WASHINGTON -- Need to get that commercial experiment on board the International Space Station? It'll cost you at least $10,000 a pound to get it there.

How about an astronaut to tend to it while it's on the station? Count on paying $15,000 an hour -- about 13 times what the priciest lawyers in Washington charge.

And don't forget the cost of getting the data from your experiment beamed back to Earth via a NASA satellite. That's a cool $100 a minute.

More About the International Space Station

The Space Station at Your Fingertips: Visit SPACE.com 's section-by-section breakdown of the International Space Station. The Journey Starts Here.

The Grandest of All Space Projects: On November 20, 1998, in the Central Asian nation of Kazakstan, a space station was born.

Castles in Space: The Road to Space Stations: The scientific foundations of the International Space Station are about a century old, but the dream of "islands in the sky" -- bubbles of earthly life held aloft far above the ground-- has been with us since our collective childhood.

After a year of study NASA has set a preliminary price structure for 15 commercial slots aboard the International Space Station, SPACE.com has learned. The slots will become available when the station is finished in 2005.

"You could say we're open for business," said Mark Uhran, head of space utilization and product development at NASA headquarters. "This is an extremely flexible policy but the one thing it needs are substantial, tangible offers. What we're doing is trying to say we're open to proposals."

The pricing policy, which was completed Monday at NASA headquarters, is to be published later this week in the government journal Commerce Business Daily.

Companies interested in the space station have grumbled privately that NASA wanted corporate commitments from them before it even figured out how much those firms would have to pay. Now NASA hopes that companies seriously can consider leasing some of the commercial slots aboard the station.

"The ball has been returned," said Uhran. "The way the policy is structuredis it's market driven. If there are 10 companies that come in and five sites available, then demand is going to drive the price up. On the other hand, if no one can afford this price but they're involved in longer [research and development] ventures [on the station], then we have the option to waive part of the price in order to stimulate business."

The policy is divided into two pricing structures. One is an all-inclusive package for payloads or "bundles" that covers such things as electrical power, crew labor and satellite transmission time for a yearlong stay on the station. The other covers extra "premium services" outside such a package -- including the cost of taking the payloads to the station aboard the space shuttle.

"The way the policy is structured it's market driven. If there are 10 companies that come in and five sites available, then demand is going to drive the price up."

The "bundle" package costs $20.8 million.

It would cover an experiment the size of a small refrigerator that could weigh up to 1,500 pounds (680 kilograms). Included would be 2,800 kilowatt hours of electrical energy, nearly twice the amount of energy used in a typical single-family home in a month's time.

The price also includes 86 hours of astronaut-labor if the "bundle" rides inside the shuttle orbiter, or 32 hours if it goes in the shuttle's cargo bay. Finally, it covers space-to-ground transmission costs for two terabits of data -- the equivalent of about 50 CDs.

Premium services will be charged to all buyers ordering extras outside of the "bundle" package.

Those charges include $10,000 per pound to orbit if the payload flies in the shuttle's mid-deck lockers, $12,000 if it flies in the cargo bay. The cost is for a one-way trip.

Crew time will cost $15,000 an hour per person and power consumption will cost $2,000 per kilowatt hour. Transponder time on NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite system will cost $100 per minute.

Still to be determined is the cost per hour of a spacewalk by an astronaut needed for a commercial experiment attached to the outside of the space station.

NASA developed the pricing policy after consulting with its 15 station partners. Also involved in the discussion were the Office of Management and Budget, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.