It feels a hell of a lot like the multimillion dollar pen vs the pencil myth - it costs them maybe $20K to send six months worth of clothes to the ISS per astronaut on a Dragon 2. The ISS-rated dry cleaning machine would cost at the very least a million dollars to develop, would still require sending ten grand of fresh solvent every so often (maybe once a year?) and would add new fire/explosion safety concerns, which they can and do put a price tag on. It would probably take longer than the life of the station for the ISS dry cleaning machine to pay itself off.
It's just too easy to not bother. For a moon colony or a Mars base, the economics change, but for near earth orbit it just doesn't make sense.
It's just too easy to not bother. For a moon colony or a Mars base, the economics change, but for near earth orbit it just doesn't make sense.