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That's exciting. It'll be nice for NASA I'm sure to finally gain independence from the Soyuz launch schedule and the 1 Russian member that always comes with that, letting them rotate crews more easily. Maybe with more craft we could see an inflatable expansion to the station for more crew berths.

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Perhaps, but it won’t be Bigelow Aerospace: https://spacenews.com/bigelow-aerospace-sets-sights-on-free-...

Looks like this company may do it though: https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/01/28/axiom-wins-nasa-approv...

Bigelow has always seemed like it was on the edge of collapsing. It'd be interesting to see them actually get their large station launched, I'd love for their to be a commercial alternative if only for there to be less pressure to commercialize the ISS. (An endeavor I think is doomed, there's not enough actual use for it yet that isn't satisfied by the national lab model)

> ... Soyuz ... the 1 Russian member

Well to be fair, it's completely understandable that US astronauts would never be allowed unsupervised access to a Russian spacecraft. Hell, US are lucky they even are granted any Soyuz flights at all, given the crazy Russophobe behaviour.

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