Unexpected increase in costs to bring objects to the international space station: nanosatellites are paying for it
by Leopoldo Benacchio
Unexpected increase in costs to bring objects to the international space station: nanosatellites are paying for it
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Suppose you have a business in the USA, which involves a lot of travel and also on-site consultancy. Suppose we receive a letter from the airline we have an agreement with announcing a fare adjustment. Okay, come on, we made the overall budget with intelligence and a bit of flexibility is allowed. But the cold shower arrives: both the travel ticket and the labor will cost seven times as much.
This is not a joke, but what happened to Nanoracks, a NASA customer for the use of the International Space Station, but also to others. Embarrassing situation and great anger, but what prompted Nasa to make such an unexpected and unpleasant move? It is a story of beauty creams, which began well and ended, as we have just seen, very badly.
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Nasa at the end of 2019 announces that, for its part of the International Space Station (ISS), one can think of a commercial use: research of industries that can benefit from the space environment, studies on the human body or drugs are welcome. Modest prices, even if we are always talking about the space environment, and therefore a kilogram of material costs 3,000 euros upstream, that is, to bring it from the ground to the ISS and double to bring it back down.
Justified costs even if we are not really used to paying a ticket to the cinema and a double ticket to get out. However, since, as the saying goes, the streets of Hell are paved with good intentions, the first use of the ISS in a commercial capacity was to act as a film set, with Tom Cruise, and as the second we saw the famous dome, a incredibly sophisticated spatial bow window from a technological point of view which, incidentally, was built by Thales Alenia Space, to act as a photographic set for a face cream for ladies.
Ten jars were brought to the ISS last September, photographed by the astronauts, who do not appear in the photos anyway, and return to Earth where they will be auctioned. It is foreseeable that a good part, if not all of the figure, of the 128,000 dollars paid out by the famous cosmetics company to NASA will be recovered, thanks to wealthy buyers who want to have the first “space beauty cream”, or almost.