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Commercialization

Another Day, Another Commercial Space Station

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 25, 2021
Filed under
Another Day, Another Commercial Space Station

New Orbital Destination Opens Up Space For Business And Travel, Creating New Ecosystem
“Blue Origin and Sierra Space today announced plans for Orbital Reef, a commercially developed, owned, and operated space station to be built in low Earth orbit. The station will open the next chapter of human space exploration and development by facilitating the growth of a vibrant ecosystem and business model for the future. Orbital Reef is backed by space industry leaders and teammates including Boeing, Redwire Space, Genesis Engineering Solutions, and Arizona State University.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

6 responses to “Another Day, Another Commercial Space Station”

  1. Winner says:
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    Blue Origin can’t get to orbit, can’t ship BE4 engines. “Let’s announce a space station!”.

  2. Nick K says:
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    NASA has been funding experiments and science investigations since the 1970s in the hope that someone would come up with a seriously Earth shaking discovery. NASA put hundreds of millions into Centers for Commercial Development, prior to spending billions for ISS.

    Now NASA is trying desperately to find someone to take over space station work in LEO so its astronauts can go ‘exploring’ and get away from the burden of humdrum life in LEO.

    There is plenty that could be done on LEO stations. Just as there are Earth based laboratories, there will be LEO based labs one day too. But the key will have to be to make them relatively inexpensive to operate with efficiencies that do not unduly burden the scientists and corporate sponsors.

    For many years NASA focused its energy on reducing the paperwork, preliminary testing and manpower to the absolute minimum required. Groups like Spacehab excelled.

    But for ISS, government and contract workers tried to build kingdoms on how large, difficult and time consuming the process could be constructed. New groups like CASIS were chartered in addition to the integrators, operators, and beuraucrats. NASA threw away decades of success.

    If these new space station sponsors want this new effort to succeed they better figure out real fast how to expedite and simplify.

  3. Bernardo Senna says:
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    Fascinating trend. I wonder if Spacex intends to doon station a Spaceship in orbit to work as the Spacelab or as a long term space station, bigger, cheaper and poddibly earlier that these alternatives.

  4. Hari says:
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    A low earth orbit (LEO) space base is needed but these pie-in-the-sky ideas just don’t seem realistic to me. Replacing the ISS should be prioritized ahead of Gateway, if catastrophic failure occurs, and China’s space station becomes the only LEO destination. Yes, this means substantial investment by U.S. taxpayers because the private sector may struggle to offset the day-to-day operational costs while trying to break even or turn a profit. On the other hand, I’d love to be proven wrong by all these companies.