I’ve been hoping for this for a while. The USOS part of the ISS should be good to 2035 without much trouble. (Beyond 2035 would require significant upgrades.) ISS is so superior in capability to any of the commercial offerings, we should not throw it away needlessly.

The Russian side, however, has issues. It would be good to get an American propulsion capability up there by 2030 and let the Russians retire their “half” (which is really about 15%) of the ISS.

As for CLD, none of them are going to be ready to conduct science anytime soon. They are all going to take time to get up and running properly, just like commercial cargo did, like commercial crew did, and like CLPS is doing now. There’s nothing wrong with keeping ISS for a few extra years and having a smooth transition instead of a chaotic one like we normally do.

Richard M: Formating fixed.

In remarks this week to a Texas space organization, a key Senate staff member said an “extension” of the International Space Station is on the table and that NASA needs to accelerate a program to replace the aging station with commercial alternatives.

Maddy Davis, a space policy staff member for US Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, made the comments to the Texas Space Coalition during a virtual event.

…“Earlier today, I was having a briefing with NASA and begging for—we really needed that RFP released for CLDs like nine months ago,” Davis said. “But here we are still begging for it.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/key-senate-staffer-is-begging-nasa-to-get-on-with-commercial-space-stations/

Not sure this merits a special blog post by Bob, but it might merit taking on as brief a postscript to this one. If congressional leadership really is pushing hard on this, it will probably result in some kind of action at NASA.

So the company that has flown four actual astronaut flights conducting actual science at an actual space station, completed its design activity, and built (but not outfitted) its first two modules is tied with the company that has flown nothing, built no significant hardware, and hasn’t even completed CDR yet — but has issued lots of press releases? Ummm…

Yeah, I fully share Bob’s enthusiasm for Vast’s Haven stations, but I tend to agree that the ranking here understates Axiom’s tangible advantages, which you note here: They’ve bent the most metal on a *long-term* space station, they’ve finished design work, and they have indeed done multiple private missions to the ISS. These are not small things, and they will matter a good deal to NASA when it makes its awards.

That said, the newly revised CLEODP potentially gives a bigger leg up to Vast and Starlab given how it is structured now, and Starlab has frankly done a more impressive job of living up investors and customers over the last year than Axiom has. I have the sense that Voyager is a better run (and now, better resourced) company, because it has been led by a better management team than Axiom (which relied far too heavily on former NASA executives who just don’t know how to execute a business case) right from the start. I would likely put Axiom ahead right of Voyager/Starlab right now, too, but the gap has been steadily closing.

I’d actually like to see all three of these stations (Axiom, Starlab, and Haven-2) given the CLEODP Phase 2 awards, because while I greatly doubt there is enough market in the Western world to sustain three commercial space stations, I’d like to at least see all three get an *initial* station configuration deployed and running, and then see who sinks and who swims once they do.

That seems like a significant oversight.

I wish I could say this is a surprise, but it’s not.

Even so, however, I think it’s hard to deny that Axiom has a credible shot at winning a Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program contract this spring.

So the company that has flown four actual astronaut flights conducting actual science at an actual space station, completed its design activity, and built (but not outfitted) its first two modules is tied with the company that has flown nothing, built no significant hardware, and hasn’t even completed CDR yet — but has issued lots of press releases? Ummm…

Edward: To be fair to Axiom, this latest slip in schedule is not a full year. Instead, it appears to be about 3-5 months. Previously they said they’d launch in late ’27. Now it is early ’28.

When working on a project, watch the schedule slips. Year for year slips (or month for month, etc.) are a bad sign. Axiom is slipping even faster, getting farther away from launch rather than closer to launch.