MARK WHITTINGTON IN THE WSJ: We Need Our Private Space: Trump is setting the stage for commerce in low Earth orbit.

One of the more controversial aspects of President Trump’s new space policy is his plan to privatize the International Space Station. The savings, around $3 billion a year, would be plowed into a lunar exploration program. Under the proposal, the American portion of the ISS would be turned over to a commercial entity.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.) is not amused. “The administration’s budget for NASA is a nonstarter,” he said in a statement. “Turning off the lights and walking away from our sole outpost in space at a time when we’re pushing the frontiers of exploration makes no sense.” Even before the transition plan was revealed, other major space players in Congress, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), expressed skepticism.

This reaction seems to stem from a misreading of the Trump administration’s intentions. The new policy in no way suggests that America will abandon low Earth orbit to go back to the moon. Instead, it suggests that the administration is preparing for the next stage of space exploration. Just as the end of the space shuttle program heralded the beginning of private spaceflight, the end of the old space station will usher in the era of the commercial development of low Earth orbit.

Apart from reforming operation of the ISS, how would commercializing low Earth orbit work? At least three companies—Bigelow Aerospace, Axiom Space, and NanoRacks—have plans to deploy private space stations by the early 2020s. Bigelow already has worked with NASA by attaching a small-scale prototype of its inflatable space station module to the ISS.

The aim would be to develop commercial markets for these new private space stations to ensure their independence. They could be serviced by commercial spaceships such as the Boeing Starliner and the SpaceX Dragon at a much lower cost than NASA currently pays to maintain the International Space Station. Private companies such as Bigelow are as enthusiastic about the privatization plan as politicians are angry.

Well, Bill Nelson is joined at the hip to NASA.