The ISS at 25, & Seven Thoughts for America’s Next Space Age

Twenty-five years ago this week

Twenty-five years ago this week, humanity established a permanent foothold in the cosmos. On Nov. 2, 2000, at the turn of the millennium, the International Space Station received its first crew, beginning an unbroken chain of human presence beyond Earth that continues this moment, as you read these words.

I remember testifying before Congress, making promises that seemed impossibly ambitious:

• We would build a permanent outpost in orbit.
• We would master the engineering of survival in the void.
• We would prove that humans belonged among the stars.

The budget hawks descended on us, and critics declared it a fantasy. In June 1993, the hopes and dreams of the entire American human spaceflight program survived by a single vote: 216-215. Congressman John Lewis cast the deciding ballot. What a moment in history. I only wish Congressman Lewis was still with us today to share this joy.

What We Built

The ISS has lived up to every promise I made to Congress. It has proven to be one of the most complex, safe, and enduring engineering programs in the history of the planet. And the scientific promise of the outpost has delivered, too:

We learned that microgravity changes everything about material science: convection, sedimentation, crystallization.

We saw commercial users manufacture crystals for breakthrough drugs and specialty semiconductors, then take the basic research we started in orbit and run it all the way out to production lines back home.

We logged 3,000+ experiments, proved bone loss and muscle atrophy could be countered, showed that humans could install solar arrays, demonstrated surgical techniques in microgravity, built/operated robotic arms with dexterous fingers, and did so much more.

What made it possible were thousands of technical details that nobody sees: closed-loop life support, CO₂ scrubbing, ammonia cooling loops, redundancy in power supply, ways to swap out air purification units or repair a sealed hatch in real time. The ISS was a forced experiment in reliability: we studied failures, engineered fixes, and iterated on hardware and process until the lessons stuck. Crews learned to carry out real science, maintain systems, and improvise solutions.

What Comes Next?

Here’s what I’ve come to believe, and it may shock you coming from the man who fought to build it: The ISS needs to come down. Not because it failed. Quite the contrary: it succeeded beyond our wildest dreams! But that very success has become our trap. We’re still locked to LEO, comfortable in the transit lanes built by Apollo and the shuttle, dependent on endless resupply missions, and beholden to Mission Control for seemingly every little decision.

To go further, we need to break genuinely hard new barriers. Every dollar extending the ISS’s useful life has an opportunity cost, as it’s not being spent on breakthrough propulsion, closed-loop life support for deep space, or the infrastructure needed to reach the Moon and Mars.

Seven Imperatives for America & Its Allies’ Space Future
If we’re serious about escaping Earth orbit and truly becoming a spacefaring civilization, here’s what it will take.

001 // Cut the cord to mission control. At its farthest, Mars is 21-24 minutes away, one way, at light speed. By the time Houston learns you’re dying, you’re already dead. Crews need reliable, physics-based AI to diagnose and fix failures in seconds, and the autonomy to act without Earth’s permission. Comms should carry science and strategy, not survival instructions!

002 // Make biology our life support system. Mechanical recycling has plateaued at 50% efficiency, despite decades of optimization on the ISS. Earth achieves 100% through biology. We need photosynthesis, algae, fungi — systems that turn waste into food, CO₂ into oxygen, urine into water. The difference between 50% and 95% is the difference between endless resupply runs and permanence.

003 // Embrace the robots. A suited astronaut works seven hours before exhaustion. A spacefaring humanoid robot could work continuously for months. We need machines that share our tools and workspaces, that can swap out a faulty component or mine regolith using the same equipment humans would use, but without prebreathe protocols, suit checks, radiation limits, or fatigue. One operator commanding ten humanoid robots could accomplish more than a dozen astronauts for a fraction of the cost and risk.

004 // Generate power at industrial scale. Solar works in Earth orbit. But what about a lunar base with 336-hour nights? We need multi-MW nuclear systems running autonomously for decades. Power enables everything: ore processing, propellant production, manufacturing. Every kilowatt we can’t generate is another supply mission we can’t eliminate.

005 // Graduate from chemical propulsion. We’ve spent a century perfecting chemical rockets, squeezing marginal gains from the rocket equation. Nine months to Mars inflicts bone loss, muscle atrophy, radiation, and psychological strain that exercise can’t fully counter. Nuclear thermal propulsion doubles efficiency. Nuclear electric improves it tenfold. Fusion, when we achieve it, could reduce Mars transit to weeks. My NASA team proved scramjet feasibility at Mach 9.68 in 2004; that record endures because we chose incremental rockets over revolutionary hypersonic aircraft development.

006 // Use what’s already there. Lunar regolith is 40% oxygen. Mars offers CO₂ for fuel when mixed with hydrogen. Water ice becomes propellant or shielding. Yet we haul everything from Earth at thousands of dollars per kilogram. We need the full chain: prospecting, extraction, refining, and finishing. Industrial-scale excavators for abrasive regolith, smelters that work in vacuum, and 3D printers that build habitats from local materials.

007 // Let government and markets do what they do best. NASA should push for breakthrough physics and the search for life: the fundamental questions only government will fund. For everything else (transport, LEO stations, mining, fabrication), industry is ready to take the baton. (For the ISS specifically: retire it, and redirect the $3B/year budget toward purchasing commercial station services.)

But let me be clear…

America needs NASA, now more than ever. Not as a trucking company to LEO, but as the pathfinder to the impossible. NASA builds the instruments that answer fundamental questions about the origin and destiny of our universe. Its calling is to push for breakthroughs in propulsion, power, life support, and flagship science missions — technologies that markets won’t touch today because they’re too hard, or too far from profit.

Twenty-five years have proven the concept: humans can survive in space for months. But survival ≠ settlement. The ISS united the world, taught us how to live in orbit, and opened the door to commercialization. Mission accomplished. Now the world is ready for the next chapter: permanent outposts on the Moon, resources from near-Earth asteroids, boots on Mars, and beyond.

The Station was always meant to be a springboard, not a destination. Now it’s time for us to jump.