NASA wants to sell off the ISS soon

NASA is looking for someone to go all-in and buy the International Space Station sometime within the next decade. It’s unclear if it comes furnished or not though.

News around a potential sale comes from a NASA Social video looking into the progress the space agency is making on its Journey to Mars programme. As spotted by The Register, at 14:15, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development Bill Hill mulls over the idea of the ISS’ role in future missions.

“Ultimately our desire is to hand the space station to either a commercial entity or some other commercial capability so that research can continue in low-Earth orbit. We figure that will be around the mid-[20]20’s”

So far there’s been no sure-fire winner on who’d bag the ISS. While I’m sure Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic would love it as an opportunity to turn it into an AirBnB, it’s more likely Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin would snatch it up. In fact, the video does suggest that NASA has something to learn from Musk’s own reusable rockets for its Mars mission.

Buying up the ISS won’t be cheap. Space doesn’t have quite the same housing bubble that we’re dealing with on Earth right now, but as it cost NASA $150bn to build this is definitely going to cost more than a two-bed flat in Ealing. In fact, with the average price of property in the UK at £2,216 per square metre, the ISS’ $2.82bn per square meter looks like nothing at all…

If you’ve got a spare hour, or really can’t think of something better to be doing, you can watch the full Journey to Mars discussion in the video below.