Sounds far-fetched at the moment, doesn't it?

But you know we may be seeing ads like this

in the not too distant future.

Living away from earth

has always captured our imagination.

As well as providing the basics for survival,

these ideas are a symbol

of humankind's unique creativity and ambition.

This advanced base, or space station,

will be headquarters for the final ascent to the moon.

Today the idea of multiple outposts

where we can live and work in space has never seemed closer.

We're gonna fly.

It's about making our lives the best we can make it.

It's about as a species having a path for our future.

And the mission to create these habitats

is well underway as private companies get ready

to take that next giant leap.

The International Space Station.

It's the only space habitat we have.

One of the first places they take you in the ISS

is the cupola so you can finally look at the Earth

in all its beauty.

I don't care who you are, it's always stunning,

it's shocking, it's amazing, because that's the view

you've been waiting for your entire life.

It passes over 90% of the world's population

without most of us ever realizing.

And, at an estimated cost of a $150 billion,

it's the most expensive object we've ever built.

You think about the Sistine Chapel, the pyramids,

and the Burj Khalifa or take your pick.

I mean it far outstrips those.

It's the one and only non-terrestrial human outpost.

We've had a constant human footprint

in orbit for almost 20 years

because of the International Space Station.

The collaboration between 15 countries

started construction in 1998 and was pieced together

in space over the course of a decade.

Since 2000 it's been a permanently

crude research laboratory.

A space habitat that's allowed humankind to live,

manufacture, and explore beyond Earth.

The overarching achievement

of the space station has been education.

It has educated us about how to do research.

It's educated us about how to live.

It's educated us about the harshness of the environment

that it is in.

And it's about learning, I think.

People say what was one of your favorite parts

about being up there?

Hands down, floating everywhere I went.

Bbut your first impressions for ISS certainly is,

it's how big it is.

The ISS is the size

of an American football field with most of that footprint

taken up by eight solar arrays.

These provide enough energy to power 40 homes.

The station has an American side and a Russian side

as well as contributions from other nations

like Canada, Japan, and the European Union.

Astronauts on board can pass freely between these sections.

Their living and working areas are made up of modules,

each 4.2 meters in diameter.

And in total, they have the same volume as a Boeing 747.

The three main labs, Destiny, Hope, and Columbus,

are conducting up to 600 ongoing experiments

at any one time.

And while it's been a collaboration

between governments to build and maintain the ISS,

its next chapter will rely more on private enterprise.

Today's a very remarkable day.

NASA is opening the International Space Station

to commercial opportunities

and marketing these opportunities

as we've never done before.

Managing and maintaining the ISS

costs $3.4 billion a year.

That's over half NASA's space operations budget.

Aging hardware and space debris will only add to these costs

which is why NASA is now hoping to pass some responsibility

for the station over to commercial companies.

We would like to see a robust commercial marketplace

in low earth orbit where space stations exist

outside of NASA.

The goal being that NASA could be a customer.

And we want to have numerous providers

that are competing against each other

on cost and innovation.

Keep your rut, and--

With federal funding proposed to stop in 2025,

opening the station to private enterprise

would free up resources for the space agency's ambitions

to return to the moon and journey to Mars.

Transferring to a more commercial model

is allowing industry to take over many of those areas

that NASA has traditionally been responsible for.

Like the design, and operations,

and maintenance of space systems.

But the most exciting part, I think, is new opportunities.

The iPhones would have never come

from the government, for instance.

The base technology came from the government,

but the way it's used, the way it interacts with consumers,

governments aren't really built for that.

So I think that'll be exciting to see how private industry

uses the same technology or the same systems

but then use them in a different way.

Every NASA achievement

has been the collaborative achievement of NASA and industry.

What's going on right now that's a little bit different

is NASA is turning to companies,

not to direct them what to do,

but it's turning to companies to build relationships

with them because those companies are attracting investment

from non-space sources and are bringing a different kind

of innovation to the table.

In the shadow of NASA's

sprawling Johnson Space Center,

the headquarters of startup Axiom Space

might seem a little modest, but their goal is big,

to build the first commercial space station.

Led by a former ISS program manager,

the team has been involved in every mission

to the station since its inception.

We know it has to be much lower cost to operate on orbit

than ISS is today so this is key

to continuing the heritage of ISS.

It's to start there so we can evolve everybody

to the next platform.

I liken this to the Internet.

So the Internet was created, and we got very excited,

and any kid with a good idea

and just the basic programming skills

could go build a program to do something.

We have huge companies that grew out of that

and still today there's new ideas, new things being built.

The thing about a microgravity environment

is it's limitless.

It's like the data we have access to

on the Internet is limitless.

And it is not immediately obvious to us all the benefits

that that's gonna entail

but over time it will become very, very obvious.

By 2024, Axiom plans to send a central node

to attach to the ISS that will make up the core

of their new station.

This will be followed by crew quarters for 16 people

and research and manufacturing modules.

When the ISS is retired,

this will break away and additional modules

with a life span of 30 years will be added

and swapped out as they age using a robotic arm.

And they're hoping to do all of this

for 1/50th the cost of the ISS.

I mean when you talk about our vision,

it sounds really simple.

It really is about

driving the thought process

and the cost down

so that anybody that wants to take advantage

of our place in orbit

and a microgravity environment can do so.

And that's really it.

Okay Ellen, I need to go towards my feet.

The International Space Station

is a fantastic vehicle but one of the big things

is they have quite a few major components outside.

Which means you have to do an EVA,

a spacewalk, to go fix it.

A spacewalk on a good day is a hundred hours of crew time

to get ready and actually go do the spacewalk,

so we're able to take advantage

of the reduced size of components.

And so our design is gonna have all of the components

are gonna be in a pressurized environment.

So we know what the basics are.

Water, food, clothing, life support.

And we know how to handle those

but now the next step is how do we make it more intuitive

and we want to now take advantage of the technologies

and the capabilities we have today

to build more luxury into the experience.

The objective is to make the environment the background

for all the users.

You're every day doing whatever you want to do on orbit.

Research, manufacturing, looking out the window.

Whatever you're there to do,

we want you to be able to do that

and not even think about the environment.

And it's because of our experience on ISS,

and what the team brings to Axiom Space,

we are able to build that environment.

You won't worry about that.

Three, two, one, release, release, release.

Fire, fire!

Like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin,

Axiom is hoping to attract space tourists

with tickets starting at $55 million for a 10-day mission.

But that's just one part

of the commercial space station market

that they think could be worth $37 billion

over the next decade.

Our first commercial customers

are countries who have astronauts in space

and want to expand their activity in space

and countries who do not yet

have a human space flight program

who want to send people up.

And we've now got both research and manufacturing companies

who want to do work with us

while we're at the International Space Station

and on our platform after it separates from ISS.

Human space flight is particularly exciting

because it's that slice of space that is really nascent.

It hasn't undergone the crowding that satellites have had.

It hasn't already had that explosive growth.

It's really ready for that now.

The first thing I'm really looking forward to seeing happen

is the face of our first astronauts on orbit

looking back down on us and knowing that we had a hand

in sending that person to space.

And ultimately the separation of ISS

when it's ready to be retired and de-orbited

and then we continue in space independently.

For me, that is a stepping off moment for humanity.

It's almost like when Neil Armstrong

put that first boot on the moon.

This will be the first time that we've gone

from a platform of learning how to live in space

to building our permanent home in space.

Other private companies

also want to use the ISS as a starting point

for their own ventures.

Bigelow Aerospace already has one

of its inflatable structures attached to the station.

And others including Sierra Nevada

and NanoRacks have put forward proposals.

Space habitats are expensive.

I think it's a false dichotomy to say,

"Okay, we're done with the International Space Station,

"let's move on to commercial platforms."

What I think is much more likely and realistic

and what NASA is certainly driving toward

is an incremental transition where commercial platforms

attach to the space station

or work collaboratively with the space station.

The next chapter cannot occur

without the active engagement of companies.

That said, that active engagement might not be as customers,