The decision of the NASA to decommission the International Space Station in 2030 makes the development of the station more of a time rather than a place and time problem, with a very strict final deadline. Hardware can take years to design, qualify, assemble and test in flight and the companies that attempted to replace the ISS are now uttering the quiet part aloud; the most dangerous delay is not a slippage in the launch date, but a slippage in the decision.
That pressure appeared in an unlikely place, a global technology conference stage, when Vast Space CEO Max Haot and Axiom Space CEO Jonathan Cirtain defended the notion of momentum despite its benefiting a rival. Haot said we were all looking forward to the procurement of the next phase to be underway in reality, but “time is getting short.”
The stakes are not symbolic. The ISS is an elaborate, constantly manned facility that has been used as a training mission on long missions, a test platform on life-support equipment, and an experimental pipeline that requires long run times. Cirtain noted the price of lapses in capability, of the lengthy intervals between the flights of Apollo and the US shuttle, and the subsequent period between the last mission of the shuttle and the resumption of US crew launches. “This lesson we learned now twice”, he said. “This very human presence, Cirtain added, is not a gimmick lest it be geopolitical.” “It is indeed a lesson gained during 75 years of human spaceflight.” The concern was also echoed by Haot, who was more direct when he said: “In our case, it is simply not an option to give up low earth orbit to China.”
What it means by “replacement” has also become narrow. The fourth step under the new Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development program is the four-person crews on one-month missions, with a crewed demonstration planned by 2030. It is not to re-crew ISS work on day one, but rather to demonstrate that a privately operated station is capable of accommodations, essential operations, and operations with visiting spacecrafts, and leave voids open to longer-duration missions in the future.
The competitors are making very different bets on engineering against that new target. Axiom is developing a modular outpost that will expand by being attached to the ISS and then detaching to become a free-flying station. Its supply chain is actually a hybrid: It does in-house work on systems like environmental control and life support, but combined with major structures supplied by established manufacturers. Supplier coordination is a “very complex element”, according to Cirtain, and the timeline has shifted: the company has indicated that the first Axiom module will target the ISS by the end of 2027.
Architecture has been another attempt by Axiom to buy time. The company has stated that it rearranged its construction such that the Payload Power Thermal Module will be the first scheme to fly, allowing it to fly free-flight-ready earlier namely; Axiom has asserted that the station would become independent as soon as 2028. “The outcome – the ability of free-flight following the launch and berthing of PPTM,” Mark Greely, chief operating officer and Axiom Station program manager at Axiom Space said. And that chain is reliant upon global manufacturing capacity too: Axiom has indicated that the main structure of the module will be constructed by Thales Alenia Space in Turin.
Vast is attempting to simplify by consolidating and standardizing components vertically, beginning with a single-module station large enough to launch a Falcon 9. But even this much lesser, “first move approach” has already experienced schedule weight: Haven-1 no longer aims to launch in the middle of 2026 but in the first quarter of 2027, although the company is performing an on-orbit test vehicle to test avionics and propulsion. Haven-2, which describes itself as an ISS-replacement-class system, is a scaled-down design built in multiple dockings to assemble into a multi-module system.
Beyond the two strategies is the unresolved business reality both the private stations have to find some non-government work to get the lights on. Pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and other ideas of microgravity manufacturing were mentioned by both executives, Haot with a yell of “microgravity manufacturing at scale.” And whether that market will come fast or slow, the near-term engineering bottleneck will not be less: without the Phase 2 awards coming on time and a clear route to demonstrations, there is no viable means of rehearsing operations prior to ISS departure.
