Commercial Management for the Space Station: Making the ISS More Accessible to All

Abstract

The International Space Station represents a remarkable milestone: if managed correctly, it has the potential of becoming the first truly global marketplace, one set above all national borders. Yet, contrary to its name, the ISS is currently far from being international. Under current agreements, it is, in fact, only accessible through the national space agencies of a select group of participating nations.

In this paper, an innovative concept is suggested where the use of the ISS is managed in a fair and efficient manner, allowing not only the ISS participating nations but all users, including developing nations and commercial companies, to benefit from use of this international orbiting station. The proposal is based upon the creation of a ‘quasi-IGO’, whose main business would be to run and manage efficiently the allocation of Space Station resources to potential users. The company would be set up by a consortium of international businesses and would act as a single point contact between the end user customers and the national space agencies of the ISS participating nations. The Company would also offer other services.

A concept of a ‘participation fee’ is introduced in the paper, whereby a fee is collected from all parties wishing to send payloads to the ISS, except from the initial consortium of founding companies. The collected funds are used to subsidise experiments from educational users and those from the developing countries, thereby making the Space Station more accessible to all. In addition to the fees, users are also subject to a charge for each payload or experiment they wish to send, which would vary according to the launch and operation costs, and the amount of resources required aboard the station. As a conclusion, the current trend of commercial businesses being encouraged to access space without having recourse to public funds is mentioned, and the potentially attractive implications which this has on the proposed venture is explained.

George Inoue currently works as a finance officer at Inmarsat Ltd. The views presented in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect those of the organisation.