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The Company NASA's Hired to Build the Next Space Station Seems to Be in Big Trouble, Firing 100 Employees and Unable to Pay Bills

https://futurism.com/the-byte/axiom-space-nasa-private-space-station-trouble

Axiom Space, the space company NASA picked to develop a private successor to the International Space Station, is in big trouble.

The Company NASA's Hired to Build the Next Space Station Seems to Be in Big Trouble, Firing 100 Employees and Unable to Pay Bills

With this project falling behind, and the reducing likelihood of delays in the Lunar Gateway/Artemis program, I think there's a good chance that NASA and the ESA will not have access to a space station following the ISS's decommission. It's not the only "public-private" partnership for an ISS successor, but I don't think the other candidates are making much progress either.

I also thought that this quote was pretty amusing, and highlights the futility of trying to privately fund commercial station projects:

To bring in some much-needed cash, Axiom Space started selling seats for trips to the ISS on board SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft.

It was also awarded a NASA contract to fund a space suit for the first crewed mission to the lunar surface, Artemis III.

But the suit appears to have been a massive distraction — not to mention a major money pit — from its plans to build a space station. SpaceX trips to the existing orbital outpost were also not a sustainable solution to Axiom Space's woes.

"Turns out that there's not a lot of billionaires that want to set aside their life for 18 months to go train to be an astronaut for the ISS," a former Axiom executive told Forbes.

27 comments

GaveUp

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Turns out that there's not a lot of billionaires that want to set aside their life for 18 months to go train to be an astronaut for the ISS

I wonder if there's some law that they could lobby to change. I wouldn't mind if billionaires started going to space without any training whatsoever

JoeByeThen

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The current USA is becoming a cargo cult of peak empire USA. Which is good, because fuck us. But man it's gonna suck when capitalism has turned Everything into a hollowed out shell of itself.

Hexamerous

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It's sad because NASA is like one of the only few cool and good things about America. At least they have a few missions going, but we'll see how long that lasts before some private entity is sucking up what little money is left of their allowance.

Oh well...

sit-back-and-enjoy

UlyssesT

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I stopped reading news about NASA after one too many "oh the comet interception has been canceled so my-hero can get more money" and "oh the near-orbit solar probe project has been canceled so my-hero can get more money" moments. marx-doomer

buckykat

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My favorite :agony-turbo: one of those is "we're not gonna put this lunar rover that we already built on a rocket that we're gonna launch anyway so :my-hero: can get more money"

Meanwhile China has I think three lunar rovers currently on the moon roving.

UlyssesT

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The bazinga car commercial in space moment was deeply demoralizing to me, and even on Hexbear there were some "I'm a leftist butt " treat defenders trying to justify that aforementioned publicly-subsidized bazinga car commercial in space with bullshit excuses like "it was a payload test for the mission(tm) and they decided to have a little fun with the payload test, did you expect them to not have fun?" bootlicker

The answer is yes. I didn't ask to subsidize a fucking bazinga car commercial in space.

If the Apollo moon landing had a mandatory Coca-Cola sign installation moment "for fun" that'd have been crushing for me too.

CascadeOfLight

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I would support the use of a nuclear weapon in space if it was used to evaporate that car xi-plz

buckykat

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They just couldn't think of a single better use for three thousand pounds of payload to solar orbit, right, sure.

The Falcon 9/heavy is the best amerikkkan launch system since Saturn but that's not a high bar.

anonochronomus

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Considering the Saturn rocket program was run pretty much entirely by paperclipped nazis, I'm gonna have to go ahead and say "nothing new under the sun."

UlyssesT

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I'd have accepted pretty much anything but an obnoxious flex from a private corporation and its products.

buckykat

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Call like any university and say "hey you got 3000 pounds of shit you want on a solar orbit? It might blow up, this is a test flight" And the answer will be "Yes, absolutely!"

UlyssesT

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I would have been fine with that. It may have actually promoted the bazinga corporation more than a narcissistic product flex, but this was my-hero

buckykat

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CNSA is stepping up to do the real space exploration stuff. Lunar farside sample return is pretty damn cool and they're actually making good progress toward a human moon landing by 2030. There are going to be two more robotic ones before that, one with a rover and hopper to scout the best sites from the ground and one with some kind of ISRU test to make a permanent moon base more useful and viable.

Des

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china will be regularly shipping autonomously mined and refined lunar farside cryogenic helium-3 packages back to earth to fuel a network of De-He3 5 gigawatt commercial reactors when the U.S. is on it's 16th failing silicon valley funded Thiel-backed private space agency under the Barron Trump administration

NASA, at that point just a PR team of 3 appointees for the private sector, will be promising to restore satellite launch capacity to rebuild real-time communications between the east and west coast after roving bands of florida RV refugees strip the copper and vital electronics from every land line and data center in the central dust bowl

xi-beard we are proudly welcoming Yemen as the 7th nation into our Space Exploration Federation after they have used their expertise to build their first super-heavy lift spaceport

buckykat

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There are already 13 countries signed up to be a part of the International Lunar Research Station program. The most recent is Senegal which joined about two weeks ago.

Yemen would be a good place to launch space rockets from, just on a technical level. Low latitude, low humidity, ocean to the southeast.

Des

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cool glad my early morning sci-fi wishcasting has some basis in reality!

and i have been thinking about that in regards to Yemen lately. could see it being a future hub for space launches for the reasons you listed. also might have the highest density of rocket scientists in the world by then

StalinStan

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Once again I will forever hate china for being cowards. It would be so easy for them to do cute space pranks. Like, we so clearly have lost it. Just imagine them putting a CPC bumper sticker on the broke. Shuttle. We wouldn't be able to take it off. If they meme on us hard enough they could get us to actually spend on some space stuff properly instead of just doing pork scams with whatever contractor

buckykat

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Using a Starfleet chevron for the CNSA logo is kinda memeing on us.

The 2011 no working with China law is going to get funnier and funnier as their moon base progresses.

someone

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Yeah, the CNSA logo is pretty dope.

Evilphd666

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picard-excited

buckykat

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Starfleet chevron over the UFP laurel

someone

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I've decided I'm going to try to make a 3D-printable TNG-esque commbadge, but using the elements of the CNSA logo. I threw something together to see how it works.

I'm not sure how detailed I can get with the laurels though on something that small. I'll make sure to make the STL files available if I do succeed.

I have a close match to the blue but I'd need some sort of backing to put them on. I'm thinking of a glitter filament, white flecks on black, like a starfield. Or maybe just a glossy black would do.

StalinStan

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That's pretty good. I just want them to just use their moon rover to push over the flag we did there. We wouldn't be able to set it back up.

someone

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Funny thing is, that's already happened for Apollo 11, 14, and 15. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite has imaged the Apollo landing sites and could only see the flags standing upright for Apollo 12, 16, and 17. After 11's flag was unexpectedly blown down during the return to Earth from the ascent stage rocket's exhaust gases, NASA decided to put the flags on subsequent missions farther away from the lander. Didn't seem to work for 14 and 15.

But there's a fun and actually heartwarming twist. All the dye in the flags has been bleached out by solar radiation. They'd be recognized as American flags by the sewing stitches if you look really close-up, because the Apollo flags all had the stripes and stars stitched together. But from a distance they'd be pure white, as if we really did come in peace.

StalinStan

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Haha, so my plan would require them bringing a little americna flag to throw down because we already shit thr bed on ours. That's great.

buckykat

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That would be the longest rover trip ever by a factor of like several thousand.

StalinStan

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Good, that would force us to watch knowing we can do nothing to prevent it. The suspence might even get congress to approve making a moon battle bot to send them to stop them.