Commercial Orbital Reef space station passes NASA’s design review
Capitalism in space: A proposed commercial space station dubbed Orbital Reef and being built by a partnership led by Sierra Space and Blue Origin has passed its NASA’s design review, allowing for construction to now begin.
The review, conducted as part of a $130 million development contract from NASA, found no issues with the station’s design.
This commercial partnership also includes Boeing, Redwire, Mitsubishi, Genesis Engineering, and Arizona State University, and plans its launch before 2030 when ISS will be retired. This quote from the article I think is important:
“We’re going as fast as we can,” Steve Lindsey, chief strategy officer at Sierra Space, said during a panel at the Goddard Memorial Symposium March 25. “We don’t want to have a gap like we did with crew back in the last decade.”
Three other private space stations are also under construction or being planned, all hoping to be operational prior to ’30. If even two of these launch, the 2030s will be very exciting indeed.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Capitalism in space: A proposed commercial space station dubbed Orbital Reef and being built by a partnership led by Sierra Space and Blue Origin has passed its NASA’s design review, allowing for construction to now begin.
The review, conducted as part of a $130 million development contract from NASA, found no issues with the station’s design.
This commercial partnership also includes Boeing, Redwire, Mitsubishi, Genesis Engineering, and Arizona State University, and plans its launch before 2030 when ISS will be retired. This quote from the article I think is important:
“We’re going as fast as we can,” Steve Lindsey, chief strategy officer at Sierra Space, said during a panel at the Goddard Memorial Symposium March 25. “We don’t want to have a gap like we did with crew back in the last decade.”
Three other private space stations are also under construction or being planned, all hoping to be operational prior to ’30. If even two of these launch, the 2030s will be very exciting indeed.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
This is a good step forward.
Also, Mr Z. Not sure if you noticed. This story got picked up on Rantingly.
I love it. Can’t help but think this is good stuff.
BTW, what do they do up there?
David,
The concept behind Orbital Reef is a Low Earth Orbit business park. So really, they do whatever the leasing company wants to do. Redwire specifically is associated with 3D manufacture. You may have to dig into the website for the Reef on other potential uses.
David Telford asked: “what do they do up there?”
Right now, on the ISS, they mostly do science and research. NASA has been reluctant to do manufacturing for public consumption and has been reluctant to do tourism, thus it is considered a “National Lab.” Even the four people who are going to ISS on a commercial mission are saying that it is a business trip, not a tourist trip. SpaceX’s first commercial passenger launch even did some science and testing of space hardware.
Many people hope that the commercial space stations will allow commercial space-manufacturing for public consumption and straight up tourism. I believe that a lack of these two options has led to a lack of interest, reporting, and knowledge on what they do up there. Reports tend to be limited to scurrilous reporting on experiments involving beer hops, Coke vs. Pepsi, or other seemingly frivolous experiments. Meanwhile, there have been a couple thousand experiments performed, and few people can describe any of them and even fewer can explain why they are relevant to our knowledge of the universe or to our everyday lives.
Even though I expect much of what they will do up there will be proprietary, I hope the public’s lack of knowledge changes with the commercial space stations, as companies start bragging about their space-made products for sale to the rest of us.
From the article:
That seems especially exciting indeed.
David Telford asked: “what do they do up there?”
The video linked below, which I came across this evening, does not discuss Orbital Reef specifically, but it does discuss some of the expectations of the future commercial space stations as well as the decommissioning of ISS, especially in light of the loss of Russian cooperation in space endeavors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHKJntXF5do (14 minutes; “Has Putin Doomed The International Space Station?”)