I think that I misinterpreted the per week and per month costs for ISS. I used the $2.5 million minimum charge from NASA as a per person charge, but it looks like it is a per mission charge, so I gave weekly and monthly costs that are higher than reality, by a factor of four. (Aren’t you all glad I don’t build the airplanes you fly in?) It should read: “$3.3 million cover charge and $800 thousand per week of experimentation (~$3.5 million per month).”

So, with my assumption that the commercial companies would have 50% occupancy, the $2.5 million per month break even charge still is below the ISS charge, but if they charge the ISS rate of $3.3 million, then their profit looks more like 40%, which is possible if they really are keeping busy. Commercial prices can come down if the occupancy rates are higher than my assumption.

On the other hand, the benefits of using commercial space stations may be worth a higher price than using the ISS, especially since the travel costs are the driving factor in space station use.

The requirements would likely be based more on the limits of the station rather than governmental bureaucratic rules. My expectation is that commercial space stations will allow far more variety of use than the ISS has done over this first decade of its operational life. NASA has more proposed experiments than its ability to do them all (which probably still would have been true had it not been downsized by Bush), but a commercial space station will be far more eager to get paid to do more, not fewer, experiments. Government is government-oriented, whereas commercial is commercially-oriented. Commercial space needs to make money in order to survive, but government looks bad if it seems to be favoring one group or company. I expect a lot of manufacturing to be done on the commercial stations, manufacturing that benefits mankind and makes good profits for the companies doing it. Beneficial and profitable manufacturing that has not been done on ISS.

The fees for commercial space stations would likely be based upon construction, launch, and operations costs rather than NASA’s arbitrary pricing, which seems to be searching for the limits that the traffic will bear.

So what might the fees be?

First, let us look at ISS costs and fees for a comparison. Last year, Robert reported the new NASA fees:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/nasa-officially-increases-prices-for-commercial-use-of-iss-by-700/

There wasn’t much increase for experimenters going through NASA or NanoRacks. However, the Axiom customers are treated as “tourists,” for whom NASA increased the fees by 700%. The report says that Axiom customers are charged tourist rates whether or not they perform NASA-approved experiments (all experiments have to be approved by NASA).

The result of the new policy is a much higher price charged by NASA to companies conducting private astronaut missions. Under the old policy, the life support and crew supplies for a hypothetical four-person, one-week mission to the ISS would cost $945,000, a figure that doesn’t include stowage, data or power. Under the new policy, the cargo, food and supplies charges for the same mission would be more than $2.5 million at the low end of the quoted cost ranges, plus $10 million in per-mission fees.

A “tourist” crew of four costs $10 million to answer the doorbell, and $10 million for a weeklong stay. For each “tourist,” not counting the mandatory retired NASA astronaut, that is $3.3 million cover charge and $3.3 million per week of experimentation (~$14 million per month). Since New Zealand is working through Axiom, I suppose NASA is charging them the same rate, with the same requirement that a retired NASA astronaut be onboard to babysit them. The following article also states that Italy, Hungary, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are, for the time being, operating their own manned space programs through Axiom.
https://www.space.com/axiom-space-new-zealand-international-space-station

Perhaps building, launching, and operating a commercial one-module four-man station costs, order of magnitude, $500 million (more than $150 million, less than $1.5 billion) for 10 years of operations. Perhaps the business plan assumes %50 occupancy, for ~ 50 months total rental for 4 people. Break even would be $10 million per month rental or $2.5 million per month per person. The financial risks are high, so the profit margin might also have to be high, perhaps the cost would be around $5 million per month per person or around $200,000 per day (more than $70 thousand, less than $700 thousand per day). This is comparable to NASA’s price for experimenters and much less than NASA’s price for tourists. An added benefit is that commercial space stations will be far more available than the ISS, which can only take one or two of these “tourist” flights each year, but each commercial station will require many such flights each year.

Would there have to be separate supply flights, as with the ISS, or could all the needed supplies be brought up in the Dragon or (future manned) Dream Chaser? Supply flights will increase the cost of operations, but if all the needed supplies can come up with the crews then moving those supplies would be part of the $55 million cost per seat to get to the commercial space station in the first place — which overwhelms the rental cost.

Either way, the cost of getting the astronauts and supplies to a commercial space station looks like it will be the driving cost of using these space stations; the rental fees would be relatively low for stays under a month or so. One advantage of commercial space stations is that the cost of twenty years of operations for all four of the stations currently under construction (all of them, not each of them) will be an of order of magnitude, or so, less than the $170 billion that ISS will likely cost for its construction and its operational phase from 2012 to 2030. Each of them will likely cost two orders of magnitude less, but being smaller would also likely generate less productivity. ISS holds six astronauts and each of the four commercial stations will hold four-ish astronauts, so we should expect 2/3 as much productivity from each of the four commercial stations.

But for that price, the research that could be done on commercial space stations may not be required to become public domain in five years, as is required by NASA for experiments performed on the ISS, so companies will be able to obtain proprietary information, which is much more valuable to them than data that must be published, in five years, for all to use freely. This would be a huge benefit to a user of commercial stations.

Manufacturing-for-profit could be done, which has yet to be done on ISS. This would be a huge benefit to humanity.

So far, all the civilians flown on Dragon (both commercial flights) have not been tourists but experimenters, but we should expect that at some point there will be vacations rather than working flights, as the Russians have done for its tourists to ISS. As we have learned from earthly international customs checkpoints, there are two reasons for travel: business or pleasure, although I have long wondered which of those two going to a funeral falls under, because it is not business and it certainly isn’t a pleasure.