International Space Station Commercialization (ISSC)
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As the United States and Japan are major investors in the International Space Station (ISS) consortium, and as JUSTSAP is an independent non-profit organization comprised of governmental, university and private sector representatives from both nations, JUSTSAP is well poised to help identify and evaluate commercial options concerning the future management and operation of ISS. While the original justification for the ~$100 billion invested in ISS ($60 billion spent / $30 billion needed to complete) was to entice commercial R&D enterprise into space and facilitate research on humans for long-duration space missions, this rationale no longer appears adequate. Instead, an alternative “commercialization” scenario for ISS (under the rubric of “space commerce”) may now be the key to its sustainability. The ISS Project Team will explore various options for developing a commercialization scenario for ISS – perhaps by transforming ISS into a ‘quasi government corporation’, owned by nation states and their agents (in proportion to their investment/usage), with a business structure for commercial development (perhaps similar to that used to form COMSAT and subsequently Intelsat) that could have long-term and far reaching impacts on space commerce (e.g., on biotech, energy production, pharmaceuticals, tourism) and provide a “staging post” for future space exploration - particularly to support completion of a lunar base in the 2020 time frame.
U.S. Project Team Contact:
Dr. Alex Ignatiev, Texas Center for Advanced Materials
Tel: 713-743-3630
E-mail: Ignatiev ( at ) uh.edu
