It is been a plan for a while in the USA to shift launches from government run to private run for over a decade. This is just an implementation of that strategy.
Longer - fifteen, closer to twenty years. It took this long for there to be one or two companies that they could be sure wouldn’t just cut and run (especially given how cutthroat the aerospace industry is).
They have had a plan for it, from the very beginning. Big-budget space projects like ISS don’t get anywhere without a wrap-up plan. ISS is in LEO, and its mass contraindicates moving it into a graveyard orbit. Conventionally, stuff in LEO gets de-orbited; same thing happened with Skylab in '79.
Maybe the countries who put it up there should have had a plan for taking it down? Or at least pay for it?
Their failure is a huge opportunity for the usual grifters.
It is been a plan for a while in the USA to shift launches from government run to private run for over a decade. This is just an implementation of that strategy.
Longer - fifteen, closer to twenty years. It took this long for there to be one or two companies that they could be sure wouldn’t just cut and run (especially given how cutthroat the aerospace industry is).
They have had a plan for it, from the very beginning. Big-budget space projects like ISS don’t get anywhere without a wrap-up plan. ISS is in LEO, and its mass contraindicates moving it into a graveyard orbit. Conventionally, stuff in LEO gets de-orbited; same thing happened with Skylab in '79.