. So, you know, in the past, NASA was in charge. launching its astronauts and launching cargo, primarily with the space shuttle to the International Space Station. But when the space shuttle retired, you know, they turned to private companies.
to take up that mantle. And so that's why you have SpaceX. And Northrop Grumman, who are in charge of sending cargo to the International Space Station. And then SpaceX and Boeing. Obviously, we don't have to get into what happened with the latest Boeing vehicle. But SpaceX has been sending crew to the International Space Station. And so in that similar vein, NASA is thinking about transitioning the control of this area, LEO, low Earth orbit.
to the private sector. And so they have been energizing commercial companies to create. new platforms and new space stations that could provide some of the same services and a place for astronauts to go, just as the ISS has done for decades. Okay, Lauren, here's the question that I have. Why would private companies want to get into this business? Where is the money in this? Well, right now, primarily the money is coming from NASA.
So operating the International Space Station is expensive. Right now, NASA allocates about $3 billion a year. to keep it up and running now these next space stations may not be as comprehensive as the iss you know the iss is technological marvel. Not to say that these new space stations will not be, but they will probably start off small and grow over time. But yes, it is a very expensive endeavor. And so what NASA is trying to do is help...
With the development funding, so start, you know, give some early contracts to help, you know, help the design and build. And then also have kind of a soft guarantee that once these. space stations are complete and are up in orbit, then NASA will serve as kind of an anchor. And so that way there's like guaranteed funding and revenue that will be coming in from the federal government while these companies can also find additional revenue streams from things like.
you know, other commercial companies or maybe academics who want to send astronauts to their station. Space tourists, for instance, is definitely. you know, been floated, pun not intended. And then there's also been... Talk of other countries. There are other nations throughout the world who haven't always had the option to send astronauts to space. Perhaps they would want to pay to send their own members of their country.
to these space stations. Speaking of other countries, doesn't China, isn't China building a space station? China has a space station in orbit. So what's their philosophy? How's that different? Well, it's, you know, that is kind of a concern that has been used as to why we need to maintain our presence in low Earth orbit because China does have.
And, you know, if we don't have one, you know, let's say there is this concern that, you know, these commercial space stations won't be ready in time by the time that the ISS has retired. It's known as the dreaded. gap in Leo. And the concern is if we don't make this a priority. by getting other commercial space stations up and running, then China will have their own space station that they can use to court other partners, you know, the ISS.
It has the word international in it, right? And so it has been this really great tool for international collaboration. So the concern is that we will lose that tool. A new space race. Yes, exactly. era of NASA look like without the International Space Station? When someone sees $3 billion a year that could potentially be freed up, a lot of people perk up and think, okay, well, what else could that money be spent on? Stay with us.
Life can pull us in so many different directions, with work, our family, and our health all needing our attention. It can be difficult to make decisions that are aligned with what we care about most. I'm Emily Falk. In my new audiobook, What We Value, I'll teach you how the brain makes decisions. Find what we value on pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or on Audible, Spotify, and wherever books are sold. All right, let me go to the phones to Evan in Pittsburgh. Hi, Evan.
Oh, hi. How are you guys doing? Hi there. Go ahead. Yeah, I have a question, a little unorthodox question perhaps. When they made the bad decision to tear down the University of Pittsburgh's football stadium, I was fortunate enough to get a piece of it, and it's hanging on my wall. Any thoughts that they're going to maybe auction some of the pieces off? Fund some future scientists going to college with the proceeds? Yeah. I'm not aware of any of that. I'm.
Sure, there will probably be some, you know, attempts to save some of the pieces. I mean, we paid for it, right? The public owns it, doesn't it? But I do know that NASA, you know, NASA takes great pains not to, it doesn't profit, you know, off of any of it. what it does, or at least tries not to seem to be profiting off of any of its programs. So I don't know about that. But hey, I'm not involved in those discussions. So maybe...
give your representative a call or maybe give NASA a call and offer that as an opinion. Lauren, you visited the headquarters of one of these companies that's competing for this contract. to build the next space station or begin that process. What makes them stand out? Yeah, so Vast is a really interesting company. They kind of burst onto the scene very recently. They were formed just in 2021.
And they are they were founded by a cryptocurrency billionaire, Jed McCaleb, and they came onto the scene with a really ambitious. timeline which is they were going to put the world's first commercial space station into orbit as soon as 2025. Now, they've since changed that timeline. Now it's next year. But that definitely caught a lot of people's attention because they were such a relatively new company.
And they were promising this really big, bold endeavor. But I think what also makes them interesting is the fact that they do have this billionaire founder who has been open about the fact that he is. willing to put in up to a billion dollars of his own net worth to help with this initial startup money to get the design and the construction of the space station going so that they have, you know, when it comes to these space startups.
having a lot of upfront capital is key, right? You know, they're very expensive endeavors. Hiring the right people too, right? Yes, exactly. Having the people that can build and come up with a design. And so that's what- caught us to take notice. And then now we did go visit and they were very clear that they are very interested in this NASA program that we've been talking about. NASA is supposed to give out final contract.
for this program to replace the International Space Station sometime next year. And they are very much banking on winning those contracts. They've said as much to us. But still, the fact that they are able to kind of fill that time before those contract awards are made. With this money is, I think, something to take notice of. One of the great features of science fiction films about space stations and out in space is artificial gravity.
Right? Yeah. 2001 Space Odyssey all the way. They're running a track. Any of these new things? Have any of these new gadget ideas come up? For the next space station? That is kind of the long-term stretch goal of VAST. Not only did they have everyone stand up and take notice when they announced their... timeline, but they also announced that they were eventually planning to pursue artificial gravity.
Yeah, you might have seen stuff like that in science fiction where there are these massive rotating modules and they're supposed to use centrifugal force to... simulate what gravity feels like here on Earth. And kind of the goal is that if we are able to kind of bring gravity with us into space, perhaps we won't suffer a lot of these long-term health benefits that we have found to be an issue when we send humans into microgravity. Exciting. Let's go to Steve in Oregon. Hi, Steve.
Hi. My question. Why do you have to bring the old space station down? It costs a lot of money to get all that mass up there, and it could be used as a material resource. It could be like an emergency place to go for people if there is some kind of disaster with the new space station or anything else.
Why just let it burn up in the atmosphere? It doesn't seem to me that if you just like mothballed it, it would really be hurting anything. Like having an outpost in the Antarctic or something. Yeah, good question, Steve. That is a great question, and you've touched on a very... fiery debate that I think a lot of people have within the space community. There are some that think it's much too premature to bring the International Space Station down just yet.
Obviously, it is requiring a lot of updates and maintenance. But I think there's a large contingent of folks within the industry who... You know, it might be too early there. We can still get quite a bit of utility out of it. So the issue, of course, is the money that is involved with. I think I mentioned earlier costs about three billion dollars a year to maintain it. and to operate it. And so with anything that NASA does, there's opportunity.
And so when someone sees $3 billion a year that could potentially be freed up, a lot of people perk up and think, okay, well, what else could that money be spent on? NASA's budget has not experienced the intense growth that it did receive during the Apollo era when we sent humans back to the moon. The budget of NASA has grown for the last decade, but it is starting to shrink for the first time. Also, there's quite a bit of discussion going on in D.C. about cutting costs right now.
So the you know, there's there's quite a few people who are eyeing that three billion dollars to say, OK, what else could we use that? to spend on, given the fact that we have you know, used this platform for such an amount of time, you know, all things do come to an end after a while. And so could we potentially free up that funding to use it for?
deep space exploration or other endeavors that we haven't done yet. I've got about 30 seconds left. When will we see some action or movement or contract on that? Well, the contracts have already been given out. I mean, at least when it comes to that de-orbit vehicle I was talking about, that's been given out. So that is on the way when it comes to... the final contracts for the space station replacement, like I said, expected next year.
But again, everything is very volatile at the moment. Well, we'll have you back. We'll have you back. Talk about it. Yeah, we'll have to talk when that happens. All right. It's a date. Lauren Grush, space reporter at Bloomberg News based in Austin, Texas. That's about all the time we have for now. A lot of people helped make this show happen. I'm Ira Flato. Thanks for listening.