According to NASA, the ISS is expected to be decommissioned in 2030, according United States to NASA. At that time, there is no definite news on whether United States and other Western countries will build a new space station. But Russia already has this in mind, planning to build its own independent space station before the ISS is decommissioned.
Russia TASS reported the news on February 13, 2023, from the mouth of Vladimir Kozhevnikov, deputy chief designer of the Russia Energy Rocket and Space Corporation and chief designer of ·the Russia space station. It can be seen that Russia plans to build a new space station, and it is true.
According to the report, Russia plans to start building its own space station as soon as 2027, and will first launch the "research and energy module" in the early stage, and launch the connecting module, transition module, basic module and special module from 2028 to 2030, and finally build its own space station.
The International Space Station was built from 1998 to 2011, and now it is indeed time to retire, probably around 2030, after all, the life safety of astronauts must be taken into account, so it is impossible to extend the retirement time too much.
Russia no longer chooses to live with United States NASA, ESA, etc., but does it independently, mainly because of the Russian-Ukrainian war and other reasons, which have led to tensions between him and the European United States.
Russia has carried out many aspects of space cooperation with the mainland in recent years, including lunar research stations, and it has been reported that Russia may choose to cooperate with China on the space station after the retirement of the International Space Station.
At present, only China, the United States and Russia in the world have extremely mature manned space technology, and Russia's predecessor, the Soviet Union, has built a space station, and Russia has technical reserves in this regard. Therefore, from a technical point of view, Russia plans to build its own space station around 2030, which is certainly not much of a problem. After all, even India, a country that has not mastered manned space technology, dares to claim that it will start construction in 2028 and build its own space station by 2035, and Russia has this technical strength, and it is not surprising that it will be built in 2030.
According to expert estimates, the International Space Station consumes more than $150 billion in about 20 years, and the average annual cost is billions of dollars, which is really very expensive.
Russia wants to build its own space station, with Russia's current national strength, can it really support such a huge space project as the construction and later maintenance of the space station?
I think it's more suspenseful, if you want to build a space station, you need a huge space budget to support, otherwise it can only be a chicken feather. Although Russia is large, its economy is not good at present, and it is also subject to Western sanctions, and its total GDP is currently similar to that of Korea, and it is unlikely to grow by leaps and bounds in the next decade or two.
And the report shows that when the Russian space agency announced this plan in 2023, it did not even make a budget, which means that the plan has just begun. Even if Russia has technical experience and experience, the scale of space station construction is relatively small, not bad money, and it is a very big challenge to complete the construction of the space station in six or seven years, after all, Russia is not the Soviet Union, and it is not what it used to be. Under the siege and interception of the West, Russia's current industrial capacity may not be enough to support the completion of the project, and it may need to seek help from the mainland. Therefore, I think that the construction plan of this new space station of the Russia Space Agency will most likely be delayed, and may even be canceled due to financial and even technical problems.
However, if Russia wants to cooperate with the mainland in the later stage, it is also possible, after all, Russia has rich experience and technical strength in the field of space, and the cooperation between the two sides can achieve complementary advantages and jointly promote the development of space exploration and space station technology.