It's official, the first US commercial news about the International Space Station's aging, cracks, malfunctions, and end-of-life, along with Russia-US tensions, have been met with calls from NASA for commercial space companies to present plans for a new US space station. Everyone knows the ISS's days are numbered, but the big question is will human presence in lower-earth orbit continue, and how?
Russia said it began construction of the first module of its new station, the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS), which will be open to commercial activities. China, on the other hand, has a brand new space station fully operational, currently on its second crewed mission. Internationally, the strategic points to cover in the new space race are low Earth orbit stations, the Moon, and Mars.
Companies Nanoracks, Voyager Space, and Lockheed Martin teamed up and announced they will be building, launching, and operating a space station called Starlab. The companies assured that the new space station will be up and running by 2027, coincidently just one year before the date in which ISS experts believe the old station will be decommissioned. While the station will be privately operated it is closely linked to NASA’s projects which have government , funding, and incentives for the development of a new space economy.
The Starlab Space Industrial Revolution 5.0
The new space station habitat will be an inflatable habitat. Inflatable habitats, when deflated for transportation, occupy little space, facilitating the movement of the habitat to space aboard modern rockets. The construction process of inflatable habitats also solves many of the problems that constructing large structures in space presents. The habitat will be built by Lockheed Martin and will accommodate four permanent crew living comfortably in 340 square meters of space with a running power of 60kW. The station will also have thrusters for navigation, and a large robotic arm for servicing cargo and external payloads. The crown jewel of the space station will be its state-of-the-art laboratory, meant to attract commercial partners to host advanced research, science, and commercial projects.
Life in the Starlab space station will be very different from any existing space habitat. Nanoracks explains that its main focus is on its customers and realizing their dreams in space. This represents a massive shift in mentality compared to the “humanity-focused” spirit of NASA. Nanoracks has set its mission to owning and operating the next generation of low-cost agile space stations where the company can work with customers in microgravity research and facilitate a space industrial revolution for manufacturing, pharmaceutics, and the like.
The vision of the new US commercial space station is a future where the space frontier produces factories, laboratories, greenhouses, and hotels, and where the new generations of researchers and entrepreneurs produce high-quality fibre optics, print innovative tissues and organs, advance new crops, and allow more people to live and work in space. It may exceed our imagination today but for Nanoracks, Lockheed Martin, and Space Voyage it is a reality with a start date: 2027.
Source: Lockheed Martin