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.
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
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.
Yeah, the CNSA logo is pretty dope.
Starfleet chevron over the UFP laurel
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.
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.
That would be the longest rover trip ever by a factor of like several thousand.
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.