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At one end of the Bigelow Aerospace plant is a model of a gigantic home for future astronauts. With a unique design – it could be packed in a rocket and then deployed in space – it would comfortably accommodate a dozen people as a space station or serve as a base for a lunar base.
"It will be a monster spaceship by today's standards," said Robert T. Bigelow, the company's founder, during a press conference in February. It is Olympus, named after the mythological house of the Greek gods and Bigelow's ambition to build settlements in space.
Further down, in the factory, a long, lean metal structure. It is a developing version of the spine of a more modest B330 module, which the company plans to build. Light in appearance compared to Olympus, it would still be much less crowded than the metal cans that make up the International Space Station.
Bigelow said he was determined to launch two B330s in 2021, which could herald the passage of half a century of manned flights to government-run agencies like NASA to a capitalist free trade system. all. The Trump administration wants to accelerate this transition by ending direct federal funding for the space station after 2024.
"We also want many providers to compete on costs and innovation," said Jim Bridenstine, Nasa's administrator recently. If commercial stations were cheaper to operate, NASA would have more money to pursue other goals, like sending astronauts to the moon and Mars, Bridenstine said.
But betting hundreds of millions of dollars on companies that do not exist yet could prove a quick way to lose a fortune. And traveling in space remains a dangerous vocation that could kill some people who make the trip. Bigelow conceded that he was not sure he could find customers for his B330s. If there is no market, then we will have a break, "he said.
Home office in orbit
Today, the International Space Station (ISS) is the only place where people – no more than six at a time – live far from Earth. This is a technological feat and the most expensive thing humanity has ever built. The 15 countries involved, led by the United States and Russia, have spent more than $ 100 billion over two decades. The United States spends between $ 3 billion and $ 4 billion a year.
Permanently occupied for nearly 18 years, the ISS serves as a testbed for studying the long-term effects of radiation and weightlessness on astronauts. NASA has become proficient to run it, largely eliminating outages such as clogged toilets, unstable cooling systems and failed computers. Perhaps the most remarkable, life on the ISS has become trivial: there is an office at home, even if it is more than 200 km away and browsing 17,000 km / h, in which astronauts work, eat, sleep, exercise, perform housework. It happens that the crew performs, as an exit in space, activities that seem really extraordinary.
The possibility of removing the ISS, which is part of the administration's budget request, surprised many. Companies such as Bigelow need several years to launch their space stations, and such expensive and costly projects often fall behind. Critics fear that the ISS will be abandoned before its successors are ready. An interruption without space stations would disrupt NASA's studies, as well as emerging commercial activities. The companies of the new space station could hurt if the hoped-for customers are slow to come forward.
Two decades ago, there was a commercial space station for a brief period. It was Russian, and an American named Jeffrey Manber directed it. Perhaps he could have succeeded – but NASA killed him.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russian space program was short of money and ready to consider ideas that might have seemed crazy for a formerly communist country. Mir, the Russian space station, was perceived as dilapidated and dated, about to be replaced by the larger and better ISS.
But Manber and other American entrepreneurs have seen Mir more as a fervent repairer. Energia, the manufacturer of Mir, agreed to partner with the Americans to create MirCorp, a commercial company that leased the station to Russia. But the Russians gave in to NASA's insistence on the dumping of Mir, which was transferred to the Pacific in 2001.
Today, Manber has carved out a prime spot as a managing director of NanoRacks, a small Houston-based start-up, which has streamlined the process of sending experiences to the space station and also launched small satellites, CubeSats.
A few years ago, Manber asked his engineers to study an idea that NASA had previously scrapped: could the rocket parts left in orbit be converted into a low-cost space station? NanoRacks, in collaboration with United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has won a contract with NASA to explore the idea, focusing on the second stage of ULA's Atlas 5 rocket. The idea is to add a small robotics module between the second stage and the satellite payload at the top. For Manber, the key is flexibility. "The market will tell us the market," he said. "So let's go."
Reasons to go in private
Axiom Space, also headquartered in Houston, is the third largest competitor of the private space station. CEO Michael T. Suffredini, who led the NASA International Space Station portion until his retirement in 2015, said an Axiom station would cost about $ 50 million a year, a fraction of what costs the ISS.
"We worked hard to validate this number. This is a shocking figure for us too, "said Suffredini. Lower costs open up the possibility of making profits.
Suffredini would not describe in detail all the possible markets that he envisioned, but the company would include sending sightseeing tours to the rich – Philippe Starck, the great French designer, designs the interior of the Axiom module – and offers a factory space to the manufacturers looking to produce materials that can only be manufactured in the space. "I am absolutely certain that we can achieve our business plan," Suffredini said.
But not everyone is convinced. Paul K. Martin, Inspector General of NASA, published a report this year outlining these concerns. "More specifically, we are wondering if there is a sufficient business case that private companies will be able to develop a self-sustaining and profitable business, independent of significant federal funding over the next six years," was -he declares.
China plans to complete its own space station in the early 2020s and officials have promised to make it available to researchers around the world. Russia also talked about keeping its half of the ISS. Space policy experts, even those eagerly expecting NASA to take a more commercial approach, are reluctant to predict when placing people in space becomes economically viable for private enterprise.
Charles Miller, former head of NASA who is now president of Nexgen Space, expects that there will be three space stations in orbit in 2025: the ISS, the Chinese station and the beginnings from a commercial station. "We will still have heated debates about the future of the ISS," he said.
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