NEW YORK -- Commercial space station developers are questioning whether NASA's reconsideration of continuous human presence in low Earth orbit risks holding back International Space Station alternatives.
Pam Melroy, NASA Deputy Administrator, last month said the agency was reassessing whether it needed a "continuous heartbeat or a continuous capability" while transitioning to commercial alternatives after retiring the ISS in 2030.
The assessment will influence the next phase of NASA's Commercial LEO Development (CLD) program, which is due to award funding for ISS alternatives in 2026.
Speaking Nov. 20 during the Deutsche Bank Global Space Summit here, Axiom Space chief revenue officer Tejpaul Bhatia called on NASA to focus on ensuring a continuous human presence in space.
"That's what we've been building towards, and while I get the rhetoric to set the bar lower, so it's kind of a hedge ... we're here to lead [and] we should be going for what's right for the country, for the industry, and for the science," Bhatia said.
However, Vast CEO Max Haot is optimistic the shift will allow for the procurement of an initial space station module that is not permanently crewed.
"The current way the procurement, driven by Congress, is set up is that the minute the new replacement, the CLD commercial destination, is up, it should be permanently crewed from day one," said Vast CEO Max Haot.
Haot noted no other space station has been permanently crewed from day one because it takes time to develop and improve life support technologies in orbit.
"And so we believe that if the NASA procurement continues to say it's zero or permanently crewed, all it will do is delay the first commercial space station," he added.
Instead, Haot said NASA should seek to procure an initial module that can be crewed for three to six months at a time while the ISS is still operating.
"And then, as we add more modules, we improve the life support technology, and as quickly as possible it becomes permanently crewed ... It's better to lower the barrier and iterate in low Earth orbit, instead of delaying for the something that's perfect."
If picked in 2026, Vast plans to have the first module of an ISS replacement called Haven-2 in orbit by 2028. The company also aims to launch a single-module station designed for short stays called Haven-1 in the second half of 2025.
Axiom Space plans to launch the first module of its commercial space station in 2026, attaching it to the ISS, where it would expand over time before ultimately detaching and operating independently.
Also joining the panel was Intuitive Machines chief financial officer Peter McGrath, who helped design part of the ISS while working at Boeing and warned about comparisons with NASA's retired Space Shuttle.
"When the Shuttle ended and you didn't have a solution, everybody moved over to Soyuz," McGrath said, giving Russia a soft power policy advantage until U.S. alternatives got up to speed.
"[Y]ou need a balance," he said, "because if you don't put enough pressure on commercial to go get something done by a deadline, commercial will slip to the right.
"But if you give them a deadline and you shut down the station and they're not there, you create the gap, and I hate to say it: Space is hard. Nobody makes it to schedule."
He said China would benefit from the gap this time as international partners would be drawn to the space station already crewed in orbit.
If there is no overlap between the ISS and a U.S.-based alternative, Haot said Vast would support extending ISS access.
"We don't think the U.S. should de-orbit the ISS without seeing that overlap," he continued, "but I think it's too early to make that decision.
"Let's [procure] to optimize for this this overlap. Let's go for it, and then let's have optionality that, if no one is up there, of course we should extend it."