The ISS as a Factory
What capacity does the ISS offer for manufacturing, what does it cost, and what happens when it retires?
Chapter summary
the ISS is a superb laboratory and a poor factory.
Key takeaways
- 1
It offers crew, power, a pressurised environment and facilities for long experiments, but crew time is scarce, upmass and downmass are limited to cargo flights, and vibration from crew and machinery disturbs sensitive processes.
- 2
NASA's commercial price list charges about $20,000 per kilogram up, $40,000 per kilogram down and $130,000 per hour of crew time.
- 3
The station is due to retire at the end of 2030, with SpaceX building a deorbit vehicle under a contract worth up to $843 million.
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