The current plan to privatize the International Space Station by 2025 appears to be a lofty goal as discussed in May by NASA’s inspector general, Paul Martin before a Senate space subcommittee hearing. He doesn’t see a demand materializing by any combination of or single market sector in time to build up a sustainable, repeatable annual level of funding to even keep the lights on to the tune of $1.2bn by 2024. Martin also points out that funding will be necessary at some level beyond privatizing to meet the minimal funding levels to ferry astronauts and cargo to the ISS on an annual basis.
While Martin’s comments to the subcommittee are not very optimistic, NASA as a federal agency is painting a much more positive picture of what might be possible by carefully privatizing specific areas of the station at first to gain additional insight into where the market potential might be.