18 Time May 9/May 16, 2022
Goodbye, ISS. Hello,
private space stations
BY JEFFREY KLUGER
there were billions of dollars to be
made in the results from research con-
ducted aboard,” says John Logsdon,
founder of the Space Policy Institute
at George Washington University.
“We’ve now tested that hypothesis,
and after 20 years, there’s not been
any validation.”
NASA, obliquely, seems to agree.
It avoids putting a dollar figure on
what the ISS has kicked back into the
U.S. economy, instead speaking of the
2,500 R&D experiments run aboard
the station and the 2,100 scientific pa-
pers tied to station research.
But whether the private space
stations will show the same iffy bal-
ance sheet or not, the plans are being
drawn, the metal is being cut, and the
age of the commercial stations—at
least to hear the space agency and the
industry tell it—is here.The name you give a spacecraft
doesn’t really mean a thing. If it flies, it
flies—that’s all that matters. That said,
the folks at Blue Origin take no small
amount of pride in the lyrical name
they’ve given their planned space sta-
tion: Orbital Reef.From iTs incepTion, The inTernaTional space
Station (ISS) was an improbable machine. As big as a
football field and made of 17 pressurized modules and a pair
of massive solar wings, the $150 billion spacecraft has been
an instrument of research, exploration, and politics, built
and maintained by 15 nations, led by the U.S. and Russia.
Even as the war in Ukraine rages, NASA and Roscosmos, the
Russian space agency, continue to cooperate in space.
But what politics cannot break, time and age can.
The ISS is getting old. Its first component was launched
nearly 24 years ago, and orbital hardware can last only so
long before equipment breaks down, small air leaks ap-
pear, and the constant punishment both by micromete-
orites and the continual thermal cycling the station goes
through on every 90-minute orbit—from 121°C (250°F)
on the sunlit side of Earth and –157°C (–250°F) on the
nighttime side—take their own toll. NASA and the ISS
partners had originally intended to keep the station in
service only until 2025, when it would be sent on an in-
cineration plunge through the atmosphere and into the
ocean. In December, the Biden Administration gave the
ISS a reprieve, extending its life to 2030—provided the
hardware can last that long. But whatever its exact end
date is, the station is on the clock.
On Dec. 2, NASA made it clear that whenever that
clock tolls, the U.S. will be getting out of the space-station
game, likely for good. Instead, the space agency signed a
$415.6 million seed-money deal with three companies—
Blue Origin, Nanoracks, and Northrop Grumman—
to develop their own private space stations, on which
NASA and other customers could lease space for profes-
sional crews and tourists. And those three companies
aren’t alone. NASA previously inked an agreement with
Houston- based Axiom Space under which the company
will launch up to four modules to dock with the ISS, which
will later decouple and become their own free-flying space
station before the ISS is de-orbited and retired. The first
module is set to launch in September 2024. Add the other
three companies now under NASA contract, and there
could be four private space stations orbiting Earth before
the end of the decade.
“I believe it’s a $1 trillion industry, especially when you
start manufacturing things in space,” says Matt Ondler,
Axiom’s chief technology officer. “We’re certainly seeing
interest in the private astronaut market. And we’re really
seeing a lot of interest in countries flying astronauts whom
they can’t currently fly because they’re not part of the ISS.”
But not everyone agrees there’s a commercial eco-
system that could support even the one space station
we’ve got, never mind four private ones. “I think that the
International Space Station was sold on the promise that
△
A rendering of
Blue Origin’s
Orbital Reef,
one of four
planned private
space stations