Re: 21st century employment prospects in space? - human redundancy
The ISS is a requirement, if we ever want to do more in space with humans. Also if we want to do any space construction or maintenance work. Just the very existence of the thing is an experiment in itself. How to operate in space in the long-term - which is still something we can't do.
It seems to me that the obvious prize is human repair/re-stocking of satellites in orbit. Though that's a difficult financial balance to make. As launch costs drop, it gets easier to build a lower cost satellite and accept a shorter lifespan and just launch more / more often.
If we want to do something like mine an asteroid though, we're going to need people. And a ship that will need assembly in orbit - short of using Project Orion to launch it. Both of which are things we are learning about on the ISS.
Plus, the ISS has given NASA a reason to fund private industry to do launch. Which has got us 2 new manned spacecraft (to be tested this year).
Oh and the ISS has mostly fulfilled its other purpose of keeping Russian rocket scientists off the job market - which has made dealing with Iran and North Korea a tad less fraught over the last couple of decades.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
