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How Much is an Astronaut’s Time Worth?

 1 year ago
source link: https://medium.com/this-fascinating-world/how-much-is-an-astronauts-time-worth-e0e21491af72
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How Much is an Astronaut’s Time Worth?

Much of the International Space Station is available to rent

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Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

The Pay Transparency Movement is gaining momentum, leading millions of workers to wonder what their time is worth. Most pay transparency seekers have down-to-earth jobs. But what if your 9–5 involves soaring around the earth at 17,000 MPH on a spacecraft like the International Space Station (ISS)? How much is an ISS astronaut’s time worth?

Answering that question used to be hard. People estimated ballpark figures by taking into account things like the cost to keep the ISS aloft, the average crew size of the station, and the like. Looking at these figures was interesting, but it amounted to guesswork at best. You couldn’t easily buy an hour of an ISS astronaut’s time, so no one outside NASA knew what their time was worth.

The ISS Opens for Business

In 2019, all that changed. As part of a broader effort to bolster the private space industry, NASA declared the International Space Station open for business. The agency published a comprehensive document listing all the ways that private companies could pay to use the ISS for everything from “manufacturing, production and transportation of goods” to “marketing activities.”

That’s right — for the right price, you can use a giant, multi-billion-dollar laboratory hurdling around the earth to market your company’s latest widget or manufacture stuff in space.

Along with its announcement, NASA also released a price list for all the ISS-related things that private people or companies can rent or buy. Want to send one kilogram of stuff (about the size of a pineapple) up to the ISS? That will run you a cool $20,000. Want to get your space pineapple back again? That’ll cost $40,000. If you’re cool with allowing your pineapple to burn up in the atmosphere after its trip to the ISS instead of bringing it home, NASA charges $20,000 per Kg for “Trash Disposal.”

Rent an Astronaut

Tucked into NASA’s price list is another interesting figure that directly answers our original question. On their list of ISS items available for sale or rent, NASA includes “ISS Crew Time.” The rate for an ISS astronaut’s time? $130,000 per hour.

That’s a staggering sum. It amounts to $2,166 per minute, or $36 for every second. If you hired an astronaut to perform a task about the ISS and they paused for a moment to yawn while on the clock (an activity that takes about six seconds), that yawn could cost you $216. Hiring an ISS astronaut for a full 9–5 workday would run you a bit over $1 million.

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Price list for the ISS. Courtesy NASA.

Who would pay these kinds of prices? Most buyers probably aren’t forking over millions to have astronauts perform micro-gravity space dances. Instead, they’re likely paying astronauts to assist with critical research, such as testing new materials, exploring novel manufacturing techniques, or assisting with drug discovery experiments. Around fifty companies were reportedly paying for experiments on the ISS as of mid 2019.

Major Tom, You’re on Mute

Still, NASA’s policies explicitly allow “marking activities,” as long as they don’t conflict with the agency’s advertising policies or imply a NASA endorsement. That opens up all kinds of intriguing possibilities. Could you fly some AXE Apollo Deodorant up to the ISS (this would cost $2,220 based on the product’s 113 gram weight), and then pay an astronaut $130,000 to talk about it for an hour, or perhaps to apply a bit under their spacesuit?

Probably not. Although NASA’s policies are dense and a bit hard to decipher, it appears that private companies can’t pay NASA astronauts to appear on camera. Doing so could “imply that the Commercial Activity is endorsed or supported by NASA,” which is forbidden. Companies also can’t use the intellectual property of NASA or its crew members, which probably includes their likenesses and the symbols and logos on their uniforms.

But there’s a workaround. NASA’s price list includes an entire large section about “Private Astronaut” activities. Basically, NASA is saying that if you can fly your own marketing department up to the ISS (book a ticket with SpaceX), they’ll provide such things as food ($2,000 per day), crew provisions like “office supplies” and “sleeping bags” (up to $1,500 per day), and stowage ($700 per cubic foot).

Heads up: you’ll also need to fork over $10 million per mission for basic services including communications with the ground and training once aboard the station. The good news? Both “life support” and “12 gigabytes of data per person, per day for videos, pictures and emails” are included.

A smart marketing director with a massive budget could do a lot with these capabilities. A company could send a spokesperson to the ISS, have them use the company’s product while aboard, and film a literally out-of-this-world commercial. Given that a Superbowl ad already costs around $7 million, the $15 million or so that you’d pay to shoot a space commercial isn’t too bad.

NASA’s private astronaut policies could allow for some fantastic PR stunts, too. A tech company could fly its CEO to the ISS and have them take Zoom calls from space to advertise the flexibility of the company’s remote work policies, attracting new hires.

Pricey Craft

Of the $2,000+ per minute that NASA charges for an astronaut’s time, how much of that money actually goes to the astronaut? According to Indeed, the average civilian astronaut earns between $104,000 and $161,000 per year. That means that a single hour of an astronaut’s time in space costs about the same as the astronaut’s entire yearly salary. NASA probably isn’t undercutting astronauts; it’s just that training them, flying them to space, and building them a giant, orbiting spacecraft home is massively expensive, and that expense is captured in the price of hiring an hour of their time.

Pay transparency here on planet earth seeks to eliminate inequalities, ensuring that job seekers can negotiate their salaries from a position of equality. NASA’s Open for Business policies and ISS price list are similar, in that they open up space exploration (and space marketing) to nearly anyone willing to comply with the agency’s policies and pay its fees.

You don’t need government contacts or sweetheart deals to send stuff to space, or to access a highly-trained astronaut’s time. You just need a vision, a plan…and $130,000.

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