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A comment on China's Shenzhou 11 blasts off on space station mission. Parent comment

Re:China's Shenzhou 11 blasts off on space station mission by Herodotus38 on Monday October 17, 2016 @05:18PM (#12729871)
It could be, however I would bet against it as both the US and Russia have plans. The US is looking at the commercial market to deal with LEO while NASA focuses on larger things. I believe that Russia has plans as well but I haven't read about them as much.

Here is a recent article that mentions a few possibilities: http://spacenews.com/companies-pitch-plans-for-commercial-sp...

Notably, the company Axiom plans on making their potential module be able to function independently after detaching from the ISS. Bigelow also has plans for using their inflatable technology, although they've been working on this for quite a while and I've heard rumors of that the management is dysfunctional so for them to be ready in time for 2024 seems unlikely to me, a layperson.

My guess: 2024 will come and there will be perhaps some commercial space stations or modules attached but they will lengthen the date until ISS decommission at least one time.

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Re:China's Shenzhou 11 blasts off on space station mission by sandworm101 on Monday October 17, 2016 @11:30PM (#12731828)
NASA may be looking beyond, but the US is still very much focused on leo. The US military and surveillance agencies have plenty of birds. They are constantly launching new stuff. They long ago gave up using men in space, that's NASA's thing, but in terms of rockets and access LEO is still an American focus.
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